Escambia and Santa Rosa counties are getting a new Regional Traffic Management Center that will use technology to enhance traffic flow and improve safety on roadways in the two counties.
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Twenty-one local and state officials involved with the project took part in the first round of the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday. Among them was Escambia County Commissioner Steven Barry, who now serves as the chairman of the Florida-Alabama Transportation Planning Organization (TPO).
“It’s a culmination of four or five years of work to get to this point,” said Barry. “There was a conversation about where it would go, and it was important to me that we found a spot in Escambia County.”
The new facility will be built on N. W Street, behind the Escambia County Emergency Management Center. The project costs about $20 million, with all of the funding sourced from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) through the Florida Department of Transportation.
Once complete, it will serve as the command center for the Emerald Green Light Advanced Transportation Management System (ATM).
"That is going to link this regional transportation management center to the transportation network by utilizing cutting-edge technology and integrating it with the physical infrastructure that will be in the ground," said Barry.
He added that the Emerald Green Light initiative will use data and analytics to synchronize more than 380 signalized intersections and a number of other things.
"Adjust signal timings dynamically, detect and respond quickly to crashes or congestion, provide travel information to drivers, coordinate with emergency responders, to which we’re immediately adjacent to them...as well as enhanced safety for all our transportation users," Barry explained.
For Barry and Santa Rosa Commissioner Colten Wright, the previous chair of the Florida-Alabama TPO, the center’s role in reducing and preventing roadway fatalities will be most important.
"Safety is the No. 1 reason why we’re here today," said Wright. "Unfortunately, over the past five years, Escambia and Santa Rosa counties have witnessed over 400 fatalities on our roadways. These fatalities are not just statistics; they’re people: our friends, our parents, our grandparents, our siblings, and our children. I think we can all agree that one fatality is one too many, but we also know that we cannot control the human condition or a driver’s bad behavior. But we should always make an effort to enhance safety whenever we can."
Wright is particularly high on the effectiveness of technology.
“Santa Rosa County, specifically, has had the emergency signal preemption program, that’s been part of this Miovision program," he said. "We’ve already put that in place. We actually have more than anyone in the entire state of Florida. And since that’s been put in place, we’ve had a 20% reduction in response time for emergency vehicles.”
Further, Wright says AI will be a part of the system, with traffic monitoring software developed by Miovision.
“This system, these cameras, they watch intersections and they can recognize a collision when it happens and notify emergency services faster than you could call 9-1-1," he said. "But better than that, it will recognize and identify near misses. So if you have a pedestrian or bicyclist that almost gets hit by a car, which doesn’t get reported, it will recognize that. It will catalogue that data and find ways to adjust timing and adjust lights, and find ways to improve that in the future.”
Kandase Lee, CEO of the Emerald Coast Regional Council, says this level of traffic management has long been needed in Northwest Florida, noting that some of the technology that will be in use has already been used to manage traffic on Pensacola Beach.
“If you used to go to Pensacola Beach maybe five years ago, you might remember traffic being backed up all the way to I-110,” she said. “Now, we’re happy to say sometimes it hits 98, but it wasn’t anywhere near what it used to be. So we did that as a test. We did that to kind of show the value of technology when you add it into existing infrastructure.”
The TPO has implemented similar technology along Highway 98 to help streamline eastbound traffic to Hurlburt Field to help service members access the base as quickly as possible in the event of a rapid mission deployment. Also, the technology is currently being tested on Davis Highway and 9th Avenue.
Escambia County District 1 Commissioner Steve Stroberger says the technology is much needed on dangerous stretches of Sorento Road in his district. Commissioner Barry says, personally, he can’t for the technology to help ease congestion on Highway 29 and Nine Mile Road.
“And...I think citizens will be excited once everything is up and running and they’re seeing the benefits of that light synchronization as they make their daily commutes," said Barry.
Construction is set to begin in a couple of months and take about 18 months to complete. Operations are expected to commence by 2027.
