PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — Ever get frustrated while stuck at a long traffic light?
Pinellas County is working on that.
New technology powered by artificial intelligence is helping the county to improve drive times and find potential safety issues at intersections.
“We now have our eyes on these intersections every day,” said Deneta Jones, manager at the Pinellas County Traffic Management Center.
Jones says AI is helping her team identify potential trouble spots at dozens of busy intersections.
The technology picks up actions like illegal crossings, close calls or red light running.
“From that, we can see if there is something that we can do to help raise that safety score. Is there some signage we need to do? Is there some enforcement? Things like that,” Jones said.
The cameras are not used to charge or identify drivers — rather they help find safety issues that the human eye might miss.
This use of what’s called ‘intersection video analytics’ comes after years of planning and funding.
In fact, teams have also been using new tech to re-time 350 traffic signals. That totals more than 40 miles of improved congestion.
“We’re trying to get traffic moving along the corridors, during the morning and afternoon peak periods,” said Tom Washburn, Transportation Division Director.
Over the next several years, Pinellas County plans to incorporate this new AI at hundreds of intersections with a traffic signal in order to get more data.
“It’s so valuable. We never had it before. So it’s very important for us to have it now, and we’re very excited about all the data that we get,” Jones said.