Now the road can talk to you

The idea: Informed drivers can get there faster.

By MIKE BRASSFIELD, Times Staff Writer
Published July 29, 2007

Interstate highways in the Tampa Bay area have long had eyes watching over you. Now they can talk to you as well.

New electronic signs that stretch across Interstate 4 and Interstate 275 in Tampa are telling drivers how long it will take to get to major destinations. In the months and years to come, dozens more will appear along highways in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

Their purpose is to warn drivers of traffic backups and accidents ahead. The 15 signs that have been installed so far are early manifestations of a 10-year, $110-million project to make local highways smarter.

Which leads to an obvious question: We're paying more than $100-million for this?

Transportation officials insist the project will make the interstates safer and more efficient, and say they reflect a philosophical shift among road engineers nationwide.

"The money it costs to build a road is astronomical, and it's climbing," said Terry Hensley, traffic incident manager for the Florida Department of Transportation. "We have to make the most effective use of our existing roads."

The plan is to install a network of at least 74 electronic signs, 275 traffic sensors and 130 closed-circuit TV cameras along Tampa Bay area highways.

More than 135 miles of fiber optic cables will transmit information to a high-tech operations center in North Tampa that's stocked with computer servers and a wall of video screens.

Right now there's one person there watching traffic 24 hours a day. More workers will be added as the "intelligent transportation system" grows.

Through remote control, traffic managers can change the wording on the signs, move the cameras to zoom in on accidents up to a half-mile away and dispatch Road Rangers to trouble spots. Computer software crunches live traffic data to calculate travel times to major destinations.

"There's nothing worse than sitting in traffic at a standstill and not knowing what's going on," Hensley said.

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The signs recently started operating on I-275 north of downtown Tampa and on I-4 from downtown to I-75.

Over the next several months, they'll appear on the rest of I-4 out to Polk County, on I-275 in mid Pinellas and on the Howard Frankland Bridge. Overhead signs recently installed on the bridge are blank because they still have to be hooked up to fiber optic lines.

By 2009, signs should go up on I-75 in Hillsborough and I-275 in St. Petersburg, where they'll replace three older signs. Those are used mostly to direct traffic during high-profile Devil Rays games, like when the Yankees or Red Sox are in town.

"The system they're putting in now gives us the opportunity for more complex messages, including Amber alerts," said Joe Kubicki, St. Petersburg's transportation director.

Still, are smart highways worth the cost?

Traffic managers say it's valuable to have a constantly updated picture of what's happening on area roads. It helps them clear accident scenes faster and minimize delays. And warning drivers about crashes ahead should help prevent "secondary accidents" that occur when traffic backs up. Those account for 25 to 40 percent of wrecks, Hensley said.

"The hard part is measuring it," Hensley said. "It's like crime prevention. How do you measure what you've prevented?"

This new effort will pair up with the Tampa Bay 511 system, which logs 53,000 phone calls and 625,000 Web site hits per month. Commuters call 511 or visit www.511tampabay.com for traffic updates.

Tampa and Pinellas County are doing this kind of thing too.

In Tampa's traffic operations center, city employees watch traffic through 38 cameras and adjust the timing of stoplights.

"The motorist doesn't know it. But if we did not do what we do, traffic jams would probably be a couple of hours longer than they are," said Tampa traffic engineer Mike Scanlon.

Pinellas County has cameras and message signs on long stretches of U.S. 19 and Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard, and will start adding them to McMullen-Booth Road later this year, said Pinellas traffic manager Ken Jacobs.

"FDOT's concentration is on interstate freeways," Jacobs said. "The next step would be to put that technology on surface streets, major thoroughfares. Pinellas County is pursuing that fairly aggressively."

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One more thing about those 130 videocameras that are being mounted on poles alongside local highways: They're not recording anything.

Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando have smart highways, too. State officials realized years ago that if their cameras were recording, they'd have to hire more government employees to hunt down and supply footage for car-crash lawsuits.

"We get calls all the time from law offices," said Transportation Department spokeswoman Kris Carson. "We record nothing."

Mike Brassfield can be reached at 813 226-3435 or brassfield@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 28, 2007, 23:09:33]