Illinois Department of Transportation Microcomputer Application Catalog By WILLIAM T. SUNLEY, Engineer of Local Roads and Streets Illinois Department of Transportation

The Illinois Department of Transportation has been developing microcomputer applications for about five years now. We have them listed in a Microcomputer Application Catalog. This catalog is available to all local agencies upon request. Most applications are written in Basic, Lotus 1-2-3, or Dataease. The catalog lists every applications author, what language it is written in, and gives a brief description of what the program accomplishes.

There are administrative programs that keep track of attendance, budget, interview rankings, etc. An example of an administrative program is Time Reporting. This application is written in Lotus and is designed to calculate employee sick, vacation, and personal business time, as well as section and bureau totals. In addition, it includes the previous month's totals, the vacation and personal business days that are required to be taken before the end of the current year.

Engineering applications make up a large share of the catalog. These programs are written by IDOT employees, consultants, other state transportation departments, and the FHWA. There are programs written for bridge sufficiency ratings, accidents, parking, hydraulic design, etc.

The Hydraulic Design application was written in Basic by the Minnesota Department of Transportation and consists of seven hydraulic programs to do design and analysis of waterways and storm sewers. A Drainage Ditch Analysis program was written in Lotus by William E. Stagg of District 4 IDOT. This program computes the area, top width, wetted perimeter, hydraulic radius, mean depth, velocity, and mean velocity when flow is at critical depth for "Q" using the Manning Equation for depth of 0-6 feet in 3 inch increments, and for slopes ranging from .3% to 10% in .5% increments.

The land acquisition applications include tax exempt status, project index, parcel files status, etc. The Sign Permit Database (written in Dataease) retains information about highway signs, location, owner, size, etc. Fields included in the data entry form are county, permit/registration number, route, section, milepoint, lighted, right/left side of highway, height, distance from road, width, sign owner, site owner, date approved, date rejected, date removed, and date acquired.

The Catalog also has applications written for design. Some are traffic factors, geotextile design manual for paved and unpaved roads, inlet grate capacities, etc. The Traffic Factors program (written in Basica) calculates traffic factors given the road classifications, structural design traffic, and percent of structural design traffic in design lane.

If you would like a copy of the Microcomputer Application Catalog, write Brad Smrcina at:

Illinois Department of Transportation
Bureau of Local Roads and Streets
2300 S. Dirksen Pkwy.
Springfield, IL 62764

In order to receive programs and manuals, you must send, in writing, the program name and number to Brad. One formatted disk must accompany every program requested. There is no charge for the catalog or the programs.

page 14 / Illinois Municipal Review / November 1989