Pinellas County, Florida, has selected Kapsch TrafficCom for the ATCMTD-sponsored project to improve mobility and safety.
Funded by a $4.6 million grant by the Federal Highway Administration, Kapsch TrafficCom will implement advanced technology solutions to address safety and mobility issues in the region. The project continues the county’s commitment of investing in emerging technologies to advance transportation operations under the auspices of the Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment Program.
Pinellas County has the highest percentage of pedestrian-involved crashes and fatalities in Florida. Around 3% of all crashes in the county involve a pedestrian. To address this, Kapsch TrafficCom will implement an intersection safety solution to reduce vulnerable road user incidents at selected intersections in the county. The approach combines intersection-based video analytics and connected vehicle technology to detect and warn of the presence of vulnerable road users in the intersection.
The Pinellas County project will also target the problem of increasing congestion along major arterials in the county. Kapsch TrafficCom will be deploying a decision support system that combines predictive analytics with load balancing algorithms to predict the likelihood of near-term traffic disturbances and proactively reduce arterial congestion. By providing drivers with routing information at key decision points, vehicles will be distributed more effectively between primary and parallel arterials.
“This is an exciting project for Kapsch as it continues our long-standing relationship of working with Pinellas County to design and deploy emerging technology solutions to address safety and mobility challenges,” said Dr. Jeff Adler, VP of Solution Consulting at Kapsch TrafficCom, who will be serving as the project director. “This will be our first project in North America to deploy a solution that fully incorporates our entire traffic product portfolio, making traffic safer and reducing pedestrian accidents.”
The ATCMTD project is scheduled to be deployed by the end of 2024 followed by a year of system monitoring and calibration. The Kapsch TrafficCom contract is for $3.5 million.
(Pic: Clearwater, Pinellas County, Florida/Ruth Peterkin, Dreamstime)
