Managing traffic with “No traffic?”

It's the name of a new system designed to make travel easier, and a Spectrum Bay News 9 viewer wants to see it used in our area.

Richard Hennek said: "The company claims up to 40% reduction in travel times. That's less pollution. That's less energy use. It's a win-win situation for everybody. So, how do we get Tampa to try a pilot program of No Traffic?"

Real Time Traffic Expert Chuck Henson reached out to Tom Cooper with No Traffic.

"We're targeting Florida very much,” Cooper said. “So a fundamental step would be, we're going to go through again the rigorous process with Florida DOT to have our products approved.”

And their products, according to Cooper, take what has been an outdated system from the start and move it to the future.

"If you look typically at how traffic has been managed in the past, it was based on going out, looking at traffic on a specific day, creating these timing plans, which are pretty simple programs that say ‘change lights at these intervals based on my observations in the past, and hopefully it serves the traffic.’"

But as we know, traffic patterns change. COVID taught us that.

And the No Traffic system says it adapts to these new patterns right away, and includes more than just cars. It measures cyclist and pedestrian use at every intersection.

Henson asked Kris Carson at FDOT about No Traffic and she indicates they are also working in this new, future field.

“FDOT has been leveraging ATC controllers for improving travel time and reducing delay along arterial corridors, and FDOT has also been testing video analytics and radar detection system for improving pedestrian and bicyclist safety,” Carson said.

The big issue in the race to make our commute easier is money. With several private companies, car manufacturers and government agencies all working in the same direction, they're all taking a chance that their system will ultimately become the industry standard.