Anyone who has been in North Texas for a while knows that the city of Frisco has grown by leaps and bounds in a very short amount of time. 

After all, Frisco is the home of the so-called $5 Billion Mile — The Star development of the Dallas Cowboys, Frisco Station, Wade Park, and The Gate.

Now, Frisco is being honored for its innovative approach to keeping traffic moving and improving road safety through “pioneering data-sharing initiatives,” according to Adam Frost on Traffic Technology Today.

FRISCO TAKES ON TRAFFIC ISSUES

To combat the city’s growing traffic issues, it has implemented four projects using transportation system data that help reduce bottlenecks, and “un-kink” the flow of vehicles throughout the city that sits in both Collin and Denton counties.

The Texas Chapter of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America recently honored the city for developing and implementing the projects, which were awarded $380,000 in supporting grants from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, according to the city.

Here’s more information about those efforts.

• Closest To: This dispatched system was launched in November 2017, and integrates GPS and GS data with the city’s public dispatch system to help pinpoint the closest first-responder resources for high-priority calls.
• Incident Management Performance Measures: This system collects all kinds of data surrounding traffic incidents, such as crashes or stalls. With this system, dispatchers note when the incident is first reported and cleared, while also examining first-responder arrival times. The system also focuses on when the traffic flow returns to where it was.
• Traffic Signal Sharing: Frisco is the first city in Texas, and the second in the nation, to deploy technologies that allow traffic signals to communicate with vehicles. These signals stream, in real time, to Traffic Technology Services which, in turn, analyzes when signal lights change, and sends that information back to the driver. TTS is sharing the signal data with Audi drivers, with other automakers anticipated to join the program. “It really allows a local agency to start sharing their signal data with drivers … and to arm those drivers with better information, so they can make better choices,” Brian Moen, assistant director of transportation for the city of Frisco’s Engineering Services Department, told Dallas Innovates last April.
• Waze Connected Citizens Program: Anyone using the Waze app learns everything from what’s going on with the bottleneck ahead, to where a police officer might be stationed on the road. Frisco is taking this technology one step further, by posting event road closures and major accidents in the Waze app. The program also helps Frisco better respond to accidents and other incidents.

Paul Knippel, Frisco’s director of engineering services, said in the statement that the award sends an important message to Frisco residents and businesses, namely that “our efforts are headed in the right direction.”

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