A small town transforms its challenging traffic problems into safer, more efficient streets as it prepares for future growth.
Located in Benton County, Arkansas near the Missouri border, Bentonville is a small town that has transformed into a bustling center of arts, culture and tourism. In addition to being the home to the Corporate Office of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the city also houses an American art museum, a regional airport and now has plans for a new headquarters campus for Walmart.
Bentonville’s traffic management team was already challenged with rapid population growth, but with the Walmart project scheduled to be complete by 2024, they expect 13,000-17,000 workers commuting to Bentonville daily. The city had used Iteris detection systems for many years at over 50 signalized intersections but most of the firmware was nearly 20 years old. The equipment still functioned but was limited and could not stream video back to the traffic management center (TMC), so they had to rely on the public for feedback or complaints.
Bentonville’s mayor, Stephanie Orman, wanted to make sure the city’s intersections were safe, not only for vehicles but for bicyclists and pedestrians also. Since they were a long-time Iteris user and had a close relationship with Iteris’ distribution partner, Temple, they came to Iteris for guidance.
As the Iteris equipment was still operational, the city decided to augment the existing hardware. They upgraded the existing Vantage Edge2 systems and replaced the encoders with Vantage EdgeConnect at each intersection to send traffic data and high-resolution video back to the TMC.
As things progress with construction of the Walmart campus, Vantage Next, Iteris’ powerful next-generation video detection systems were installed, as well as Vantage Next combined with the Vantage Vector Hybrid video and radar sensor to provide accurate stop bar and advance detection. Together, Vantage Vector and Vantage Next provided lane-by-lane detection, bike and pedestrian detection, dilemma zone coverage and high-resolution data for adaptive and signal performance measures (SPM) systems.
The city also wanted to make sure they collected the right data needed for growth, as well as reduce the city’s data collection costs, so they installed VantageLive!, Iteris’ cloud-based data analytics solution.
For a full analysis of how Bentonville deployed a multimodal detection and traffic data collection program for safer, more efficient streets view the full case study:
About the Author:
Ginny Acosta is marketing events manager at Iteris.
Connect with Ginny on LinkedIn.
