For those who hate waiting in traffic, help may be a click away.
A traffic-tracking website that updates traffic information throughout the day, gac-smartraffic.com, launched Thursday.
Philip Mann, traffic operations manager for the City of Gainesville, presented the website to the Gainesville City Commission on Thursday as an unveiling of sorts. The commissioners said they thought the website was a step in the right direction for the city.
Mann said the website is a part of the Traffic Management System, a collaborative project of the City of Gainesville, Alachua County, UF and the Florida Department of Transportation, and is a small part of the system’s $18.2 million budget.
If someone knows what roads are jammed, he or she will know to take another road and won’t become another car stuck in the backup, Mann said in an interview after his presentation to the commission.
Website staff use cameras attached to traffic lights to find the jams and post the information on the site’s main page map.
Mann said his staff scans fire department and police alerts for accidents. When they find one, they put an exclamation mark on the site’s map, tweet the location of the crash and post an update on the project’s Facebook page.
“It’s important for us to maximize the efficiency of the roads we have,” he said.
