Caltrans District 11, in collaboration with Mooven and Skanska, piloted the Mooven AI-powered traffic monitoring platform to help determine the most efficient lane closure windows for an active construction project on SR-78 (EA 11-43164).  Designed to help teams confidently build, maintain, or operate transport networks in complex urban environments, Mooven enables agencies to deliver projects faster, safer, and with fewer complaints.

Caltrans District 11 has evaluated multiple metrics to determine the possibility of extending  construction lane closure windows. Evaluation through the Mooven program has included: 

• Vehicle counts

• Live journey times

• Peak delay/queue

• Live vehicle speed

• Additional closure window safety

• Streamlined data collection/reporting

A measure, test, and implement methodology was used to identify low-risk changes, validate the benefits and risks, and then implement ongoing improvements to delivery.  

Initial analysis during June and July 2025 indicated potential extensions to closure windows with minimal delay impacts. An early lane closure trial shifted the evening start  time from 10:00 PM to 9:00 PM (1 hour extension) while volumes remained below ~1,000 vehicles per hour (vph) during working hours. There was minimal to no increase in delay observed inside the closure window, suggesting additional flexibility could be tested in future phases.  

Mooven’s platform gave unprecedented visibility by combining vehicle volume data, lane closure schedules, as well as real time traffic performance to measure actual impact.

What that hour is worth

District 11's evaluation found that one extra hour per shift was operationally feasible and could shorten the paving operation by 13 working days over three months.  Fewer working days means fewer nightly mobilizations and less overhead: an estimated saving of roughly $250,000, subject to final cost reconciliation. It also means 13 fewer nights of crews and traffic control exposed on a live mainline.

This paper summarizes how that result was reached, what the data showed, and what it takes to repeat it on another corridor.

The problem:
Closure windows set by aggregated, city-wide trends

Conservative closure windows are a rational response to aggregate, poor information. If you can't get rich location specific data or see what delay a closure is actually causing, you buffer - and the buffer is paid for over and over:

• Contractors bid more working days to fit the same quantity of work into shorter shifts.

• Agencies absorb more nights of traffic control, more mobilizations and more overhead.

• Crews spend more total nights exposed on a live mainline, and more time doing manual traffic checks.

• Communities live with a longer project, and complaints are argued from impressions rather than evidence.

The reason those buffers survive is that the evidence needed to shrink them safely has historically been hard to get. Traditional traffic studies are slow and expensive, and often out of date by the time construction starts. During construction, it’s difficult to measure if actual delays aligned with the assumed impact, or not.

The project

How Mooven approached it

Mooven is a cloud-based, AI-powered traffic monitoring platform. On SR-78 it aggregated four data sources into one view of the corridor:

Figure 1 — Mooven platform: monitored routes and average daily counts across the SR-78 project limits.

Phase 1 (June–July 2025)

Baseline and opportunity analysis

Mooven compiled PeMS counts and floating-vehicle journey times throughout the project limits and identified where the corridor had headroom. Rather than proposing the largest possible change, the analysis recommended the smallest defensible one: closures starting 30 minutes earlier on Sunday and Monday at low-risk locations, to demonstrate data-driven decision-making with almost no downside.

Phase 2 (October–November 2025)

Early closure testing

An early closure test starting at 9:30 PM confirmed minimal delay during working hours at multiple locations. Critically, the trial ran with operational guardrails in place: alert parameters were configured, traffic was tracked before, during and after each closure window, and a contingency plan committed the team to reverting to default closure times if delay greater than 20 minutes was ever observed.

Phase 3

Accepted extension

On the strength of that evidence, the closure start time was moved from 10:00 PM to
9:00 PM — a full hour added to every shift, with monitoring left running to confirm the
result held.

How lane closure opportunities were identified

Detailed volume profiles were created to understand how site specific conditions compared to lane closure charts. This enabled Caltrans to determine when traffic volumes result in delay.

A conservative threshold of approximately 1,300 vehicles per lane per hour (vphpl) on westbound SR-78 was established from April–June 2025 Caltrans PeMS data, to serve as a low-risk baseline for testing.

Figure 2 — Baseline vehicle count profile, Civic Center Dr to SR-78 westbound (April–June 2025). The dashed overlays show the existing closure chart against the potential extension identified by Mooven.

What the data showed

The trial then tested that threshold against reality. Westbound analysis at Civic Center Dr showed the corridor successfully handling up to 1,591 vphpl during closures with minimal additional delay — comfortably above the conservative baseline.

Figure 3 — Vehicle count profile during the October–November 2025 trial, showing the accepted extension in place.

The benefits Mooven brought to the project

Volumes inside the extended window stayed below roughly 1,000 vph during working hours, and the corridor demonstrated capacity up to 1,591 vphpl during closures. For single-lane closures, the data supports potential extension windows of one to two hours.

What the project team reported

Mooven confirmed minimal delay with earlier closures which helped decrease construction timeframe.

Thomas Davis
Senior Transportation Engineer
District 11 Closure Manager

Mooven increased confidence in early closure decisions. With the trial/error method, an earlier closure period can be implemented to show delays of less than 30 minutes.  Mooven data collection identified traffic patterns such as heavier traffic flow on  Wednesday/Thursday. Mooven also optimized longer work windows which means fewer  working days and cost reduction.

Yong Pak
Senior Transportation Engineer
District 11 North County Corridor Construction

Strong confidence in the Mooven platform, emphasizing its ability to deliver clear  operational benefits and support better decision making. Mooven helps achieve public facing savings by enabling quicker field operations and reducing disruptions, while also  improving team safety through less time spent on the mainline, contributing to lower TRO  exposure. They also point to important soft cost efficiencies, since crews and staff don’t need to be onsite as frequently. Overall satisfaction is high, with appreciation for how live system data clearly illustrates how operations affect traffic. This improved clarity has also helped Traffic closure group feel more comfortable interpreting charts, reinforcing  Mooven’s value as both an operational and communication tool.

Nick Moss
Office Engineer
District 11 North County Corridor Construction Consultant

Mooven adds value for negotiation, productivity, and stakeholder engagement. The application’s future potential grows with historical data collection and design-phase planning.

James Sidney
Field Engineer
SKANSKA USA Civil West

Capabilities this pilot didn't need - yet

SR-78 used a narrow slice of the platform. District 11's evaluation noted that future projects have potential to gain significant value from the capabilities the pilot left on the table:

Site Diaries/Shift tracking

A live map of scheduled and active work across a network, automatically highlighting exceptions and giving instant access to responsible contacts. Crews report issues from the field; stakeholders stay informed through integrated messaging. Paired with live network monitoring, it links crew activity directly to real-time traffic impact.

Business and transit impact assessment

Mooven summarizes nearby businesses, their operating hours and affected transit services, with a CSV export for outreach — so closures can be planned around the economic and mobility impacts that drive perceived risk.

Community engagement and Smart VMS

Live journey-time advice and adaptive detour messaging on roadside signs — data-driven, without manual updates or additional hardware — plus dynamic public landing pages. Complaints get grounded in objective data, clarifying whether an impact came from project activity or something else entirely.

Project management

Gantt and list views for shift, task and phase scheduling, cost management, and reporting on job completion rates, on-time starts and overruns.

Looking ahead

The SR-78 pilot provides a repeatable model for evidence-led construction access: establish a baseline, identify a lower-risk opportunity, test incrementally, monitor live conditions and document the result.

Future applications could begin earlier in project planning, giving teams more historical data and allowing closure opportunities to be considered before construction pricing is finalized. 

With the right approval workflows, operating protocols and data governance in place, the same approach could help other projects make better use of available road space while managing delay, safety and community impact.

For Caltrans District 11, the pilot answered a specific operational question on SR-78. More broadly, it showed how bringing the right data together can convert traffic insight into productive construction time - and productive time into measurable public value.