PANAMA CITY — Panama City Beach Police Chief Drew Whitman said that a few times lately he’s been able to travel the entire corridor of Back Beach Road going the speed limit from the Hathaway Bridge to the police department on State 79 without hitting a red light.
He said the improvement in traffic flow is noticeable, and he credits a computerized county traffic signal synchronization system that was recently up and running.
“It’s made a huge difference,” he said. “It’s pretty impressive.”
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Bay County is the only one in the Panhandle to get state Department of Transportation funds to install the system, which is different from the coordinated traffic signal system the county has been using at other intersections. With the adaptive system, a computer tracks traffic in real time, and adjusts traffic lights on Back Beach Road. The computer also monitors traffic on side streets, and adjusts timing to help traffic flow.
“It’s second by second,” said county traffic engineering manager Keith Bryant. “That platoon (of traffic) is, say, ‘a minute away.’ The computer can surf the side streets, catch the platoon. If it didn’t clear everything on (Back Beach Road), it will jump back to the side streets. The computer has the ability to do that and we can’t do that. Back Beach Road is running more efficient than it has in the past.”
Bryant said the DOT felt Back Beach Road would be a great place to try out the system.
“Back Beach is especially problematic because you have the off-season traffic, that school traffic, and then when school lets out and the season begins, you have a lot of traffic accidents on the beach,” he said. “The state wanted to run a test of the new product. There are a couple of different brands of this product now, and they wanted to test one of them, so they contacted us and asked us if we’d be willing to accept the grant and put the system in for Back Beach Road and 23rd Street.”
Bryant said the adaptive system should help traffic flow on Back Beach Road during Spring Break.
“We’ve been watching,” he said. “It’s only been in (a short time). We were calibrating as recently as last week. We’re expecting a 15 percent reduction in travel time. The computer from what we’ve seen is doing a pretty good job.”
The FDOT paid $905,000 for the cost of deploying the “adaptive traffic signal system,” which is currently being installed on 23rd Street in Panama City.
“We’re putting the equipment in the cabinets (on 23rd Street),” he said. “Now you’ll see a pole coming off the mast arms, but no camera yet. We got to get the cameras up.”
The adaptive signal system works differently than the coordinated signal timing system the county uses at other major intersections. With the coordinated traffic signal system, county officials use traffic counts and other data to develop a signal timing system that it hopes will improve traffic flow. They then program that in and watch on cameras whether it pans out in real life. They can adjust the light timing if it doesn’t.
“We run models,” Bryant said. “Unless it’s an emergency situation, we don’t randomly put timing out there. We don’t sit here and throw it out in the field without a lot of planned thought. We’ll collect traffic counts. There is a lot of math that goes into building models we’re running up here.”
On Wednesday just after 7 a.m., Jerry Kearney, a county signal timing specialist, was at the helm, watching the traffic at signals throughout the county at the Transportation Management Center on the second floor of the government building. An entire wall in the 5,000-square-foot facility is covered with cameras showing traffic at lights of major intersections. He was listening to a police scanner to learn of any possible accidents.
Kearney has the ability to change the traffic light timing on the main corridor or side streets should an accident occur or other backups due to various factors.
“You’ll have a crash where emergency responders will have to close so many lanes,” Bryant said. “Last week, there was a crash at Thomas Drive and 98, and it blocked all the traffic westbound, so when they cleared the lanes, these guys in here will put in timing to help move that traffic.”
On early Wednesday morning, Kearney saw a thick blanket of fog at many traffic lights. It concerned him as traffic started backing up on U.S. 98 going to Panama City Beach by the Hathaway Bridge.
“It looks like we’re going to have to put up a sign,” he tells Bryant.
Kearney then turns on a switch that turns on a dynamic message board sign on 23rd Street warning motorists of the heavy fog.
“We can control the traffic signals from this room,” Bryant said. “We can send messages out to our dynamic message signs. We have two weather stations out in the field. We have one on the top of the Hathaway Bridge. We have one on the top of the West Bay Bridge.”
The cameras on this day show traffic headed out to Panama City Beach is much more congested than headed into Panama City. Bryant sees the same patterns every day.
“It’s definitely heavier going to the beach in the morning, we watch that,” he said. “State Road 77, when school is in session, is very heavy with people coming into town from the north side of the county, students going to Mosley, people coming to work. Tyndall Parkway is very heavy with people going to the base in the morning. The base starts a little bit earlier then everybody else. All of 15th (Street) is generally pretty busy, (as is) Back Beach Road.”
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County employees staff the traffic signal center usually from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. But they work longer hours during Spring Break, Bryant said.
He said they work closely with law enforcement to adjust light timing to get people in and out of events that attract large crowds, like the Luke Bryan concert.
“During the summer, we’re here on Saturdays, because traffic is a little heavier,” Bryant said. “During special events on Spring Break, we’re here a lot late into the night, because you have different things happening at the beach — big parties releasing at night.”