The City of Charlotte required the replacement of its Siemens i2 system in order to meet growing ITS requirements for 750  signalized intersections. After the completion of an exhaustive system evaluation, the City of Charlotte selected Econolite Systems, Inc. (ESI) as its integrator for Centracs ATMS and Econolite’s ASC/3 controller hardware and software. As prime contractor, ESI responded to this challenge with a fast-track schedule that condensed the initial design activities. This schedule placed a priority on early system deployment, staging the field data conversion, and cutover with concurrent activity between the City and ESI.

The system design plan for the $1.4M project was completed and approved 30 days after the Notice-to-Proceed (NTP), and the system was installed and operational within 60 days. At the 3-month mark, all 145 Central Business District (CBD) controllers had been replaced and cut over to the new system. The next phase of the project included the replacement of the existing 2070 ATC software with Econolite’s ASC/3-2070 software. As part of this work, ESI developed detailed system graphics and performed data conversion for all of the controllers. Following the initial deployment of Centracs, the City engaged ESI to integrate 500 existing CCTV cameras into Centracs.

Additionally, the City entered into a $950K contract with ESI to provide GPS-based Transit Signal Priority and Emergency Vehicle Priority to all 750 City signalized intersections. The average response time to an incident prior to Priority deployment was 3:34. After deployment, the average response time improved to 3:12. This 22-second (10.3%) improvement is remarkable for an industry where the number of lives saved can be equated to a reduction in seconds of delayed response.