Systems Integrated Selected by Los Angeles County to Wirelessly Sync 1,000 Traffic Intersections
Initial Pilot Deployment Wins Award for Saving the County $7 Million, Systems Integrated and Proxim Selected to Continue Phase Two of Rollout
Silicon Valley, CA – November, 2008 - Systems Integrated (SI) today announced that SI has been authorized to proceed with phase 2 implementation of Los Angeles County’s Public Works Traffic Department’s (LACPWTD) wireless communication system. The contract, valued at approximately $7 million, follows SI’s highly successful 51 intersection pilot project in LA County’s South Bay and will expand the original pilot to 1,000 intersections throughout LA County. For the deployment, SI will deploy over 1,200 of Proxim’s Tsunami MP.11 point-to-multipoint radios to provide the high-speed wireless backhaul to connect all of traffic intersections to provide support for traffic synchronization.
The selection of SI and Proxim for phase 2 of the deployment comes after the initial pilot implementation of LACPWTD’s wireless communication system earned the 2008 Productivity and Quality award. Awarded once a year by the LA County Quality and Productivity Commission, the honor represents an achievement by a department within the county to contribute significantly to productivity and improvements through application of technology. LA County’s aggressive program to counter smog and traffic congestion with technology resulted in SI’s design and implementation of a Proxim wireless network connecting 51 initial intersections. The award-winning pilot program has already been expanded to over 350 intersections today and will be rolled out to a total of 1,000 intersections, which will improve traffic for commuters through more than 30 cities throughout LA County.
“The ability to wirelessly network and synchronize 1,000 traffic intersections is a huge enabler of productivity for LA County, and significantly reduces the overall cost of real-time traffic synchronization,” said John Holbrook, President of SI. “We’ve found that Proxim’s broadband wireless technology not only provides the best performance for delivering bandwidth intensive applications like video, but it is also the most cost-effective solution on the market. As a result, we have used Proxim’s equipment exclusively throughout this deployment.”
The County of LA estimates that utilization of Proxim’s wireless technology to connect the 1,000 traffic intersections saved the county $7M in costs over traditional copper or fiber optic installations. Additionally, use of Proxim’s unlicensed radios will save the county $708K annually from the cost of leased lines. The Proxim wireless network, part of the County’s traffic signal synchronization program, has been estimated to reduce travel time by citizens by as much as 29%, saving motorists on an annual basis $387M in vehicle costs, 26.3 million travel hours, 32.6 million gallons of fuel and 11,400 tons of pollutants.
Implemented as a multijurisdictional traffic coordination effort, the wireless communication network is being installed under the direction of SI’s engineering staff to connect the 1,000 traffic intersections to the county’s Alhambra Traffic Management Center (TMC). The solution integrates with the Kimley-Horn Integrated Traffic Systems (KITS) software, which manages freeway, arterial, and corridor traffic through a single, dynamic user interface. The combination of the KITS software and Proxim’s broadband wireless technology allows both county and city staff to monitor traffic signals and react in real time to traffic problems and adjust the signal timing to relieve congestion. At the same time, this solution reduces both the set up and operating costs for signal communication to reduce traffic problems for many commuters.
“Traffic Syncronization and wireless video are key drivers for wireless broadband in the U.S. today, and this deployment is an excellent example of how much simpler and more cost-effective wireless broadband can be for delivering high-performance networks for video,” said Pankaj Manglik, CEO of Proxim. “At Proxim, all of our equipment is built from the ground up to handle the quadruple play of video, voice, data and mobility, so providing the wireless backhaul for such a large video network was right up our alley.”
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