One of the largest cities in Arkansas is using cloud-based traffic management equipment from Virginia-based All Traffic Solutions (ATS) to determine how to solve current road safety challenges and plan for the future.
Covering 600 traffic-lane miles (965km), the City of Bentonville Street Department’s implementation of internet-connected TraffiCloud traffic safety and data analytics technology from ATS is enabling better-informed decision making and optimized allocation of budgets and other resources to handle traffic-related community issues. A significant development is that the web-based TraffiCloud technology will also provide data that will be used to measure and plan road capacity needs in line with future economic expansion. The Street Department, together with the City’s Traffic Safety & Signage Committee, handles the majority of community speeding complaints within its locality. Responses have to meet an agreed set of criteria and between them the Department and the Committee were looking for a way to ascertain whether complaints are valid and their responses appropriate.
TraffiCloud provides accurate, dependable real-time insights by bringing together information from a wide range of sources. It is a web-based data management solution and its open-standards approach enables it to work with sensors and systems from ATS as well as other manufacturers. Used in combination with ATS’ StatTrak portable microwave radar vehicle counter classifiers, TraffiCloud is currently enabling the Bentonville Street Department to ascertain its true needs in terms of safety interventions and mitigations; where a legitimate speeding problem is identified, a remotely controlled ATS Shield radar speed sign is deployed as a traffic-calming measure. TraffiCloud enables wide-area traffic management at minimal cost, as it enables both permanent and temporary devices to be networked and so work cohesively rather than piecemeal.
As an example, the Bentonville Street Department is also using ATS Shield radar speed signs to govern speeds on diversion routes necessitated by work zones. The solution is employed by both the Street Department and local law enforcement. This means that TraffiCloud provides a wealth of high-quality data on traffic movements and drivers’ habits and, in the future, it will be employed to help re-work the local Master Street Plan. This will enable the City to determine how to manage traffic capacity in line with economic development. In particular, it will help to build a picture of what is going on and what is needed away from the main arterial routes.
“Before TraffiCloud, our traffic-calming measures were complaint-driven, but you’ll always have a certain percentage of speed violators,” noted Tony Davis, street manager with the Bentonville Street Department and a member of the Traffic Safety & Signage Committee. “The challenge was how to assess each situation and put it in context with overall traffic volumes; in some instances, the perceptions of the safety risk can be rather different from the reality. We also needed to be able to gauge how to deploy limited resources to best address any problems.”
ATS CEO, Andy Souders, commented, “The key reasons for the Bentonville Street Department choosing TraffiCloud are its versatility and connectivity. The Cloud means that devices can be accessed from pretty much anywhere. Data can be retrieved, and operating parameters changed without having to visit the roadside. Remote operation frees up resources and is more cost-effective. It provides a further safety benefit because you’re not unnecessarily placing operatives next to live traffic lanes, and it speeds the collection of information for many different kinds of applications.”
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