McTrans - A Year in Review

This past fiscal year was a pivotal point for McTrans’ operation and business toward developing, disseminating and supporting traffic engineering software. The Transportation Research Board (TRB) published the 7th Edition of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). As such, McTrans released “Version 8” of Highway Capacity Software (HCS), titled HCS2022. The HCS2022 is the next generation of HCS that complies with the newly released HCM and is offered as “Software as a Service (SaaS).” With this move, McTrans joined the pioneer tier in the industry in moving away from the old perpetual model and enabling everyone to afford to access traffic analysis software.

Besides HCS, McTrans released a major update for TSIS-CORSIM software in the past year. The next generation of TSIS-CORSIM software integrates live Bing map (offered by Microsoft) to the CORSIM, the transparent backend initially developed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). This creates a comprehensive suite of features to model traffic in a microscopic fashion comparable with other software options in the market. Similar to HCS, TSIS-CORSIM is offered as SaaS, making it an affordable option for transportation professionals.

For the first time, McTrans center formed an External Advisory Board (EAB) to seek external strategic advice. The board includes members from private consulting firms, academic institutions, and state and federal government former employees. Besides the EAB, McTrans started a business partnership with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) to offer training for Highway Capacity analyses, Highway Safety Analyses, and Transportation Equity. This collaboration enables 17+ thousand ITE members to access McTrans-offered courses at a discounted rate.

By entering into the post-COVID era in the past fiscal year, McTrans started attending professional conferences and offering a diverse set of presentations, as well as hosting booths in the exhibitions. This has created a dynamic interaction between the McTrans and current and prospective users. Those fruitful in-person marketing efforts have resulted in considerable new sales opportunities. McTrans will continue engaging with the industry and higher education to offer the latest in traffic analysis through software implementation.

As the final word, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to McTrans, UFTI, and UF employees, EAB members, business partners and UFTI leadership for helping McTrans to grow successfully in the past year. Without their passionate efforts, achieving those milestones would not have been possible. I am looking forward to another prosperous year to come.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bezhad Aghdashi, Director