Skip to main content

Multi-million dollar system to ease Columbus’ congestion

Columbus, Ohio is to benefit from a US$38.1 million traffic management system to replace the one installed in the 1970s to allow the city to respond more quickly to problem areas and speed up travel throughout Columbus and even in its suburbs. The new system will wrap all signals into a single network. More data will funnel to new software in the traffic-management center, where operators can decide how to handle traffic congestion. Nearly 500 miles of fibre-optic cable will run to most traffic signals, and
April 3, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
Columbus, Ohio is to benefit from a US$38.1 million traffic management system to replace the one installed in the 1970s to allow the city to respond more quickly to problem areas and speed up travel throughout Columbus and even in its suburbs.

The new system will wrap all signals into a single network. More data will funnel to new software in the traffic-management center, where operators can decide how to handle traffic congestion.

Nearly 500 miles of fibre-optic cable will run to most traffic signals, and others will sync wirelessly with the new system. The number of cameras posted around the city will triple from fifty to 150, while six, 60-inch monitors will display camera feeds and other data will go up in the new command centre.

“It definitely will make the commute smoother,” said Patti Austin, a city planning and operations administrator.

Upgraded software will give the city power to move traffic along during big events, Austin said.

“We’re pretty limited in what we can do certain times of day,” said project manager Ryan Bollo. “This new software will be able to cover whole corridors and have pre-timed systems we can run any time of day.”

Related Content

  • Palm Beach trials Bluetooth traffic monitoring
    April 10, 2013
    As part of a growing effort to use technology to manage traffic on roads and highways without building more roads, for the last six months Florida’s Palm Beach County has been using Bluetooth readers to determine how long it takes motorists to travel along its corridors. "We're adding more capacity through technology rather than asphalt," said Dan Weisberg, Palm Beach County's traffic engineer. "We can't build ourselves out of congestion. We need to be smarter about what we have and manage it." In collabor
  • Rochester solves $8.5m transit question
    October 22, 2018
    RTS in Rochester, New York, saves by working with Conduent to upgrade its CAD/AVL systems rather than ripping them up and replacing them. Andrew Bardin Williams hops on for a ride. What to do, what to do?” It’s a question every transportation official must ask when faced with legacy assets, equipment and software that are nearing the end of their useful life. Nothing lasts forever, right? Freeways need to be repaired, bridges replaced, traffic management software updated and railway cars turned into
  • Video analytics enhances urban rail safety
    December 16, 2016
    David Crawford explores some promising innovations for North American commuters. North America is experiencing a surge in commuter rail and metro development. The US now has 75 light rail and metro networks in operation; and California, in particular, is actively exploring ways of developing the state’s existing passenger rail operations into a fully integrated system.
  • Machine vision’s transport offerings move on apace
    June 30, 2016
    Colin Sowman considers some of the latest advances in camera technology and transport-related vision technology applications. Vision technology in the transportation sector is moving apace as technical developments on both the hardware and software sides combine to make cameras more multifunctional with a single digital camera now able to cover a multitude of tasks.