Along several Northeast Florida highways, information superhighways – in the form of miles of fiberoptic cable – are being installed. The new technology could make safer, more efficient road trips a reality.
The Florida Department of Transportation has recently undertaken several projects to install the cables along existing roadways. Construction has already begun for the projects located along State Road 16 in St. Johns County as well as I-75, and another project along I-10 is expected to get underway this fall.
The cable installation will help pave the way for transportation of the future. A fiberoptic cable is made of dozens of tiny glass strands that can carry digital information at the speed of light. A bundle of about 144 strands, what projects will eventually use, is only about the width of a human thumb. They are a crucial part of allowing cars and roads to “talk” to each other.
“In the past, communication within our society has been through copper. That’s how telephone lines were connected – very cumbersome, very bulky, very expensive,” said Peter Vega, transportation systems and operations program manager for FDOT.
Josh Reichert, an FDOT engineer who manages the Intelligent Transportation Systems program, said the fiberoptic cables will allow connected vehicles – cars that can communicate with roadways and other cars – and automated vehicles – those that operate themselves – to send and receive information, like traffic or road conditions, to and from transportation management centers, including a new center in Jacksonville.
“We’re basically gearing up, not only for what we have now, but for what we see coming in the future — all these different programs coming, as connected and automated vehicles show up,” he said.
Vega said it’s all about safety.
“The most important part to me is accidents. Currently, when a car is driving down the road, they have an accident, you can just tell through our cameras and what we have with our data,” he said. “With the feature of automated and connected vehicles, they’ll have sensors in there.”
Sensors, like these, and other measures could help improve emergency response time. For instance, if a car gets into an accident, the sensor could alert medical teams immediately. Perhaps one roadway has an especially slick surface, friction data collected from the connected vehicle’s tires could inform the road’s redesign and guide the selection of a safer material.
The data FDOT engineers collect, however, is mainly just general numbers rather than tracking specific cars. Vega adds that it’s not as Orwellian as it sounds.
“This is aggregate data, so no we’re not tracking anybody," he said. "We’re not big brother watching each individual person. It’s all used collectively to get a perception of what the roadway conditions are at that real-time moment.”
The data collected from the new information infrastructure will govern road design in the coming years, as smart roads catch up with smart cars.
