ARTICLE
O.C. Streets Get Smarter
Orange County Register
Anyone with a driver's license has at one time or another angrily puzzled over the seemingly inexplicable delays and weeks-long construction detours caused by work on major streets. Poking along in traffic narrowed from three lanes to one, we grumble: How could it possibly take all this to
fill a few potholes?
Ironically, the explanation is that it's the price the public pays - in increased drive time and construction costs to city governments - for cars to move more quickly in the long run. The culprit: hard-wired detection systems that help traffic move efficiently from major intersection to major intersection. They greatly complicate almost any work done on a city's main streets.
Happily, new technologies in traffic detection promise to make many such expensive delays a thing of the past. Cities in Orange County are already working toward that goal with Sensys Networks, the world's leading provider of wireless traffic detection and integrated traffic data systems.
According to Ron Keith, Principal Traffic Engineer with the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), traffic detection on major city streets, or "arterials," has traditionally worked through an "inductive loop system," where coils of wire embedded in the pavement detect changes in magnetic inductance caused by cars passing above.
Information is fed trough conduits and cables that are run every which-way beneath the ground. The data is used, among other things, to monitor traffic and control intersections. When the pavement cracks or wears out, the embedded wires get damaged and traffic lights often default to a fail-safe mode so cars are stuck at light that stays red far longer than necessary. Repairs are expensive and troublesome because streets have to be zoned off, the pavement has to be cut to reach the units, and conduits and cables must also be dealt with.
Maintenance of the loop system is so costly, Keith said, that cities usually wait until several repairs are needed so they can send crews out to do them all at once to save money.
Enter Sensys Networks, a Bay Area company that has created a wireless system of traffic detector units whose batteries last about ten years and which require virtually no maintenance except that which can be done from a computer. The units requre no cabling or conduit, which saves cities even more money - and drivers even more time.
"When we put these things in, we pull up in the middle of the street with a truck, drill a hole, put the unit in, and within ten minutes we are out of there and the detector is working," Keith said. "If later on a pavement rehab is needed, with the loop system we must re-cut and re-install the units and reconnect the conduit. With the wireless system, we pop the unit out, put it on the shelf for the duration of the road repair, and then put it in the ground again."
Dr. Hamed Benouar, Sensys Networks' Vice President of Business Development, said the system's arterial travel time estimates are extremely accurate and ultimately reduce auto emissions. Data from the systems have the potential of being sent almost anywhere - to cell phones, a car's navigation system, and changeable roadside billboards - to give drivers up-to-the-minute information about traffic conditions.
"Imagine going to the Honda Center or Anaheim Stadium. If you have this system measuring travel time as you approach the 57 freeway, you can get a message detailing the fastest exit route. If that route gets too busy, the system updates so drivers can go another way and don't add to the congestion," Benouar said.
The wireless system is so significant that at the 2008 World Congress of Intelligent Transportation Systems, Sensys Networks won the ITS America Best Product Award. Benouar said it is being sold in 30 states and 10 countries.
He added that aside from saving people money and time, it creates jobs for Californians because Sensys Networks is a Berkeley-based company that employs people in both Northern and Southern California and does all its manufacturing in California.