Sarasota’s Smart local project goes beyond free Wi-Fi in local parks and real-time beach information.
For its efforts to keep pedestrians and drivers safe, the City of Sarasota is also receiving an international prize.
Several crossroads off of Fruitville Road are monitoring the situation in an effort to help avert another catastrophe.
“We get speed, near-misses, lane departures. We also get information on how many vehicles per day go through the area,” Nikesh Patel Sarasota’s City Engineer stated.
To record near-miss collisions, illegal crossings off key roads like Fruitville Road and Lemon Avenue, and to alert cars to pedestrian crossings, the city of Sarasota is utilizing artificial intelligence in conjunction with traffic cameras.
“It’s really to see what’s going on with user behaviors in the right of way. It’s to determine what the behaviors are happening and see what we can do to implement solutions that help us with target zero,” Patel stated.
The city’s objective to lower the number of serious collisions and injuries in the downtown area includes Target Zero.
In and around downtown Sarasota, the technology is being utilized at sixteen distinct junctions. It provides the city with data that they can access at any time since the initiative began.
“If speed is an issue, we can slow down speed by implementing traffic-calming measures. If pedestrians are not crossing on the crosswalk, we can look at making the crosswalk wider and adjusting the signal timing. There’s a lot of different solutions we can look at,” Patel stated.
According to Patel, the technology provides a clear image of regions that require additional patrols or changes to traffic signals.
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“It helps us make better decisions because we are tracking that information in real time and seeing what is going on out there,” he stated.
Bradenton visitors like Mike Oliveri recognize the advantages.
“There’s a need for it. There’s so much traffic here,” he stated.
Although Sarasota was among the first cities in the state to test the program, other cities are now doing the same. In the near future, the city intends to equip all 90 of its crossroads with the technology.
