J Magazine Winter 2019

Innovation
Continued from page 87
where the Internet of Things helps people
and traffic move safely and seamlessly.
A 33-project Smart Region Master Plan
authored by the TPO shows just how much
little bits of data stand to change life in
Northeast Florida.
There’s an app to find parking spaces
in St. Augustine and another app to locate
vehicles belonging to government fleets in
Clay County.
Smart traffic signals give priority to trucks
on Hecksher Drive and to city buses along
main arteries.
Alerts are sent to ambulances, warning
them when rail crossing gates block the
usual routes to Baptist Medical Center, and
alternate routes are broadcast.
Within the context of this larger plan,
the Bay Street Innovation Corridor is not
a keystone project. It’s the Petri dish. It’s a
place where the Internet of Things technology
can be tested, and then deployed to scale
in other places.
Autonomous vehicles for Bay Street?
The same technology is proposed as a way
to shuttle passengers around the St. Johns
Town Center, The University of North Florida
and Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
Flood sensors to measure waters rising
on streets? San Marco, the banks of McCoys
Creek and St. Augustine are flood-prone
areas where the same sensors could be used.
Pedestrian sensors could tell traffic lights
and drivers on State and Union streets when
people are crossing. Duval County’s A1A
corridor is another traffic-laden place where
pedestrian sensors could be used.
Internet of Things NERVE CENTER
When it comes to creating the Internet of
Things across a four-county region, there are
a lot of disparate parts. Those parts all connect
at the Regional Transportation Management
Center. Just like the data blips sent
by today’s traffic sensors, the Smart Region
Master Plan sensors route all the new bits of
data back to the center. That infrastructure
creates another possibility.
The center is in a good position to
become a nerve center for the region’s
Internet of Things data. Having data stored
in one centralized location means it could be
analyzed as a whole. It could also be shared
with the public. That would allow third-party
app developers to create their own traffic
Banks of monitors are mounted on the walls of
the Transit Operations Center showing live traffic
camera feeds and data from around North Florida.
solutions for a transit hungry public.
The same data that’s used to promote
safe, convenient transportation could also
potentially be connected to data from other
organizations — for example, in the healthcare
or human services space — to solve
community problems as yet unimagined.
To that end, the Innovation Corridor
has one other role. It’s a Petri dish, yes. But
it’s also a small and focused view of what a
brave new data-connected world might look
like.
Imagine it.
CAROLE HAWKINS was a reporter for the
Times-Union’s Georgia bureau in 2007-10. She is a
freelance writer who lives in Murray Hill.
BOB SELF
When will the Innovation Corridor get ‘smart?’
Things got exciting last year when the
U.S. Department of Transportation awarded
the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and
the city a $25 million BUILD grant. The city
will use its half of the money to lower the
Hart Bridge ramp to street level. JTA will use
the other half for the Innovation Corridor.
JTA is currently in the design phase of its
plans to purchase autonomous vehicles, said
Bernard Schmidt, JTA vice president of Automation.
JTA says in its grant that the entire
project will be done by the end of 2021.
The autonomous vehicles will be
dedicated to one lane on Bay Street, and
that lane will be shared by other vehicles,
according to Schmidt. The shuttles will
be type 3AVs, which is a no-hands, nofoot-on-the-pedal
level of automation. An
attendant will monitor operation and take
control of the vehicle, if needed.
The vehicles will use radar, sonar and
LIDAR to detect and avoid obstacles. Smart
connectivity will let vehicles “talk” to traffic
lights to find out whether they are red,
yellow or green.
“They will have an enormous amount of
flexibility. They’ll have the ability to see the
road and react,” said Schmidt. “We’ll also be
able to make route changes, and we’ll have
the ability to increase or decrease levels of
service. For customers, it will be very different
experience.”
That’s incredible.
What about the corridor’s other smart
technology, smart traffic lights or pedestrian
sensors? There, the news is quiet. The TPO’s
Sheffield believes JTA, as the grant administrator,
will be doing that part.
JTA’s Schmidt believes the city will be
doing it. Or the TPO.
The grant narrative submitted by JTA lists
“dynamic connected signals, smart lighting,
pedestrian sensors, and flood warning
sensors” as part of its Innovation Corridor
project. And the TPO, city, and JEA are listed
as partner agencies, each with roles.
But finding the agency that will pick up
the rest of Bay Street’s smart features, and
the dollars that will pay for them, seems a bit
of a shell game. That’s too bad.
A smart corridor was the vision pitched
to the public, and also the commitment
made in the grant narrative. AVs are an exciting
step forward.
Jacksonville needs to follow through with
the rest.
CAROLE HAWKINS
WINTER 2019 | J MAGAZINE 97