Work Progresses on City's Intelligent Traffic System

The Johns Creek City Council recently approved amendments to the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Phase II contract for State Bridge Road and other areas.

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) subsidized a portion of the tasks required for the city in a contract calling for the implementation of an intelligent transportation system on Medlock Bridge, Jones Bridge and State Bridge roads that will allow city workers to remotely manipulate traffic signals to better accommodate the flow of traffic.

Tom Udell, traffic services manager for Johns Creek, presented the proposal outlining the next steps to bring the project to fruition at a cost of $148,589.11, an amount that had been saved when finding efficiencies in building the city's traffic control center in Phase I of the project.

Phase II includes installing more cameras on State Bridge Road and generally building out and improving the network.

Many cities are focusing on intelligent transportation systems as a way of resolving traffic congestion, which has been increasing steadily as a result of population growth, urbanization and changes to population density, as Johns Creek has seen in recent years. Congestion reduces efficiency of the transportation infrastructure and increases travel time, pollution and fuel consumption, so naturally, the city had to address those issues.

Intelligent transport systems vary in technology applied, from basic management systems such as traffic control systems to security closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems, which Johns Creek is putting in place. CCTV systems use video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place on a set of monitors. Johns Creek's cameras are not used for traffic enforcement; rather, they are used as a monitoring tool that the traffic control center can use to manipulate signals to reduce congestion, when necessary.

No matter how you view this, a solid ITS system is vital for any city to be completely operational.

As the city said in its ITS Master Plan, motorists will benefit from better traffic signal operation, better response to incidents and availability of real time traffic condition information.