Sarasota-Manatee Traffic Lights Smarter

It’s a dream shared by many. As you drive through a city, every traffic light goes green as you near the intersection. Impossible? Probably, but by next July it could be closer to reality.

Sarasota, Bradenton and the Counties of Manatee and Sarasota are teamed in a $15 million project to improve traffic flow by improving signalization.

 Right now, the lights use timers. The synchronization changes through the day. For rush hours, there is one schedule. For overnight, another schedule. Some are triggered by the appoach of a vehicle; others have a fixed schedule. Some have as many as 16 different schedules for one day. All can lead to frustration.

The new plan is called the Advanced Traffic Management System, and will tie traffic lights on major arterial roadways together with fiber optical cable to a headquarters at the Manatee County Emergency Operations Center. 

“It uses a variety of detectors, cameras and communication systems to monitor traffic and optimize signal times on major arterials,” says Jim Harriott, executive director of the Sarasota County Public Works Department. “And it will allow emergency vehicles to move through more quickly.”

You may have noticed crews swapping out signal control boxes at night. By June Harriott hopes to have 121 intersections in the new plan. They will streamline traffic on U.S. 41, University Parkway and Fruitville Road. In July he hopes to have US 301 and Bee Ridge Road on the new system, adding 32 additonal intersections. 

Harriott doesn’t plan to flip a switch and turn the new system on all at once. Over the coming months, as sections of roadway are prepared, they’ll start using the sensor-controllers, and the operators in the Manatee HQ will start using their cameras to help coordination.

Harriott gave the example of the impact of an auto accident on a major road. The current signals on timers are unaware the traffic is now in a new pattern. But the controllers can spot the back-up and began regulating signal timing to get traffic moving more quickly. And provide green lights to ambulances and other first responders.

As traffic moves more efficiently, it reduces the need to buy land and widen roads. “Increasing the capacity with this [system] is the cheapest way, and the most logical way, rather than suddenly six-laning a road,” says Sarasota County Commission Chair Nora Patterson. 

And there’s an added benefit. As contractors laid the fiber optic cable to connect the system, Sarasota County installed conduits in the same trench to accept a separate fiber optic cable in the future that could be used by others for high-speed internet connections.