One of the USA’s leading suppliers of applied informatics systems for the transportation industry, Iteris Inc., has been selected by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to enhance and upgrade the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) across five cities in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.
The three-year project supports San Francisco MTC’s Innovative Deployments to Enhance Arterials (IDEA) program, which seeks to enable the continuous improvement of arterial operations and the enhancement of the Bay Area’s readiness for connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies.
As part of the project, Iteris will provide systems engineering services for the IDEA program, including the deployment of connected vehicle applications, automated vehicle applications and virtual bicycle detection technology for signal operations across 79 intersections in the cities of Los Gatos, Emeryville, Walnut Creek, Concord and Dublin.
As well as preparing the five cities for the widespread adoption of CAVs, the new MTC initiative will improve efficiency and safety of transportation systems, as well as decrease vehicle emissions and fuel consumption.
The main aim of the program is to enhance vehicle flow on the Bay Area’s network of high-capacity arterial roads, which to deliver traffic from local collector roads to the region’s high-speed freeways and expressways that connect the main urban centers.
Iteris played a similar role in the IDEA program’s predecessor, the Next Generation Arterial Operations Program, which deployed adaptive traffic control systems in the cities of Dublin, Fremont, San Leandro and Hayward, as well as enhancements to Santa Clara County’s traffic responsive system.
The MTC initiative makes use of Iteris’s ITS expertise to prepare cities and states for the rapid advancements in connected and automated vehicle technology. This new project is in line with the many other CAV deployments the company is working on across the USA, including smart work zones, advanced pedestrian detection systems, and automated commercial vehicle inspections.
Iteris also led the development and evolution of the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) ITS architecture reference for over three decades, initiating the Connected Vehicle Reference Implementation Architecture in 2012 and continuing to support the evolution of the combined ARC-IT for the USDOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).
“We have been a national leader in using technology to make the Bay Area transportation network safer, more efficient and easier to navigate,” said Andrew Fremier, deputy executive director at MTC. “We look forward to working with Iteris to make sure our region is prepared for the connected and automated vehicles of the future.”
Ramin Massoumi, senior vice president and general manager of transportation systems at Iteris, commented, “We are proud to support the MTC’s IDEA program and help to improve mobility and safety across key intersections in these five Bay Area cities.
“Our continued involvement in the growing connectedness of multimodal road users puts us in prime position to prepare one of the most technologically advanced regions in the nation for the CAV revolution.”
