Special Hauling Oversized/Overweight Permit System in Pennsylvania Saved Route Planning Time by Up to 15 Minutes.
PennDOT Overhauled a Legacy Permitting System with Upgrades to the User Interface, the Analysis Process, and the Supporting Digital Infrastructure.
Pennsylvania, United States
APRAS Modernization
Summary Information
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) developed a web-based application in 1998 to issue special hauling oversized/overweight permits for carriers to move extremely large and/or heavy items on state-owned roads and bridges. However, over time this system became outdated and fell behind the state-of-the-art systems used by other states. To address these issues, in 2018, PennDOT started a modernization project that aimed to (i) streamline the permit application process for hauling, (ii) introduce GIS-based map routing to expedite auto-approval of loads, (iii) enhance the likelihood of immediate permit issuance without manual review, and (iv) simplify the end-to-end user experience. This project demonstrated the transformation of PennDOT's legacy system into the Automated Permit Routing and Analysis System (APRAS), which now handles more than 400,000 requests annually.
METHODOLOGY
After thorough evaluations, PennDOT began development of their own web application with direct input from carriers and permit services. To ensure a successful deployment, PennDOT devised a detailed rollout plan involving the following phases:
- A pre-rollout training for users and a phased implementation spread over six months,
- Rollout Wave 1: a select group of carriers in December 2019,
- Wave 2: A larger group a few months after,
- Wave 3: The final wave was successfully completed by May 17, 2020, on schedule despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
The legacy system was decommissioned on June 14, 2020. Further upgrades were planned based upon learnings from operations.
FINDINGS
- Multiple carriers indicated that using the map to generate a route saves approximately 5-15 minutes per application.
- New map-based routing feature provided reasonable paths and reduced denied applications.
- More than 2,000 users were transitioned to the APRAS system to produce more than 120,000 applications.
- Moving to a cloud-based infrastructure enabled application deployments without any downtime for end users.
