Jeremy Bertrand

Jeremy Bertrand, WSDOT Web Designer, (360) 705-7872 (Olympia)

Worms haven't done much damage to the Department of Transportation's system since a January 2003 worm forced a brief system shutdown, said Jeremy Bertrand, the agency's assistant Web manager.

"Ever since then, we've made significant investments" in security, he said.But he added, "There's always a hole somewhere."

Jeremy Bertrand, Interactive Communications Specialist at the Washington State Department of Transportation, has kindly provided a sample of a search log generated by Google Appliance.

The fact that more people are using the site is in part due to better use of data, said Jeremy Bertrand, the interactive communications specialist for the transportation department.

Bertrand credits a new state contract with digiMine, a Bellevue company that collects and analyzes computer data for an array of large corporations, including Starbucks, Nordstrom and J.Crew.

After digiMine began sorting and coordinating the transportation department's Web data, Bertrand said, the agency has been able to track people's movements on its sites, giving them a fast and accurate sense of what is useful and what is not.

"It's been an incredible benefit," he said.

While the 92,106 hits on the Narrows Bridge cameras was impressive, Bertrand said, average use of the remote cameras at some Seattle-area bottlenecks is consistently higher.

The most popular view in the state, he said, is a Bellevue view of the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington.That one averages 70,000 hits every weekday.

Views of major mountain passes are even higher in the wintertime, he said.

The Narrows Bridge cameras, one at each end of the bridge, are positioned so viewers can see all four lanes of traffic.But the cameras transmit still images, downloaded to the Internet about every 90 seconds.That makes it difficult to get a clear sense of traffic flow.