Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority: Building the Road Ahead with Google AI

The city of Austin is experiencing rapid population growth, which puts more pressure on all services in the area – and more cars on the roads. With $800 million in road construction already underway, Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA) knew it had to plan ahead to implement a road management system that could handle advanced analytics, and integrate complex data from multiple sources, including road sensors, toll transactions, and cameras reading license plates from all over the country.

CTRMA recognized the need for a custom-built solution tailored to their specific requirements and chose Google Public Sector and Deloitte to design and build an in-house centralized data platform that could seamlessly support its high-volume datasets and standardize input from other roadway toll systems.

Greg Mack, Director of IT at CTRMA, explains: “We process 750,000 toll transactions each day–and that comes with associated revenue that we have to reconcile. We brought in over $225 million from this platform since it was launched in August 2023, and we’ve been extremely happy with the stability of the system.” By using Google Cloud’s BigQuery for data management, Looker for analytics and visualization, and Apigee for third-party integrations, they designed the platform for scalability and flexibility, to expand to new organizational needs. With a phased approach, the roll-out of the new system was gradual. “The cars never stop on the roads so we had to be careful when we switched from our legacy system. One of the best things we did was run the two systems in parallel for six months. Then the transition was seamless,” says Mack

After a year in operation, Mack points to many benefits. “We own the data and now we can see it in real-time. With Google Cloud’s Looker dashboards, we're seeing trends that we may not have recognized before,” he says. Agents in CTRMA’s call center can see at a glance what transactions have been billed or paid, and view trends by different parameters, like road, tag, or date. They can easily find any toll transaction and share images with motorists. “A job that took 30 minutes now takes a few seconds,” Mack explains. The platform has also lowered operational costs and saved time. It can easily scale up to process 100,000 transactions every fifteen minutes – or over nine million transactions each day.

For the next phase of this partnership, CTRMA plans to integrate real-time traffic data from Google Maps into a Traffic Management Center that can help ease road congestion and send help to motorists whose cars break down. With Gemini, agents and staff will be able to ask questions of the data in everyday language to find answers in real-time. The agency is expanding its data processing platform to recognize Federal Communications Commission transponders from other regional transit systems, and even adding point of sale transactions at parking garages. CTRMA’s focus on continuous innovation and a commitment to improving the motorist experience sets the stage for safer driving and smoother travels on the road ahead.

The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is an independent agency established to build and maintain high-quality roadways and related transportation solutions in Williamson and Travis counties.

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