Case Study: Yunex Traffic Concert Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS)
Problem: Old Traffic Infrastructure and booming growth
Seattle has been the fastest-growing large city in the country twice in the past decade. The growth spurts the city has gone through brings tremendous excitement to the economic growth. But this comes at a cost to the city’s transportation substructure and keeping up with the ever-demanding increase of congestion.
The Seattle Central Business District (CBD) is the heart of mobility throughout the city. It is also the oldest infrastructure of employed controllers, that are 20+ years old. Although these controllers were industry leaders in their day, they have limited functionality based on today’s needs and standards.
Until a year ago, CBD data was sent to and from the controllers, all 300+ of them, at the same time. It consisted of one pattern, at specific times of the day, with no relevance to the traffic or demand. Information about these large influxes of traffic coming to or from the south; such as Centurylink Stadium (home of the Seattle Seahawks), Safeco Field (home of the Seattle Mariners) or from the north; such as Key Arena or the surrounding area around the Space Needle, was not being distributed throughout the network of intersections. City engineers, planners, and designers needed a way to share information, predict what is to come, and deal with the growth, while utilizing an infrastructure that is limited.
Solution: City of Seattle looks to Western Systems to Advance their technology
Western Systems provided the Yunex Traffic Concert Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS). The Concert system enabled the City to make a connection to all their subsystems – CCTV cameras, DMS signs, local controllers, detection and data collectors. Concert gives the ability to the city to start sharing, facilitating, and connecting the data between all their systems. Concert makes the city infrastructure smart. It provides the city a new way of connecting this information by changing the behavior of the system(s) based on real time developments happening on the street. New actions, based on situations and area data, are pushed down and implemented.
Yunex Traffic Concert is an umbrella which integrates all of the subsystems, providing for smarter data collection and use. Elements include:
- Controllers, changing timing program based on real-time data
- Detectors, pushing data to make actionable choices
- Wifi Sniffers/Travel Time devices, displaying average travel time
- Dynamic Message Signs (DMS), changing notifications according to conditions
- Closed Circuit Televisions (CCTVs), recording and notifying of field incidents
Yunex Traffic Concert helps facilitate a huge improvement in efficiency for the operator because:
- Concert shortened the learning curve. With one large system in place hovering over existing systems, the human operator or engineer doesn’t need to interact with five different systems.
- Concert increases speed and efficiency. Changes are made and implemented quickly, because of connectedness and smarter data retrieval.
- Concert enables easy-to-use operator programs. Concert sets up ‘if this, then that’ reactions to scenarios, either manually or automatically, resulting in fast, shift-on-the-fly adjustments to changing conditions.
- Concert improved older technologies, while adapting to existing technologies. This created a huge savings in cost for new infrastructure.
Concert has been a tremendous success. City of Seattle and the CBD is now connected to Washington State DOT I-5 freeway along and in the city’s important neighborhoods. Traffic patterns are anticipated and dealt with in real time. This allows the operator to make faster and more precise decisions. Incident management is handled quickly, resulting in better flow. Traffic is much more easily coordinated for events at Safeco Field (Mariners), Century Link Stadium (Seahawks, Sounders, concerts), and Key Arena (basketball, music, other entertainment).