Skip to main content

GTT aids cyclist safety in Minneapolis

In a bid to improve conditions for cyclists in Minneapolis, Global Traffic Technologies (GTT) using existing infrastructure and its Canoga 9004 system to detect and react to bikes at intersections. The traffic detection system is now able to recognise both vehicle and bicycles and the Canoga card reacts quickly enough to give cyclists a green light without needing to slow down or wait at the intersection or navigate a red light. Previously, only vehicles would trigger green traffic signals at intersectio
July 14, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
In a bid to improve conditions for cyclists in Minneapolis, 542 Global Traffic Technologies (GTT) using existing infrastructure and its Canoga 9004 system to detect and react to bikes at intersections. The traffic detection system is now able to recognise both vehicle and bicycles and the Canoga card reacts quickly enough to give cyclists a green light without needing to slow down or wait at the intersection or navigate a red light.

Previously, only vehicles would trigger green traffic signals at intersections, which meant that a cyclist halt at an intersection undetected, waiting for a car to approach to activate the signal.

Where possible, the city wanted to implement bicycle detection at key signalised intersections, without investing in expensive detection technologies and leveraging the existing infrastructure, avoiding cutting new loops or mounting new pole-based detection technologies.

Using the existing advanced detector loops and the Canoga 9004 traffic sensing technology in the traffic cabinet, the traffic department was able to detect and classify bicycles with enough time to trigger the intersection green lights before the cyclist has arrived. This information is also calculated, recorded and stored for subsequent data retrieval through an Ethernet-enabled connection.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • CES 2021 | Connecting cities
    March 1, 2021
    Covid-19 forced the Las Vegas Convention Center to close its doors for CES 2021, but the trade show’s online debut suggests the pandemic is helping cities
  • Coventry City Council chooses Siemens for traffic signal refurbishment project
    October 26, 2017
    Siemens has been awarded a contract by Coventry City Council (CCC), through the National Productivity Investment Fund, to design and refurbish traffic signal equipment and systems at nine signalised junctions in the region. CCC is renewing life-expired traffic control equipment with the latest designs and management systems to improve network performance and reliability and reduce maintenance costs.
  • Icoms offers low-cost intersection detection
    March 20, 2018
    Intertraffic visitors are the first to see a new radar detector from Icoms Detection – the Belgian subsidiary of IRD. The pole-mounted unit, knows as the TMA-13X, has a range of 80 metres, identifies up to 32 vehicles (targets) across three or four lanes of oncoming traffic and can monitor the route vehicles follow through an intersection. According to the company, one TMA-13X unit can replace multiple loops (approach and stop line) without any roadworks and it functions regardless of light conditions
  • Future traffic management needs new thinking, new technology
    January 23, 2012
    One of the biggest problems facing US ITS professionals, says Georgia DOT's Hugh Colton, is the constrained thinking which is sometimes forced upon those making procurement decisions. It is time, he says, to look again at how we do things. In the November/December 2010 edition of this journal, Pete Goldin interviewed Joseph Sussman, chairman of the US's ITS Program Advisory Committee. Amongst other observations that Sussman made was that, technologically, ITS in the US is 10 years behind that in the world-l