Austin To Pilot Smart City Technology To Improve Congestion

Austin, Texas – Parsons Corporation (NYSE: PSN), a technology company recently announced Austin, Texas as a winner of the company’s Smart Cities Challenge. Austin will pilot Parsons’ new Intelligent Intersections solution, which uses advanced analytics and algorithms to improve mobility.

By unlocking insights from the data being generated at intersections, the solution creates a custom dashboard, giving traffic engineers the information they need to make more informed decisions to reduce congestion.

“Austin is committed to smart city innovation and the Smart Mobility Office is currently working with a number of private companies to test, pilot, and prove emerging technologies that will help us achieve our mobility goals.,” said Austin Transportation Assistant Director Jason JonMichael, “ Piloting the Intelligent Intersections solution is another way Austin is a leader in implementing smart city technologies, and we look forward to testing Parsons technology to see how much it could help us manage congestion and improve safety.”

Before coronavirus (COVID-19)-related shutdowns, the United States lost 6.3 billion hours, 30 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and $88 billion dollars of productivity to congestion each year.

While COVID-19 closures have decreased emissions by as much as 26% around the world, experts expect traffic levels to resume over time.

Retiming signals – typically an expensive, time consuming, manual process – can reduce congestion at intersections by up to 40%, in turn reducing GHG emissions by an estimated 4.9 million tons per year and lowering productivity losses by an estimated $27 billion annually.

Parsons’ Intelligent Intersections solution takes data from the signal controller unit and from local sensors to provide a dashboard that allows traffic engineers to visualize the information.

With this data, traffic engineers can better monitor intersections and retime the signals up to 20 times more frequently.

Piloting this solution along with others allows the City to be a part of the innovation process while they evaluate the technology’s capabilities.

“The City of Austin – located in the fastest growing metropolitan region in the United States – has a proven record of piloting new smart city technologies,” said Andrew Liu, senior vice president, smart cities for Parsons. “We look forward to working with the city and its partners in the region to help realize the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan for the citizens and communities they serve.”

As a winner of the challenge, Austin will receive a free six-month trial of Parsons’ Intelligent Intersection solution, which will be used to monitor the city’s Cameron Road corridor.

The solution will use existing city sensors to analyze traffic data and provide signal timing recommendations.

At the end of the pilot, the Smart Mobility Office and Parsons team will evaluate outcomes related to managing congestion, improving air quality, increasing vehicle throughput, and improving safety.

Parsons’ Smart Cities Challenge was launched in 2019 in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to change the way cities move.

More than 60 city governments entered the challenge by outlining the mobility challenges they face, along with their goals for utilizing the Intelligent Intersections solution.

Winners were determined by an independent panel of judges. Additional winners include Frontier Metropolitan Planning Organization (FMPO)/Fort Smith, Arkansas; Westminster, Colorado; and Walnut Creek, California.

To learn more about Parsons’ Intelligent Intersections solution, visit Parsons.com/smart-cities-challenge.