The Manitoba government has signed a five-year agreement with the University of Manitoba’s Urban Mobility and Transportation Informatics Group (UMTIG) to continue their partnership on the Manitoba Highway Traffic Information System (MHTIS), Manitoba’s traffic monitoring program for provincial highways.
Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Lisa Naylor said Wednesday, “Effective research and data-driven decisions for improving Manitoba’s roads play important roles in ensuring safe and efficient mobility for all road users. The Manitoba government and UMTIG have partnered to create and offer MHTIS, a key system that provides critical information on traffic volumes on all provincial highways. We look forward to what these next five years will bring.”
The agreement between Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure (MTI) and UMTIG will involve an investment of $1.5 million to ensure the continued delivery of MHTIS to Manitobans. UMTIG is co-directed by Jonathan Regehr and Babak Mehran, associate professors of civil engineering at the University of Manitoba.
“We are very pleased to continue this long-standing partnership with MTI by continuing to deliver an essential service for Manitobans that simultaneously promotes innovation and training,” said Regehr. “For nearly three decades, the MHTIS has generated world-class research that helps address the practical challenges of providing a safe and resilient transport system for our province.”
MHTIS is a partnership between MTI and UMTIG for the collection, analysis and distribution of information about traffic movement on Manitoba highways. This service is widely used by engineers, consultants, researchers, students, other levels of government and the general public. The combination of MTI’s technical expertise in traffic data collection along with the university students’ and faculty’s developmental research focus has created an innovative traffic information system that continues to evolve as new data requirements and technologies emerge, noted the minister.
MHTIS is planned, designed, implemented and operated by Price Faculty of Engineering graduate students, working under the direction of professional engineers with expertise in traffic measurement and estimation. The Manitoba government is proud to continue to support the engineers of tomorrow through esteemed programs like the UMTIG, noted Naylor.
