Over the past two years, the Port Authority has built an enterprise network that uses switched 10M, 100M and 1G bit/sec Ethernet, and ATM technologies; launched a Web site and intranet; and rolled out new browser-accessible scheduling, dispatching, financial, human resources and payroll applications.

It is for these undertakings, and their far-reaching ramifications, that Network World is honoring the Port Authority as a runner-up in our annual User Excellence Award competition.

The Port Authority's reach is vast. It employs 3,100 employees and serves more than 260,000 daily commuters and 76 million riders annually through its downtown subway and light rail systems, two inclined planes (elevator-type vehicles that service the hills above the business district) and more than 1,000 buses. The 13th largest transit agency in the country, the Port Authority's system covers 730 square miles, including Pittsburgh and all of Allegheny County.

The Port Authority's technology investment was relatively small, at $425,000. But the savings are immense.

The agency conducts formal return-on-investment (ROI) analysis on all technology projects. Based on those, it expects to save about $4.26 million annually over at least the next three years, says Maureen Bertocci, chief technology officer (CTO) for the Port Authority. The new scheduling and dispatching applications, for example, let the Port Authority better schedule people and vehicles on any given day. From this improved scheduling, the agency expects to reduce its bill for hourly wages by $1.76 million annually, for operator pay by $1.4 million, and for maintenance costs by $1.1 million. The agency has determined, through its new applications, that it will require 15 fewer peak vehicles daily.

On the front end, its customers see its new Web site. Before heading to the terminal, people can use this site to obtain updated bus and train schedules. They can search by route name or number, and get scheduled times for each stop or just their own. And this is current information, not long-outdated, printed schedules. The Web site also serves up reports on traffic congestion, route maps for the entire transit system, and a view of traffic on some routes via Webcams. Commuters can buy monthly passes online or just find fares.

Response from commuters has been good, if Web hits are an indicator. Daily hits average 40,000, or a half-million per month. That's up from 10,000 per month for the Port Authority's old Web site, which Bertocci says was pretty primitive and buried under an obscure address.

The Port Authority's network project dates to November 1998, when Bertocci joined the agency as CTO Sweeping change was in order, she says.

Like many transit agencies, the Port Authority was behind the times when it came to network technology. A couple hundred people at the agency's computer center had serial line connections to a Honeywell mainframe that ran stodgy, home-grown programs. They used either dumb terminals or PCs with host emulation software from their desktops. Just a few people had remote access to the mainframe, via dial-up 56K bit/sec modem connections or frame relay. A small 10Base-T network served a few others, who were working on clunky, old computers and using Windows for Workgroups for e-mail, Bertocci says.

Prior to Bertocci's arrival, some managers realized that the agency needed to get rid of its outdated mainframe applications and so had begun looking for off-the-shelf financial, scheduling and other applications. But no one had given the network any thought; they just figured the new applications would run on stand-alone servers. "When I arrived, we took a step back and looked not just at implementing new systems but at an infrastructure that we could build on for the next 15 years," Bertocci says.

Bertocci centered on the Web: "Becoming Web-enabled would allow us to implement new products, faster, with less training. We'd save time and money. " She began by researching the types of data the agency would be delivering, bandwidth requirements, and the number of pages per second that could be downloaded. Then she drafted a request for proposals that specified use of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet switches. She told the vendors what facilities needed to be networked, but left the architecture details to them. "We wanted to be able to move core equipment out to the edge and build on from there, bringing in whatever else we need to – even 10G Ethernet, if it comes to that!"

Cabletron (now Enterasys Networks) won the Port Authority's business hands down, against competitors including Bay Networks (now Nortel Networks), Cisco and FORE Systems (now Marconi Corp.). Deciding factors were the thoroughness of Cabletron's proposal, product flexibility and, to Bertocci's surprise, price. She put out a similar bid at her previous place of employment and received a Cabletron proposal that was 100% more expensive than the bid she got for the Port Authority project.

From start to finish, the network installation took six weeks in the spring of 1999. The Port Authority's new network uses 10/100 SmartSwitches at 15 agency facilities throughout Pittsburgh. Four SmartSwitch 6000s operate at the data center, connected to each other via Gigabit Ethernet and to Windows NT servers via Fast Ethernet links. Just recently, Bertocci upgraded the data center-to-headquarter link to ATM, simply by swapping out a blade in the SmartSwitch 6000. It now routes phone calls over a 15M bit/sec portion of that link, saving $300,000 in PBX-related phone charges annually, Bertocci says.

Smaller SmartSwitch 2000s provide WAN connectivity from other sites, including garages, maintenance buildings and the rail center. The Port Authority is using channelized T-1 for those WAN connections, with ISDN for backup.

Coincident with the network buildup, the Port Authority rolled out PCs with 10/100 Ethernet cards to its 400 or so office workers, and gave them e-mail and access to a new intranet, called E-port. Highlights of E-port include interactive vehicle maintenance guides and video replays from nightly news coverage. Online benefits enrollment will also be a feature.

With an entirely new and extensible network, Bertocci can now make the Web play an even more central part for commuters. She envisions a day, for example, when a commuter working in the U.S. Steel building would go to www.portauthority.org before heading 52 floors down – a 10-minute trip – to the crowded subway station. From the comfort of his desk, that commuter would be able to find out exactly where his train is in its way through the downtown tunnel system, and in how many minutes the train will pull into his station. Does he have time to respond to those last e-mails, or best he hustle to catch his train?

To that end the Port Authority has been pilot-testing global positioning satellite technology. Bertocci is optimistic that this application is feasible perhaps six months down the track and is hoping it'll prove cost-effective. She even sees a day when the system could page that office worker to alert him of his train's impending arrival.

Whether that ever happens, transportation watchers already are taking notice of the new Port Authority and its technology drive. The American Public Transportation Association, for example, asked Port Authority CEO Paul Skoutelas to speak at its annual conference in San Francisco last month. The top topic: technology in the transportation industry.

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