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COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Because of technology developed at the University of Maryland, one local group was able to communicate with different transportation agencies almost immediately following a deadly collision on Metro's red line.

The collision led to heavy traffic backups away from the scene. To make matters worse, there were three serious accident on major roads in the region that also happened during rush hour. With the help of technology, emergency crews responded sooner and allowed for better coordination near the scene.

Critical traffic information was captured at the time of the crash by technology at the university. "We take data from all those individual jurisdictions, fuse it together into a common operating picture and platform and provide it back out to those agencies," said Tom Jacobs, director of Center for Advanced Transportation Technology.

The center at the University of Maryland created a tool that looks at the big picture when it comes to traffic and transit bottlenecks in the region.

"There are spillover effects. There are impacts to the arterial roadways, there are impacts to the highways system, then you have other incidents that are going on that also have impacts to the overall transportation system," said Jacobs.

The real-time data is managed by a team of students. The resource provided through the school is being used now by a local transportation facilitator who assisted in the deadly Metro collision.

"It's about support and passing on information to the other agencies to the other Departments of Transportation," said Buddy Ey, Metropolitan Area Transportation Operations Coordination.

Ey said he addressed the ripple effect following the crash. "For D.C. to think, 'OK I'm going to call Maryland to let them know,' there wasn't necessarily, right off the bat, an immediate response that Maryland might have provided."

With the information he had, Ey also notified crews about more problems nearby. "There was three very significant incidents that occurred at the same exact time of the train crash."

Both the University of Maryland and MATOC said the horrible incident will allow their organizations to improve on their current technology.

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