Port Authority of New York and New Jersey IT Team Goes Above and Beyond in Sept. 11 Aftermath

Computerworld - Among the stories of perseverance in the face of tragedy that unfolded on Sept. 11 was the tale of IT workers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who struggled to restore a piece of normalcy to the city while dealing with their own personal loss.
When the first jetliner struck the North Tower of New York's World Trade Center that morning, it tore into Port Authority headquarters, which housed 2,000 staffers and the central host servers for the E-ZPass electronic toll collection system. When the North and South towers collapsed, 75 Port Authority workers were among the more than 2,800 who perished.
In the hours and days that followed, a team of 15 IT managers and engineers banded together to overcome emotional trauma and logistical and communications nightmares to recover the toll system, helping to ensure the flow of traffic, including emergency vehicles, into and out of Manhattan.
"Certainly, getting E-ZPass back was useful for us to get revenue back. But symbolically, the restoration had greater value," says Ernesto L. Butcher, the Port Authority's chief operating officer. Restoring the system was evidence that the region and the agency were "getting back to normal," he says.
Included in the estimated $3.5 billion in buildings and equipment lost that day were the two Compaq Computer Corp. Alpha 4100 E-ZPass host servers. On a normal day, the E-ZPass system wirelessly captures more than 340,000 toll transactions from 74 traffic lanes on several New York and New Jersey bridges and tunnels - about two-thirds of the total vehicles passing between the states. Were the systems not quickly restored after Sept. 11, those tollbooths might have been mired in traffic, delaying the emergency crews and recovery trucks hauling away debris, says Walter Kristlibas, E-ZPass program director.
Routers and T1 connections between the host server and the toll lanes, and between the host and customer service center, were lost. Phone lines and cellular connections were crippled.
But the Port Authority and its contractor, ACS State and Local Solutions Inc. in Washington, had designed a system to handle such interruptions. Each E-ZPass lane was equipped with a reading device, an antenna and a ruggedized computer capable of storing days of transactions.
The Port Authority had drilled for disaster recovery, a precaution that wasn't undertaken at enough companies, says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at The Yankee Group in Boston. "Most companies didn't have a backup plan or didn't test it and take it seriously."
The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had spurred E-ZPass engineers to install backup computers at a remote site on Staten Island. Team members worked around the clock gathering recent data from each toll lane - sleeping in their cars and fighting back emotion. "There were tears coming out of your eyes, but there was a certain thing you had to do, and it overrode the worries," Kristlibas recalls.
Within 72 hours, the backup was reconfigured and transactions were again accepted. The team also altered the system to excuse all toll fees for several days following the disaster.

Read more about wireless trends and technologies in Computerworld's Wireless Trends and Technologies Knowledge Center.