New Multi-Million Dollar Traffic Center in Jacksonville Will Decrease Traffic Jams
Employees from the State Department of Transportation and the Florida Highway Patrol have joined together under one roof to work together in the brand new Regional Transportation Management Center. Housed in a $11 million facility just north of downtown Jacksonville, the traffic center contains a massive room filled with 32 state-of-the-art workstations and a wall of monitors (18 to be exact) that stream real-time traffic conditions from hundreds of roadside cameras along Northeast Florida’s highways.
Using the information about traffic provided by the technology, officials say the traffic center will improve response times and allow them to quickly send assistance where it’s needed. The benefit for motorists will be faster response times, whether it’s getting an ambulance to the scene of an accident that includes life-threatening injuries or clearing a wreck from the highway to decrease traffic delays.
The traffic center is part of a years-long effort to boost efficiency and the use of technology for reacting to traffic problems. While transportation officials have been able to monitor traffic conditions via roadside cameras for years, the new traffic center greatly expands the scale of the operation. The video wall, for instance, is double the size of what the state used to have, and the new center is directly linked to a network of fiber-optic cables that run along the interstate highways throughout Jacksonville. These cables include sensors that monitor the speed of traffic, so when a crash occurs and traffic slows down, the information gets relayed to the traffic management center right away, causing a section of highway to get a red color-code on a digital map displayed on the video wall. Staff at the traffic management center then select roadside cameras that zero in on that segment of highway for a real-time look at traffic conditions. Armed with that information, workers at the center can quickly send whatever assistance is needed to the scene. They also post messages on electronic signs alerting motorists so they have the option of considering alternate routes based on predicted travel times.
As of now, the roadside cameras linked to the traffic center have been installed only on the interstate highway system in Jacksonville. But according to the North Florida Transportation Planning Organization, the traffic center will continue to expand over the next five years, to cover more interstate highways and heavily-traveled roadways throughout Northeast Florida.
If you have been involved in a Florida auto accident, contact the Law Offices of James O. Cunningham, P.A. today at 877-FL-INJURY (877-354-6587) for a free initial consultation.
James O. Cunningham
Since 1977, personal injury lawyer James Cunningham has provided effective legal advocacy to people who are injured through the negligent actions of another person or entity throughout the Central Florida area. He fights to obtain recoveries for his clients’ physical and emotional pain and suffering and pursues his clients’ personal injury cases with a commitment to excellence and impeccable preparation.
