Some smart moves being made on Broward's interstates

By Michael Turnbell
sun-sentinel.com
Posted February 4 2005, 2:50 PM EST

Those message signs that loom like large blackboards over drivers on interstates 95 and 595 in Broward County haven't had much to say since they were turned on two years ago. All they do is flash traffic alerts when a congestion-causing wreck can be confirmed in person by authorities.

But the Florida Department of Transportation says the signs are going to be a lot more useful to drivers in the coming months. The signs will be linked to 45 cameras and 95 speed detectors currently being placed along I-95 and I-595 in Broward. "We have gotten to the point where expanding the existing highway system will be difficult, so we must better manage what we have," said Steve Corbin, the DOT's intelligent transportation operations manager. At a cost of $2.7 million, the new cameras and sensors will come online between now and October. They will enable technicians to see slowdowns, track how fast traffic is moving and report accidents almost instantaneously. "When that happens, you'll see usage of the signs almost triple," Corbin said.

A second phase of 55 cameras, 130 speed detectors, 10 more overhead message signs and fiber-optic cables, mostly along Interstate 75, should be in place within three years at a cost of $14 million. By then, Broward's entire expressway network will be blanketed with the signs and gadgets.

One of the new overhead signs will be on eastbound I-595 east of I-95 to advise drivers about parking and delays at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

The nerve center of this high-tech network is a sleek, $10.8 million, 42,000-square-foot building on Commercial Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, behind the old Broward County Traffic Engineering Division building that was razed.

Inside the traffic management center, the DOT and the county work side-by-side in a control room similar to NASA's Mission Control, with a two-story wall of video screens showing live traffic.

The new building is a counterpart to one that opened in Miami-Dade County last year. In Palm Beach County, the DOT is relying on a temporary traffic management center to shepherd drivers through miles of I-95 reconstruction.

While the message signs are the most visible symbol of the DOT's efforts to use technology to manage traffic, they are often the most criticized. The 31 signs flash traffic alerts only if the Florida Highway Patrol or the Road Rangers, the state's courtesy patrol trucks, verify the accidents.

Typically, that's only 60 times a month and almost never on weekends. Larry Hagen, a researcher at the University of South Florida's Center for Transportation Research, said the DOT saved money because it phased in construction of the cameras, even though that meant the overhead signs weren't completely useful right away. "With the leaps in technology made in the past few years, the costs have dropped significantly," said Hagen, a former Broward County traffic engineer.

The DOT's decision to limit usage of the overhead signs until the cameras are switched on makes sense to Hagen.

"They would rather put up no information than bad information," Hagen said. "You don't want to be sending out messages that are wrong, because you will lose credibility, and drivers will start ignoring them."

Hagen said drivers will benefit from the county and the DOT working together.

"In the past when there was a major incident on the interstate, there may or may not have been notification to the county," Hagen said. "The county can adjust the signals to accommodate it, but to do that they have to know about [the incident]."

In tandem with the DOT's congestion-busting efforts, Broward is spending $80 million in the next 10 years to upgrade equipment and replace software that controls the majority of the county's 1,325 traffic signals.

The first phase of the signal project will be built this year in the area bounded by I-95, I-595, Commercial Boulevard and the beaches. The next phase, which could begin next year, will extend west to the Sawgrass Expressway.

First published in the Sun-Sentinel on Jan. 10, 2005.

Michael Turnbell can be reached at mturnbell@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4155 or 561-243-6550.