FAIRLAWN, Ohio — The City of Fairlawn is now home to the first fully connected vehicle corridor in Ohio.
The city is upgrading the technology used in its traffic signals along Market Street, also known as Route 18, to enhance emergency vehicle response times, improve on-time city transportation, and provide real-time traffic updates.
"This is the latest and greatest when it comes to providing smart traffic signals," Peter Ashley, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Applied Information Inc., said.
Applied Information created this new technology. The transponders are placed inside emergency vehicles.
Those transponders communicate with traffic controllers, who can then change traffic signals to clear a path. In turn, this reduces response times.
"If you've got a fire that's occurred in a building, and you've got to get there in four minutes," Ashley said. "A minute and a half really, really helps."
At the same time, this technology also communicates with drivers and their vehicles through an app called Travel Safely.
Alerts for pedestrians and school zones will also appear on your phone or through CarPlay while you're driving.
Around 40,000 cars travel Market Street every day to dine, shop and stay at businesses along the road. Those numbers increase whenever an accident happens along Interstate 77.
"All of them try to traverse through Fairlawn and get back on 77 beyond the crash," Ernie Staten, the city's director of public service, said. "When that happens, we get inundated on West Market Street."
Those factors played into the city's decision to upgrade its traffic technology along Market Street.
"That is our main heartbeat of the city," Staten said. "We really have to focus on the idea of getting traffic through that corridor the best way possible."
The City of Fairlawn stated that the program could be expanded to other streets in the city, depending on the data gathered.
The Drive Safely app is available for both Android and iOS users. You can download it for free from your phone's app store.
