AUTOMATING THE TRAFFIC COP

Pittsburgh has retired the white gloves and the whistle and turned traffic management over to something it calls Scalable Urban Traffic Control, or Surtrac.

Surtrac is an artificial intelligence that instantly analyzes data taken from cameras, stoplight controls, and sensors at individual intersections so the stop-and-go lights there can decide how long to stay red or green.

Surtrac then communicates that decision to traffic signals at other intersections nearby so they can make their own decisions about timing their lighting patterns.

In corridors where Surtrac has been installed, traffic congestion has been slashed by 40 percent and smog from cars idling at the intersections is down by 20 percent, according to the Metro21 Smart Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which was a partner in Surtrac’s creation.

In 2016, Surtrac was spun off into RapidFlow Technologies, a for-profit company that has installed the system in “hundreds of intersections” in over 20 cities in cities in Maine, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

Fitting up an intersection with Surtrac costs about $100,000, RapidFlow says, but the technology moves people through 25 percent faster and cuts wait times by 40 percent because folks confront 30 to 40 percent fewer stops in a Surtrac-managed corridor.

A city using Surtrac at 10 intersections cuts carbon emissions as much as taking 100 cars off the road, according to RapidFlow data.

TRENDPOST:  This fall, RapidFlow will introduce Routecast, an improved version of the system that will speed folks through intersections as much as twice as fast as Surtrac.

While we wait for self-driving cars that will negotiate intersections between themselves, smart cities are solving the problem without the aid of Elon Musk.

Surtrac is one of the most elaborate demonstrations yet of how state-of-the-art telecom technology can improve city life. More will follow.