City commission looks at proposal for new communication center

The Urban Transportation Committee was presented last Tuesday with the prospect of a second facility to operate CTECC: the Combined Transportation, Emergency and Communications Center.

The purpose of CTECC is to facilitate more efficient communication and data sharing between agencies, by focusing on public safety through dispatch of law enforcement and EMS, transportation management with the Texas Department of Transportation and the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and emergency management through the city and county.

Robert Turner, CTECC general manager, presented a summary of the partnership’s collaborative qualities and successful function since its inception over 20 years ago.

Turner provided the example of a crash that occurred during his time working with CTECC and how the facility was able to quickly organize and disperse a variety of response operations, such as sending an EMS unit to the scene, shutting down the roadway where it occurred and informing the public about the closure to prevent traffic or further accidents.

“That collaboration happens on a daily basis, and is only made possible when all the agencies are located in the same facility,” he said. 

Turner said that during the first few months of 2023, over 1.5 million emergency calls have come through CTECC, where information is processed and efficiently delivered to the response teams addressing each emergency situation.

Before CTECC, each dispatch facility was siloed, so coordinating major events was challenging and the response system was based on jurisdiction, rather than actual proximity of agencies.

Because of the centralized facility’s wide range of agency operations and data processing systems, first responders are able to operate and make decisions at the scene by utilizing immediate access to information and communication tools delivered by CTECC.

Turner said the features that make the CTECC facility resilient include its backup generators, outsourced water supply and connectivity to multiple networks.

“But what we don’t have is another facility that’s similar enough to the current one to make our operations seamless,” Turner said. “That way, in case one facility for some reason had an unexpected outage, the second could continue to operate and provide those critical services.”

It’s been over a year since the plan for a “CTECC 2.0” facility was formed by the Governing Board, which is composed of representatives from each of the facility’s four partners: TxDOT, Capital Metro, Travis County and the city of Austin. In January, the University of Texas was selected to develop the “Concept of Operations” for 2.0, and shortly thereafter the board sent a letter to an array of Central Texas governmental agencies that have expressed interest in transportation management to get feedback about the plan for the two facilities. 

Turner mentioned that the Concept of Operations will need to take into account how the two facilities will work together – for example, how to distribute the agency operations across the facilities, and what kind of space and new personnel and training will be needed.

The next steps are to create a list of “interested organizations” by the end of the summer, and then for the board to present a fully developed Concept of Operations by the end of 2023.

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