Cranberry’s Traffic Lab: Where the Future Gets a Green Light

I first stumbled across the term "Intelligent Transportation Systems" about 20 years ago. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation introduced it with enthusiastic support, which meant it had grant money behind it. It sounded very futuristic, and the promoters of all sorts of new transportation-related ideas and equipment quickly began to hawk their wares as ITS products.

Some of them were right. 

But ITS really was an abstract concept—one that didn’t refer to any specific transportation mode or vehicle. Instead, it was the idea that if you had the right kinds of information—preferably in real-time—and you knew how to apply it, you could make all sorts of transportation work faster, safer, cheaper and more efficiently. 

The timing was right for ITS. 

At the time, electronic communications were starting to come of age. Public policy makers became increasingly aware they couldn’t just build their way out of traffic problems by adding more lanes and roadways as they had done in the past.

Instead, people needed to find more efficient ways of using the roads already in place.

Since that time, cars are smarter, traffic-control systems are more intelligent, smart phones are universal, traffic cameras are everywhere and electronic roadway signs are on highways all over the country. 

Now they’re starting to talk to each other, and it seems they have information worth sharing. While its efforts are still a work in progress, Cranberry is leading the way.

Since it opened a little more than a year ago, has emerged as the region’s showcase for state-of-the-art traffic control technologies. Walking past its wall of high-definition screens as they show real-time traffic information—as well as its clusters of computer monitors displaying signal-control system data—is like strolling the bridge on a spacecraft. 

The visible instrumentation, along with the unseen software driving it, represents the most advanced technologies of its kind. The technology helps Cranberry manage a growing volume of traffic on what are essentially fixed ribbons of pavement. 

It came as no surprise that several faculty members from Carnegie Mellon University’s Traffic 21 research unit took an interest in the data the center generates. Also expressing interest was TrafficVision, a division of the South Carolina firm Omnibond Systems and a developer of traffic-monitoring technology.

Several agreements now are in place. Starting next year, both organizations will tap into the rich trove of Cranberry's traffic data. 

One CMU interest involves improved incident detection. Cranberry’s agreement allows it to feed the view from township video cameras into programming software and use it to detect incidents, such as broken-down vehicles, cars on the side of the road, accidents or other types of anomalies. 

The second involves refining adaptive traffic-light control software using traffic counts generated by the township’s timers and traffic signals. 

The TrafficVision project involves work on next-generation traffic-sensing devices. In the next 18 months, Cranberry will serve as its beta site and one of the company’s servers will be installed locally. 

While CMU and TrafficVision have different technical goals in mind, they share an important understanding: that the key to maintaining the safe flow of traffic is information. This includes historical information to establish predictable patterns and real-time information to address unforeseen situations as they arise.

Both research projects involve efforts to capture that information and apply it to assisting traffic movement. Cranberry is right on its cutting edge.