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From left, State Treasurer Dereck Davis, Gov. Wes Moore and Comptroller Brooke Lierman listen to a speaker at a meeting of the Board of Public Works on March 13, 2024. (Sapna Bansil/Capital News Service)
$32M OKed for MD highway systems after 2 worker deaths
Listen to this articleThe Maryland Board of Public Works approved a contract Wednesday to augment the system that provides technical and operational support to highway workers in the wake of two employee deaths last month.
“These services help to reduce risk for workers, improve traffic management, expediting incident response, reducing the likelihood for secondary crashes in work zones, but importantly, we see and we continue unfortunately seeing how necessary this is,” Gov. Wes Moore said during the board meeting.
Moore, Comptroller Brooke Lierman and state Treasurer Dereck E. Davis, all Democrats who make up the board, approved a five-year, $32 million contract with General Dynamics Information Technology, Inc. to enhance the State Highway Administration‘s Coordinated Highways Action Response Team.
The response team is the arm of the Maryland Department of Transportation that monitors and manages traffic, performs traveler information services and responds to crashes on highways across the state.
The funding aims to advance the Advanced Traffic Management System’s development, maintenance and operational support. According to the Board of Public Works agenda for Wednesday, the system is used to manage roadway incidents, monitor traffic conditions and provide information to members of the public.
Although proposals for the agenda item were opened in December, the contract approval comes nearly three weeks after two Maryland Department of Transportation employees, Robert W. Dempsey, 40, and Dipakkumar Patel, 70, were killed in separate roadway accidents while on the job.
Dempsey had been responding to a crash on Interstate 495 in Prince George’s County when he was fatally struck April 25. Three days later, Patel was tending to a maintenance project in Somerset County when his vehicle was hit.
“They were struck by cars, and they were simply doing their jobs,” Moore said of the victims. “By approving this contract, the board is once again just demonstrating our commitment to ensuring the safety and well-being of our highway workers.”
