Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA)

The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA), in coordination with the City of St. Petersburg, and Pinellas County, constructed a 10.3-mile Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line from downtown St. Petersburg to St. Pete Beach via the Central Avenue corridor. The $16.5M construction project is designed to improve transit accessibility within downtown St. Petersburg and provide more frequent mobility options between downtown St. Petersburg and the Gulf Beaches area, enhancing commerce in the region. The corridor originally had five local bus routes, but no direct transit service linking central St. Petersburg with attractions to the west. Additionally, bus travel times were slowed by automobile congestion and the absence of transit signal priority or any other preemption signal programming.

For the Traffic Signal Priority System (TSP) portion of the project, Econolite upgraded the existing Centracs Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS) software application to the latest version of Centracs. The ATMS includes the Centracs Priority module to support TSP along the project corridor for the City of Saint Petersburg and Pinellas County. The system interfaces with PTSA’s CleverCAD for SunRunner buses, and Centracs ATMS Signal Priority also has the functionality necessary to work with EMS Emergency Vehicle Dispatch Systems in the future. Econolite also provided the Centracs Mobility Bus Dashboard and Centracs Mobility SPM, which is Econolite’s Advanced Traffic Signal Performance Measurement (ATSPM) system for 51 signalized intersections along Central Avenue. Additionally, Econolite furnished 21 traffic signal cabinets and 50 Econolite Cobalt traffic signal controllers with EOS firmware for the project. System Testing and Acceptance were performed by Econolite to ensure conformance with all applicable project requirements. The requirements also included coordination and performance of system acceptance tests, operational tests, and burn-in tests.