Helping Arlington Traffic Flow Smoothly

The city of Arlington has hundreds of traffic cameras at intersections throughout the community, many of which are underused.

To help make these traffic tools more efficient, Taylor Li, an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, has been given a high-speed fiber connection and access to more than 300 traffic cameras and 100 traffic light systems across Arlington, as well as access to the city's Traffic Operations Center. UTA is the first university in the UT System and the only university in North Texas to have such an arrangement for research.

The joint effort started about three years ago when the city asked Dr. Li's team to explore its new advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to improve traffic operations. Through a pilot study at six intersections, the researchers proved an accuracy of 95-99% in traffic data collection using their solutions. Inspired by this outcome, the city decided to scale up the collaboration and transform all of Arlington into a real-world testbed of new smart transportation technologies.

To start, Li will repurpose the existing traffic cameras with the AI video analytics solution he developed and use it to retrieve traffic flow characteristics, capture near misses, and collect other information that can be used for traffic safety improvements. He will also look at new concepts, such as preventing pedestrian deaths—20% of pedestrians killed die at intersections, and 70% of those deaths occur at night—by implementing better controls and looking at how intersections are set up. Li and his team can either view livestream views from the camera network or record it and run it through his AI-empowered video analytics software. He also uses LIDAR (light detection and ranging) for real-time control purposes.

"We plan to provide practical research service as well as solutions to Arlington based on this fiber connection and its direct access to hundreds of traffic cameras and sensors in the field," he says. "We also welcome other agencies and companies to take advantage of this unique realworld testbed to evaluate novel IT solutions to make better decisions and expedite deployment." ₪