Iteris Inc.

The 21-year-old company is based in Santa Ana, Calif., but has a local office in the Westlake area. Iteris has an emphasis on manufacturing products and cameras that detect and capture movement, said Ayoub. Most of its customers are government entities or agencies, and its roadway detection products—more than 30,000 units deployed throughout the state—can be found in every Central Texas city, he said.

Centers on the rise

Iteris has constructed traffic-management centers in Central Texas during the past decade that allow agency staffers to review video of roadway traffic flow and send emergency aid or modify traffic signals, Ayoub said.

"The goal of the program is to reduce response time to traffic issues," he said.

Cities with at least 50,000 residents purchase the system because, at this population threshold, the city becomes responsible for roadway maintenance from TxDOT, he said.

iPerform

Iteris created a new technology, iPerform, involving performance monitoring and measurement that can compare statistics including the amount of congestion on a stretch of roadway over time, said Scott Carlson, Western Region Transportation Systems vice president.

"Under a 2013 federal transportation bill, agencies—the Capital Area Metropolitan Transportation Organization and TxDOT—must conduct a study before and after a project to show reduced congestion, travel time or other improvements to the roadway [as a result of the project]," Ayoub said. "[IPerform] can look at a roadway and see how much congestion there is compared to the previous year."

For two decades, data collection emphasis has been on monitoring freeway traffic, he said. Recently, the focus has turned toward arterials because of the increase in congestion in urban areas, he said.

The new data can also be used to predict traffic delays attributable to an accident as far as 3 miles from the scene, and the customer can get help to the area before congestion becomes a problem, Ayoub said.

"You can start to predict what the impact of that incident will be and prepare for it," he said.

Both Ayoub and Carlson said the detection technology is not used to collect personal data on drivers. The goal of the product is to make the roadways safer and more efficient, Carlson said.

IPerform is used in California, but no Texas agencies have purchased it, he said.

Vantage Vector sensor

Iteris Inc.'s Vantage Vector hybrid vehicle detection sensor integrates video and radar technologies to determine the number of vehicles approaching an intersection, vehicle speed and occupancy measurements. It can include information about bicycles travelling on the roadway. These statistics can then be viewed remotely in a traffic management center to help alleviate highway issues.

Hybrid systems and the Dilemma Zone

As a Bee Cave resident, Scott Carlson, Iteris Western Region Transportation Systems vice president, encounters his company's video detection systems on West Hwy. 71 and RR 620 daily.

Iteris' traditional video-based detection products can be found in the local area but TxDOT installed its first hybrid system from the company in December—on Hwy. 29 in Georgetown, said Associate Vice President Nader Ayoub.

A camera can detect cars at a traffic signal and, in the hybrid system, is used with radar detection at an intersection to determine high approach speeds of traffic, he said.

Together the products can determine if a driver is approaching an intersection with a stale green traffic light, known as the Dilemma Zone, he said. Depending on the speed of the car and the distance from the signal, the Iteris technology can maintain the green light longer to allow sufficient time for the approaching car to get through the intersection, he said.

The hybrid product is mounted on a traffic pole above an intersection and has a range of about 600 feet, he said.

"[The hybrid system] is a safety improvement and not just an operational tool," Carlson said. "If we can eliminate some accidents at [an] intersection, [we've] just improved that corridor."

Iteris Inc., 912 S. Capital of Texas Hwy., Ste. 190, Austin, 512-716-0808, www.iteris.com