Nashville’s first Traffic Management Center (TMC) is officially up and running, putting the Metro area in line with other major cities.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Nashville’s first Traffic Management Center (TMC) is officially up and running, putting the Metro area in line with other major cities, according to the Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure (NDOT).
The TMC will act as a hub, collecting data from Nashville’s streets through live cameras. Eleven full-time staff members can also monitor traffic and coordinate responses to crashes and emergencies.
“It represents a major change for the city of Nashville.” NDOT deputy director Brad Freeze said. “We are looking and moving to a more proactive stance in how we operate our system. [We’re] moving away from a reactive stance where we hear from other people on what’s going on.”
The TMC is fully funded for the next three years by a $3.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)
NDOT is also working on a project with Vanderbilt University using LiDar technology to identify dangerous or overly congested intersections. They are currently operating in seven intersections in North Nashville.
“We chose Clarksville Highway for this deployment because there’s a lot of crashes there and a lot of near misses and this is really proving what people are telling us,” assistant chief engineer for Metro Transportation Systems Management, Derek Hagerty, said. “We’re seeing a lot of opportunities for us to make improvements and we’ve already started to make some of those.”
Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell and several Metro Council members toured the new center on Tuesday. O’Connell said this is Phase One of the USDOT grant and the city has applied for Phase Two, which would allow the center to monitor Nolensville Pike, one of the more dangerous corridors in the area.
“This is something that will save lives, time, and make air cleaner,” said Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
Mayor O’Connell also promoted his ‘Choose How You Move’ proposal, which residents will be able to vote on this November.