New Jersey Department of Transportation — Weigh-In-Motion Web Application

The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) currently operates 81 “Weigh in Motion” or WIM stations that record around a billion vehicles per year. The collected data is critical to transportation planning, project design efforts, and the state’s commercial vehicle safety program. In addition to collecting vehicle weights and classifications, NJDOT estimates that it receives around 50 billion pieces of data each year via its WIM stations; data vital for online navigation tools like GPS. Yet when the traditional method of data dissemination became challenging for NJDOT to handle, putting stress on the system and its performance, the department knew it had to streamline the process. The agency designed and deployed an innovative app to give users a variety of options when accessing WIM data. During the design phase of this $200,000 project, NJDOT engaged closely with users – including municipal planning organizations and the private sector – and identified two key priorities for its WIM data service: allowing users to download station data for customized uses alongside a “visualization service” that gives users a “snapshot” of daily data by travel direction, lane, and by hour for each station. In addition to those priorities, features such as data packaging, Cloud deployment, and its Open Source platform help provide an improved experience for both users and NJDOT staff – saving time, money, and creating more efficiency.