Learn how Sturgis Police Department reduced speeding in neighborhoods using speed reduction signs and data to resolve complaints and prioritize enforcement.
HERNDON, Va. – October 15, 2021 All Traffic Solutions awarded a Shield 15 radar speed sign to Fort Indiantown Gap Police Department and a SpeedAlert 18 radar message sign to the Borough of East Bangor Police Department through the company’s ATS Gives Back initiative.
Over the years, All Traffic Solutions found that police departments in smaller communities have a need for All Traffic Solutions signs but lack the necessary funds and do not qualify for grants. The ATS Gives Back goal is to bridge this gap. Each month the All Traffic Solutions team selects two police departments to receive radar feedback signs free of charge. ATS Gives Back recipients also receive a subscription to TraffiCloud®, All Traffic Solutions’ patented traffic device and data management system.
Fort Indiantown Gap is a National Guard training center located in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. The Fort Indiantown Gap Police Department is a law enforcement agency comprised of 19 sworn officers that falls under the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Military Veterans Affairs. Speeding is a concern on the roads and highways that run through Fort Indiantown Gap, particularly because large military vehicles can create visibility issues for drivers.
“As a busy National Guard training installation, we have troop formations, military vehicles with limited visibility, and regular traffic throughout the post. The Shield 15 traffic sign will allow us to warn traffic of their speed while providing us data to better target traffic enforcement to keep our soldiers safe while training to protect our country.” said Fort Indiantown Gap Police Chief Jarrad Berkihiser.
East Bangor is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania with a population of approximately 1,100 residents. Although east Bangor Borough is a small community, it experiences a high volume of commuter traffic on state routes that pass through the borough. With seven sworn officers, enforcing speed limits throughout the town can be a challenge. The SpeedAlert sign will be used as a force multiplier to reduce speeding, collect data, and help the police department prioritize enforcement.
“This sign will be a wonderful addition toward keeping the residents of East Bangor Borough safe by slowing down the vehicles traveling through. This sign will allow drivers to recognize how fast they are actually going and correct their speed if necessary. This sign will also allow the police department to collect the data and then focus on problem roads in town. We can’t thank you enough for this donation.” said Police Chief Robert Mulligan of East Bangor Borough Police Department.
You can nominate a department and learn more about the ATS Gives Back criteria by visiting the All Traffic Solutions website.
About All Traffic Solutions
All Traffic Solutions (ATS) is a leader in portable, durable products and web-based solutions for traffic management and safety. We help law enforcement agencies and municipalities use data and devices such as web-enabled radar speed displays and variable message signs to calm traffic, resolve complaints, and improve safety outcomes while maximizing resources and budget. For more information, visit https://www.alltrafficsolutions.com.
HERNDON, Va. – July 12, 2021 All Traffic Solutions awarded a SpeedAlert 18 radar message sign to the Town of Townsend, Delaware, and a Shield 12 radar speed sign to the Town of New Boston, New Hampshire Police Department through the company’s ATS Gives Back initiative.
Over the years, All Traffic Solutions found that police departments in smaller communities have a need for All Traffic Solutions signs but lack the necessary funds and do not qualify for grants. The ATS Gives Back goal is to bridge this gap. Each month the All Traffic Solutions team selects two police departments to receive radar feedback signs free of charge. ATS Gives Back recipients also receive a subscription to TraffiCloud®, All Traffic Solutions’ patented traffic device and data management system.
The Town of Townsend, Delaware has a population of about 2,600 residents that is continuing to increase, leading to higher traffic volume. Townsend has an elementary school located along its Main Street and has expressed a need for traffic calming support downtown.
“Main Street has a community elementary school, and we have recently finished a safe corridor project. The sign is desperately needed to provide traffic calming to this area. ” said Townsend Town Manager Anthony Mangeri.
New Boston, New Hampshire, has a population of approximately 2,500 residents. Although it is a rural community, it experiences a high volume of commuter and tourist traffic. Excessive speeding has increased along the six state-maintained roadways which run through New Boston, and in 2018 New Boston Police Department found that 77.9% of motor vehicle violations were committed by drivers residing outside of the town.
“We are very excited to be able to deploy this new technology within our community to the most problematic areas. By using the traffic calming device, as well as the option to collect data on vehicle speed and quantity, it will help us in our mission to provide the most safe and effective enforcement with limited resources.” said Sergeant Timothy Loveless of New Boston Police Department.
You can nominate a department and learn more about the ATS Gives Back criteria by visiting the All Traffic Solutions website.
About All Traffic Solutions
All Traffic Solutions (ATS) is a leader in traffic safety and data analytics for Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and smart parking applications. We help law enforcement, municipal agencies, and commercial organizations use data and cloud-supported devices such as web-enabled radar speed displays, conditional messaging technology, and lidar technology to calm traffic, optimize parking availability, share notifications, and improve traffic safety— while maximizing resources and budget. For more information, visit http://www.alltrafficsolutions.com
In October, All Traffic Solutions exhibited at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) annual conference. We have participated in the conference for over 15 years, and we always look forward to meeting face-to-face with our customers. However, things looked a little different this year. The event was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we set up a virtual booth and hosted video demos. We strived to make the experience feel as personal as possible for attendees, and we enjoyed the opportunity to have in-depth conversations about our InstAlert 24, Shield Radar Speed Sign, SpeedAlert Radar Message Sign, TraffiCloud®, and our other law enforcement solutions. We also gifted YETI tumblers to Police Chiefs who visited our virtual booth.
The virtual conference facilitated various networking opportunities and hosted educational training sessions that focused on topics such as the pandemic and media coverage of law enforcement. IACP 2020 attendees will continue to have full access to these training sessions for a year after the conference was hosted.
Members of the All Traffic Solutions team attended the conference and thoroughly enjoyed the “COVID-19 Response and Effect: Preparing for a Second Wave” educational session. The session discussed the predominant struggles that law enforcement has faced while dealing with COVID-19 abroad. it was interesting to learn more about the issues that law enforcement faced in other countries. We found the perspectives of different police forces to be very insightful.
Our virtual booth will continue to be accessible until December 31, 2020 for attendees who purchased tickets prior to the conference. If you didn’t attend the conference but would still like to meet with one of our representatives for a virtual product demonstration, you can fill out a contact form at any time!
One thing I’m sure you’ve read about since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: anarchy on the roads. There’s less traffic, and the consequence has been more speeding. That’s a life and death proposition with most of the country still facing social distancing restrictions and an increase in the number of pedestrians and bike riders on the streets. In Minnesota, 42 people were killed on the roadways in 45 days after the stay-at-home order was put in place on March 16. In Canada, a teen was caught speeding doing 191 mph and a Maryland man was caught going 187 MPH through a work zone in North Carolina. The problem is not just speeding, Ohio saw 154 traffic fatalities during the month of July, the highest since 2007. That’s sobering traffic data during a time when citations are down significantly in most areas. In Indianapolis, for instance, citations are down 93 percent.
Ultimately, while law enforcement has been focused on the crisis at hand, bad behaviors have developed. Some communities are fighting back: recently in Atlanta, police arrested 44 people, issued 114 citations, and impounded 29 vehicles in a proactive bid to cut down on street racing.
There’s another way communities can cut down on speeding: using data to prioritize enforcement. All Traffic Solutions collects volume and speed data on more than 100 million vehicles per month through our radar speed signs connected to our patented cloud software, TraffiCloud®. Leveraging traffic data from TraffiCloud, we conducted an extensive analysis of a handful of communities we serve and found that the overwhelming majority of drivers are still responding to speeding signs. In fact, in some cities, we have seen average speeds decrease along with the decrease in traffic volumes. Take, for example, a city we serve in Silicon Valley. The school district has a sign posted outside the high school that remains operational despite school having been canceled back in March. Speed postings change throughout the course of the day – and drivers are adjusting their speeds accordingly. Since the start of the pandemic, the average speed has been within 3 mph of the pre-COVID-19 limit.
From a compliance and risk perspective, another interesting finding was that the percentage of “violators”, which is defined as going 10+ miles per hour over the speed limit, has also stayed relatively flat during the pandemic. So, while our freeways are running amok with speeders, the data we have collected from TraffiCloud clearly reveals a different story where speed feedback is provided to the driver.
The solution to speeding is not something that can be decided unilaterally and rolled out. Each community must decide how to deal with speeding drivers; in many instances, communities are struggling with limited law enforcement resources who also have many other issues to deal with. Data is critical for managing – and ultimately enforcing – speeding on your highways and in your neighborhoods. More on that soon.
Traffic Device and Data Management software enables you to manage signs remotely. If, in the case of the school, the speed limit needs to be reduced at drop-off in the morning and pick-up in the afternoon, that can be done from the comfort of your home. Daily and weekly reports don’t need to be reviewed in a precinct. It can be done through a platform like TraffiCloud.
Speeding is not going away – but it can be measured and curbed. Put a plan in place now to use traffic data to your advantage by cutting the amount of time your law enforcement agencies need to spend on traffic worries.
By Andy Souders
CEO, All Traffic Solutions
At Booth 3817 at this year’s IACP Conference and Exposition (October 26-29, Chicago, IL), All Traffic Solutions (ATS) will be showcasing how the right technology can improve efficiencies, maximize budgets and — most importantly — reduce traffic incidents and save lives.
The company has been a trusted partner to law enforcement agencies and road safety organizations for over two decades, helping to reduce high-risk speeding by 10% or more and to slow traffic in school zones by as much as 85%.
Visitors can learn how ATS’s cloud-based products can help to progress traffic and safety initiatives by viewing a demo of ATS TraffiCloud. The new FloodAlert detection and notification system, which uses ultrasound or laser to detect rising water levels in flood-prone areas, will be on show for the first time. FloodAlert enables law enforcement agencies to take a more proactive stance on traveler safety management.
Also on display will be ATS’s ultra-portable SpeedAlert trailer, as well as InstAlert 24, the traffic market’s only foldable message sign. These solutions enable agencies to be highly adaptable, activating safety and informational strategies across large geographical areas as public threats emerge. The real-time data collection capabilities of the portable Shield radar speed sign and ready-made speed and volume reports from TraffiCloud, meanwhile, allow speeding complaints to be resolved far more quickly.
There will also be a raffle and the chance to win one of two wooden Thin Blue Line flags from veteran-owned and operated organization Flags of Valor.
“Technology has a vital role to play in helping us move towards Vision Zero — the total absence of road casualties. It can certainly play a major part in leveraging often limited budgets and resources to achieve more. ATS constantly looks for ways to innovate and we actively engage with the law enforcement community. Working together, we can better define the solutions that will be game-changers in terms of road safety. As a result, we’ve consistently been first to market with new ideas. FloodAlert is a fine example,” says Andy Souders, ATS’s President and CEO.
“We’ve participated at the IACP show for more than a decade now. It’s always a great opportunity for us to meet with our highly valued customers and validate how our solutions are helping to solve their problems.
“We get to understand better what they need to make their work easier and save lives and to show them what’s just arrived or is just around the corner. So, we’re very much looking forward to another opportunity to discuss how we can work together to make our communities safer places in which to live, work and travel.”
As towns and cities everywhere become more populated and industry continues to grow, our roads have become more congested, with more residential and commercial vehicles hurrying to get where they’re going. Increased traffic means more delays at some times and more speeding and traffic incidents at others. Though the solutions may be up for debate, one thing is for sure, the state of traffic on our nation’s roads falls under the jurisdiction of law enforcement, public works and local government in some way.
It can lead to the need for more frequent road maintenance, especially in areas with heavy commercial traffic, and traffic studies in others, to address shifts in population and commerce. For law enforcement, increased traffic has traditionally meant more officers assigned to carry out the important, neverending tasks of enforcing traffic speed, managing safety and responding to community concerns about both. For municipalities and public agencies, increased traffic has meant assigning more traffic engineers and other personnel to carry out the important, never-ending tasks associated with managing volume, speed and safety, as well scheduling road maintenance and construction.
In today’s economy, cuts and hiring freezes have made it necessary for agencies and municipalities to become more resourceful in order to achieve traffic safety goals and manage risks. One solution lies in approaching the problem from a new perspective—one that leverages the technology with automated traffic data collection and reporting allowing for real-time sharing of data and analytics.
Safer Communities
Sharing current, accurate data within a department and with surrounding agencies forms alliances that profoundly impact the safety and well-being 
of our communities. Traffic intelligence enables coordination between traffic engineers who design roadways, public works departments who manage all the signage and road marking, and police departments who are responsible for traffic calming and enforcement.
For example, if there’s an area that experiences a lot of accidents annually, maybe that’s because the road markings or signs are inadequate, because the speed limit is too high, or because the intersection signal timing is too rapid. There are a number of reasons why those accidents may be occurring that have little to do with policing. Sharing traffic data helps departments lessen their individual burdens and responsibilities of calming traffic, reducing accidents and making roadways safer for the public.
Budgeting and Funding
Cooperation among multiple departments within city and town governments is important as well as mutually beneficial. Spreading the cost of traffic safety equipment and software across two or more budget proposals has a better chance of being approved than if one agency makes the request. Government agencies often notice this trend when applying for grant funding. Many of the high-dollar grants require multiagency participation and that can be difficult when not all agencies share the same mindset or commitment to the partnership. By sharing traffic data with other agencies, partnerships can be formed, and groups can work together toward funding the solutions that benefit everyone.
Agencies can also pool their funds, such as for the purchase of traffic safety equipment that collects data. Recently, the Vienna Town Council in Virginia unanimously approved the purchase of eight portable SpeedAlert signs and Traffic Suite management software from All Traffic Solutions, which town officials will pay for using money from capital-improvement funds and the town’s traffic-engineering operating budget; the remaining portion will come from the Virginia Department of Transportation. “On a per-dollar basis, this might be one of the best expenditures we have,” said Councilmember Pasha Majdi.
ATS customer Louisville Metro Police Department recently purchased nine new SpeedAlert trailers, complete with red and blue strobe lights, with funds provided by the Republican Members of the Louisville Metro Council. The radar speed displays upload speed and volume data to the ATS TraffiCloud automatically so the Department can run reports to respond to complaints, understand speed and volume trends and prioritize problem areas that require enforcement. The Department will share report access with the City Council and other elected officials so that they can monitor traffic information themselves.
Identify Problem Areas to Prioritize Enforcement
The ability to pinpoint high-speed areas and when problems are at their worst enables law enforcement to assign officers when and where they can do the most good, conserving resources and traffic equipment. With access to historical and real-time volume data for specific areas, the department of transportation can spot trends, look at ways to reroute traffic, change the timing of lights or make other adjustments to keep traffic moving and incidents at a minimum.
Long-term Planning
Traffic data can help identify what each agency will require in the future in terms of traffic safety and improvements. Analyzing traffic data allows municipalities to identify the locations and severity of traffic congestion and safety issues in the community to see which are trending upward and will require more long-term solutions, such as adding more traffic lanes or signals. Sharing traffic data helps law enforcement enormously in planning and budgeting for new traffic equipment and for resource allocation.
Holistic View of the Future
More and more municipalities are sharing data between agencies so that everyone can benefit from a larger, integrated database that paints a more holistic picture of the future. For example, when DOTs share traffic volume data with law enforcement, they can use that information to assign officers to a particular road during peak congestion hours. The vehicle count and classification data collected for traffic studies is helpful to them as well, for example, in identifying where trucks or motorcycles are most likely to speed through neighborhoods.
The city’s traffic engineers will find count and classification data useful, too. They can use it to determine how long to make turning lanes or to identify where they may need to reroute trucks away from heavy local traffic. Urban planners can use traffic data intelligence to plan new business and shopping districts, parking facilities and residential developments. Intelligent transportation and smart cities initiatives can use the data to build conditional messaging or dynamic traffic routing in real time, using a flexible open platform that integrates with existing equipment and systems. When public agencies share their data, everyone benefits from the combined pool of intelligence it creates.
Adopt a “Data-Analytics” Mindset
As municipalities and law enforcement find themselves continually challenged by the growth in population, commerce and sheer volume of traffic, adopting a data-sharing strategy to traffic management is more critical than ever. By applying a shared “data analytics mindset,” agencies can capitalize on the trends they see taking place. The result is informed decision making that leads to better traffic management and resource utilization, reduced congestion and work zone accidents, improved community relations and safer roads for everyone.
If you would like to simplify and streamline the collection, management and sharing of traffic data in your municipality, we’re here to help.
For more strategies and tips on how to use traffic data to reduce costs, maximize resources and keep your community safe, read our white paper How to Use Data and Analytics to Achieve Your Traffic Management Goals.
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