We are excited to announce the release of our new interface for the One-Stop-Shop (OSS). Check it out at https://oss.weathershare.org/. OSS is now mobile-friendly while presenting all the data and capability of the original One-Stop-Shop. Even though we have had a mobile version for several years now, it only included a subset of the original layers. The new version will work well on any device: desktop computer, tablet or phone.

Fire season is here again, and it is hitting close to home. The Carr Fire spread into Redding, California, and has caused a lot of damage. The fire and its impact can be seen in multiple ways in the One-Stop-Shop.

Research pays off! The One-Stop-Shop was featured in TR News as an example of how research is being put into practice, adding value and providing benefits to both stakeholders and end-users.

A bad fire season just got worse. Even though fires in Montana and other areas in the Northwest have diminished with cooler, wet weather, hot, humid and windy weather in California has caused disastrous fires throughout wine country in California. These fires have had an impact on travel.

We were curious to see how well the impact of eclipse viewers and travelers and the eclipse itself was shown in the One-Stop-Shop. Sure enough, their presence on and near the roadway was apparent.

This bad weather season has been particularly busy for the One-Stop-Shop (OSS), and it appears that winter is not letting up over the Western States region, including California. Even though winter is not over, it is a good time to look at statistics for both the original, desktop version of OSS and OSS Mobile. It has been a very bad weather season, which means that it has been very good in terms of statistics for our systems! From October 1st, 2016 through midday today, March 6th, 2017, there have been almost 310,000 user sessions on OSS Desktop.

The One-Stop-Shop project team recently compiled an informational list of links and other relevant information related to OSS and the data it utilizes. The Data and Links page lists the information and data layers in the OSS. It lists the many data sources used by the OSS system, including state departments of transportation, state traveler information sites, weather data providers, and various other data providers.

The One-Stop-Shop has gone mobile! OSS is now available on your smartphone. Check it out at http://oss.weathershare/org/m/. Note that it works best with an LTE or high-speed wi-fi connection.

On August 16th, the Blue Cut fire started along Interstate 15 North of San Bernardino and resulted in the closure of a large portion of Interstate 15. This closure was apparent in the One-Stop-Shop, visible in the Google Traffic layer, in CMS messages, CCTV images, and more. The fire could be seen in the fire detections layer not long after the blaze began.

The Kick-Off Meeting for Phase 3 of the One-Stop-Shop project (OSS Phase 3) was held on April 5th, 2016. Project team members agreed to hold a teleconference in lieu of an in person meeting.

In preparation for the 2015 winter holiday season, Montana State University and NBC Montana reported on the One-Stop-Shop and its benefits to travelers.

The 2015 National Rural ITS Conference was held August 9-12, at the Snowbird Ski Resort in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. The agenda included tours and technical sessions covering a wide variety of rural ITS topics. Doug Galarus presented Expansion of the Western States One Stop Shop for Rural Traveler Information in Session B1 Using Partnerships to Improve Traveler Information.

Recently we added a fire layer to the One-Stop-Shop. Given the big fires in California and Washington this year, we thought a fire layer would be helpful to travelers, particularly to show fire activity in relation to the road network. Sunday afternoon we noticed smoke on the north side of the Gallatin Valley. Given strong winds all day, we were fairly certain that a wildfire had started and taken off northwest of Bozeman.

The One Stop Shop received significant media coverage across Montana last November following a major update in late 2014 that expanded the web application to include data from 11 states across the western U.S.

The One Stop Shop for traveler information, or OSS, has recently been updated to include real-time and near real-time road information from 11 different state transportation agencies. OSS users can now see up-to-the-minute road and weather information for Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. A principal objective of OSS is to allow travelers to view important road and weather information across state boundaries, and this update is a big step towards that goal.

At the 2014 ITS World Congress in Detroit, Michigan, the One-Stop Shop was announced as the winner of ITS America’s Best of ITS Award for Best New Innovative Practice – Research Design and Innovation. ITS America presents these awards to “the most prominent and innovative transportation technology leaders in the Americas” whose projects exemplify innovation and demonstrate specific and measurable outcomes. The OSS project is sponsored by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), who nominated it for the annual award.

We do our best to monitor OSS to make sure it is functioning correctly, particularly during events that impact the traveling public. You might think such events only occur during the bad weather season, but summer brings plenty of challenges including fire. For the Western States region, this is certainly turning out to be a bad fire year, particularly when coupled with the drought in California.

We recently created a poster for OSS that displays many of the features and uses for the web application. You can download the poster here or view it on the OSS documents page. This poster will be displayed at the 2014 Western States Rural Transportation Technology Implementers Forum in Yreka, California, June 17th-19th, 2014.

The “bad weather” season in California has been bad for a different reason this year – extreme drought. Fortunately, Northern California has received some relief in the past several weeks in the form of rain and snow. As is always the case during changing conditions, travelers need to remind themselves that information is key to decision making and safety when navigating rural areas in bad weather. Caltrans District 2 staff, Ian Turnbull and Joe Baltazar, were interviewed on February 6th by the “Action News Now” (KHSL-12, KNVN-24 Chico/Redding) team for such a reminder, and the broadcast was seen across Northern California and Southern Oregon, and on the Internet.

We recently posted a quick start video showing basic use of the OSS web application. We hope this video will help first-time users to better utilize OSS. You can find the video by clicking on the “?” icon at the top left of the OSS interface to show a drop down menu and then selecting “Basic Usage (video)”.

Timothy Compston and Traffic Technology International magazine recently interviewed OSS project team members Doug Galarus and Ian Turnbull about the One Stop Shop application. Doug and Ian described the challenges travelers face in obtaining comprehensive travel information when crossing state borders or districts within a state and the solutions they are developing to address these problems.

As of this morning, several new data layers were added to OSS, helping us to provide even better coverage of the Western States region. We’ve added CCTV cameras, changeable (dynamic) message signs and rest areas for Nevada. We have also added RWIS (road weather information systems) back into OSS after an absence of approximately 1.5 months due the Clarus System going offline.

A storm with heavy rains and strong winds passed through central and northern California last week. The storm caused many lane and road closures, flooding, the toppling of trees and power lines, and accidents. Portions of California received over 7 inches of rain within 24 hours, creating many traffic hazards.

Today is one of those days when a single update isn't enough. Winter has been slow in arriving, but it came in full force today across the four-state, Western States region. There is snow throughout the region and plenty of incidents to go with it. Be sure to take a look at multiple OSS updates from today.

In this second update for today we take a closer look at the Google Traffic layer relative to the weather and road conditions. Recall that we've include Google Traffic as an experimental layer in OSS to gauge how well it reflects rural traffic flow. We have concerns about it in terms of accuracy, timeliness and reliability. However, it does appear to be a reasonable indicator of general traffic flow.

In this third update for today we take a closer look at the snow, particularly in Washington. The following snow forecast layer in OSS comes from the National Weather Services National Digital Forecast Database. Heavy amounts of snow was forecast over nearly all of the Western States region, with Washington covered almost completely.

In this fourth update for today we emphasize the need to look carefully at all information available when traveling under winter conditions, since conditions can change quickly with both time and location.

It's been awhile since we've posted an update about the One-Stop Shop (OSS), and a lot has happened since the last update. We now have coverage of the Western States Region, which includes California, Oregon, Nevada and Washington.

OSS Phase 1 Final Report ...

On December 21st and 22nd, there was a great deal of precipitation throughout California and Oregon. Here we’ve grabbed some screenshots to show magnitude of the storm, and the wealth of information available in WeatherShare and OSS ...

The bad weather season is here again. OSS can be used to get an idea of where conditions are less than ideal. We took the following screenshots several days ago, on January 7th, 2011.

The National Rural ITS conference (NRITS) was held August 1-4, 2010, in Huntington, West Virginia. Hosted by the Nick J. Rahall II Appalachian Transportation Institute, the conference was titled The Bridge to Success: Engineering the Future of Rural ITS.

Google Traffic - ready for rural or not? We've enabled Google Traffic in OSS for the sake of evaluation to see if speed estimates are accurate, and how it jives with other OSS layers. Let's see if it's up to the task.

Take a break - keeping track of facilities, including rest areas, in One Stop Shop.

Watching the weather - National Weather Service Digital Forecasts in One Stop Shop.

Snow from last night.

Changing conditions.

Unexpected events - rockslides, and more ...

Introduction to One Stop Shop.