Transvista workers played crucial role rerouting traffic after fiery wreck shut down freeway

For drivers who were fed up with traffic re-routing as part of the Go10 project, take comfort in the fact that all that helped with traffic management after a tractor trailer plowed into a utility bridge on I-10.

Traffic coordinators with the Texas Department of Transportation have built such a good relationship with all emergency management agencies, that re-routing was effortless thanks to coordination during previous Go10 closures.

Friday, ABC-7 visited the Transvista Traffic Management Center in East El Paso where workers are monitoring traffic flow, and hiccups, to get drivers the best routes.

The Transvista workers keep a close eye on 165 traffic cameras throughout El Paso. They and fellow workers have been burning the midnight oil working non-stop since Thursday’s fiery crash, which could have brought downtown traffic to a standstill, had it not been for their work.

“Your main artery is cut. So people now have to look for alternate routes,” said Alfredo Sanchez with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, which is tasked with studying traffic flow during TxDOT’s Go10 project.

Sanchez said TxDOT found those alternate routes just hours after Thursday’s fiery crash, something TxDOT is already accustomed to after all the Go10 project closures. “I think that has made people more familiar with alternates routes because of the closures that we’ve had,” said Lauren Macias Cervantes, with TxDOT, “We’re able to coordinate and collaborate with multiple entities that we already have a continuous connection with.”

Transvista workers are responsible for sending alerts to mobile devices to folks at home or at work. They also alert drivers on the road with the help of signs along the highway. “They have the information that, not only local drivers need to know, but we’ve got people coming in from out of town that may not be familiar with the area that need to know I-10 is closed ten miles ahead or 12 miles ahead,” Macias Cervantes said.

Transvista employees are able to identify where drivers are a little less patient and begin to take some aggressive driving measures. For example, soon after the freeway was shut down Thursday, two Transvista employees started noticing drivers who had just passed the Schuster exit began changing gears into reverse, backing up right into traffic in an effort to take the Schuster exit ramp after they had already passed it. It’s a situation TxDOT says is a major concern because they say the drivers are not only placing themselves in danger, but endangering the lives of drivers around them. It was all caught on camera.

“So when we see incidents like these, where we see people perhaps going the wrong way, you know, it’s just like with any of our closures, we work with El Paso Police to alert them of the situation,” Macias Cervantes said.

Transvista employees are already hard at work in preparation for Friday night’s outings, figuring out routes for folks headed to the Chihuahua’s game and Southwest University Park, south of the freeway from the damaged utility bridge.

While Transvista has access to 165 cameras, those cameras are mostly on highways and freeways. Sanchez says the next evolution of traffic control would be to have access to cameras on the gateways and frontage roads so workers can not only re-route traffic along I-10, US-54 and Loop 375, but all of the city’s traffic.