Over the last couple of years, our residents have indicated that traffic was their number one concern. As a result, in the summer of 2015, the Town conducted a Transportation Summit, which resulted in over 35 initiatives to help address the traffic in Miami Lakes. On November 3rd, 2015, the Town Council approved the Town's 2015-2025 Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan incorporated all of the initiatives from the Transportation Summit and authorized the Town Manager to take all actions necessary to implement the policies and goals under the plan. One of the transportation initiatives identified is the implementation of Adaptive Signal Control Technologies along the NW 154th Street Corridor.
Over the last year, the County has been assessing various technology options with the objective of implementing upgrades to all traffic signals countywide over a 5 to 7 year period with CCTV and ASCT technologies. To expedite this implementation, the County has allowed the Town to procure equipment and services from the County's approved provider, with the same pricing terms available under the County contract, to upgrade traffic signals within the 154th Street corridor from NW 87th Avenue to NW 77th Avenue, to provide for advanced traffic management capabilities, CCTV and ASCT.
The installation of CCTV cameras and ASCT technologies will help the County and the Town monitor traffic conditions in real-time and adjust signal timing for both normal rush hour traffic and special events based on the camera footage. The adaptive signals will automatically change signal-timing to improve traffic flow and keep signals synchronized as conditions change throughout the day. Equipped with cameras and secure Bluetooth/Wi-Fi devices, they are designed to monitor the intersections and reprogram their own timing to respond more quickly to changing conditions and improve the efficiency of the transportation network. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), on average these technologies can improve travel time by more than 10 percent and in areas with particularly outdated signal timing, improvements can increase to 50 percent or more. Lastly, the camera footage being collected is not recorded, nor use for traffic enforcement, and is only used to monitor traffic operations.
As part of the Intergovernmental Agreement with the County, the Town is responsible for providing all equipment, software licensing, subscriptions, etc. needed for the installation and operation of the approved devices. Because the County will only permit specific products from its approved vendors to be installed on County-owned poles, the normal competitive bidding process is unlikely to provide any benefit in terms of cost or quality since the competition is restricted to County-approved equipment. Therefore, in lieu of a formal competitive solicitation, Town staff will access County contracts to procure said equipment from the following County-approved vendors:
- Express Supply, Inc. – provider for the CCTV camera technology in the amount of $18,000
- Econolite/Aegis ITS- provider for the ASCT technology in the amount $152,000
The funds are available and budgeted for this purpose in the Capital Fund. In the case that the Town needs to replace or repair the equipment, or enhance other identified intersections within the Town with this technology, it is also recommended that the Council authorize the Town Manager to access County contracts to purchase equipment from the County-approved vendors as along as funds are budgeted for this purpose.
We expect this project to be completed in 2017.