Cradlepoint Helps San Antonio's Traffic Management System and Smart City Initiative

Cradlepoint has enabled the City of San Antonio to become a Smart City by streamlining its traffic management system to realize a nearly 100 percent rate of communication across its network, all while reducing the amount of resources needed to maintain the network.

The city is currently home to 1.4 million people, so traffic congestion had become a big headache for both the residents and traffic officials when its legacy management system experienced inconsistent remote communications support. In response, the City of San Antonio began utilizing Cradlepoint solutions for always-on, cloud-managed primary LTE connectivity across its distributed traffic network.

San Antonio’s Traffic Management Center is responsible for the city’s nearly 1,400 intersections. The city’s complex legacy network included a mesh of a dozen radio towers and 300 wired and wireless access points that served as reference nodes to the rest of the network. However, its legacy infrastructure performed inconsistently, only allowing staff to engage with about 60 percent of the city’s intersections. This created a serious issue, as staff need constant access to the traffic network to centrally monitor key applications, troubleshoot problems, and adjust the clocks that synchronize traffic lights and flow.

Cradlepoint helps the City of San Antonio overcome these issues with cloud-managed COR IBR1100 LTE routers as the primary WAN source throughout the traffic management network. Most importantly, the Traffic Management Center now has the scalability required to meet the city’s expected growth without sacrificing speed or connectivity.

“As the commutes for our motorists began to slow, we knew we had to implement a new solution that would address our network communication issues. However, this could be a huge, intimidating undertaking for staff of just 16 individuals. Cradlepoint took the uncertainty out of the equation,” said Marc Jacobson, manager, city of San Antonio’s Traffic Management Center. “Cradlepoint has changed our mindset to the point that we are beginning to come up with new ways to utilize cloud-managed LTE to make our jobs easier, and to make the ride better for everyday commuters.”

“As cities grow, their infrastructure will need to adapt to the growing needs of the general public. Cradlepoint is dedicated to providing solutions that integrate the best of cloud, SDN, and 4G LTE to not only address the network issues of today, but also to easily scale networks to efficiently meet future demands,” said Ian Pennell, chief marketing officer, Cradlepoint. “For the City of San Antonio, this means the Traffic Management Center can initiate Smart City initiatives, begin to ease traffic congestion, and create a better commuting environment for residents, tourists, and future San Antonians.”

Read the full study at http://www.masstransitmag.com/12275600