WavetronixLINDON, Utah—December 12, 2007—The planning department of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has made an initial purchase of 50 SmartSensor HD units in order to upgrade existing automatic traffic recorder locations. The sensors will collect the volume data that Planning uses to track seasonal changes in traffic; that data is also used to develop factors for converting 48-hour counts into an annualized estimate of daily traffic.
Paul Stein, manager of the department’s Traffic Data Systems, said HD’s length-based classifications and speed accuracies will also be used to great advantage. “Using HD’s length-based data will allow us to develop annualized statistics for truck traffic,” Stein says. “With speed, we can track not only average speed but also the percent of traffic that exceeds posted limits by varying degrees.” According to Stein, that information will then be used by police agencies to develop enforcement strategies.
Stein says the department ultimately anticipates a need for 100 additional HD units. They are also looking into the possibility of sharing the HD sensors with Wisconsin DOT’s freeway operations unit, allowing them to obtain real-time traffic information from the same units.