Tampa, Florida — Smart Cars, Smart City
Tampa, the largest city in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida, showcased its investment in smart technology earlier this month with its first public demonstration of a connected vehicle technology research project, further fuelling speculation that the city hopes to become a future leader in smart city infrastructure.
The project, which is a part of the Tampa Connected Vehicle Pilot, will see a fleet of 1,600 privately-owned vehicles fitted with technology to enable communication with both roadways and other cars in order to receive updates, alerts and warnings about roadway conditions, speed limit changes, potential dangers ahead and more. Pilot testing of the scheme will be launched in the city — the population of which exceeds 335,000 — in early 2018.
The project will employ a total of ten streetcars to trial detection technology. This will be used to inform the car driver of when another connected vehicle is about cross their path, therefore reducing the chances of collisions or near-misses and preparing drivers for potentially stress-inducing situations.
And it won’t just be connected cars. The project will include 10 internet-enabled buses which will be able to communicate with traffic signals. The traffic signals will then function in accordance with the buses’ movements so that public transportation can stay on schedule.
Although not part of this month’s public demonstration, the project will also include an accompanying app to be used by 500 pedestrians. At multiple intersections in the city the app will issue “walk” alerts as well as audibly alerting the user if a bus or tram begins moving in the immediate vicinity.
What is the Tampa Connected Vehicle Pilot?
The pilot describes its work as employing “innovative vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication technology to improve safety and traffic conditions in downtown Tampa.”
Funded from a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the TCVP is one of only three large-scale connected vehicle system implementation efforts taking place across the U.S. Two similar projects are taking place in New York City and Wyoming, but all three projects have different sets of objectives to meet. What’s unique about the Tampa Connected Vehicle Pilot is that it’s the only project of the three which involves local residents driving their own vehicles.
“The whole idea is to have drivers aware of their environment — when a light is about to change, or if there’s congestion ahead, or if there’s a pedestrian in the crosswalk,” explained Vic Bhide, Chief Traffic Management Engineer for the City of Tampa. “This pilot is about vehicles, about infrastructure, about pedestrians, and eventually, about bicycles as well,” he said.
The ultimate goal of the 18-month project is data collection. Researchers are hoping to collect data on how connected cars work in a real-world environment, and observe communication and operability between different interfaces and vendors. Most importantly for drivers, the study will look into what impact connected vehicles will have on road accidants and patterns of traffic.
Tampa fought off competition from the likes Charlotte, NC and Pittsburgh, PA, for the Department of Transportation’s $21 million in grant funding, with elements like its medium-sized downtown, traffic congestion issues, ability to close down roads during the daytime working to its advantage.
