Emergency Vehicle Preemption (EVP) Deployed in Seminole County, Florida Led to Average Response Time Reductions of 90 Seconds and Saves an Estimated $200,000 Annually
Florida DOT Deployed an EVP System Utilizing Cellular Communication and Upgraded Traffic Signals to Clear Intersections Ahead of Emergency Vehicles, Leading to Both Time and Cost Savings
Seminole County
FDOT NTCIP Based Emergency Vehicle Preemption
Summary Information
Florida DOT (FDOT) acknowledged benefits of EVP, but queues at critical intersections often exceeded the distance of line-of-sight preemption calls, delaying the arrival of emergency vehicles. FDOT worked with a vendor to deploy a DSRC-based V2X solution to enhancing the effective radius from which an emergency vehicle could place a request for preemption.
FDOT and MetroPlan Orlando managed funding and license procurements for signal upgrades, while Seminole County updated hardware, firmware versions, and configurations. While the team started with just the PC-5 standard, after finding its functionality limited, the team began exploring direct NTCIP (National Transportation Communications for Intelligent Transportation System Protocol) solutions.
METHODOLOGY
This case study considered response time results pre-and-post pilot launch. Once the pilot launched, FDOT spent nearly a year of testing and refining to produce a product that addressed key factors such as increasing look-ahead distance when appropriate, automatically holding calls when stopped, providing feedback to the apparatus operator, and offering performance statistics.
FINDINGS
- By implementing this system, average response times have improved by approximately 90 seconds.
- Annual maintenance costs are expected to decrease by $200,000.
Given the success of the technology, FDOT is expanding the system to other partners with the assistance of Seminole County.
