School Zone Warning Flasher Technology Upgrade

About the Program

Category: Transportation (Best in Category)

Year: 2016

Montgomery County DOT operates a system of 150 school zone warning flashers that automatically turn on/off a half hour before and after school arrival and dismissal times. These standalone devices required a technician to manually troubleshoot and reprogram because they were originally not built to be monitored or managed remotely. Due to this, the County had no indication of any malfunction and had to wait for a school or resident to report a problem. Complicating matters, the County school system implemented a bell time change starting in the 2015-2016 school year that forced MCDOT to do a complete schedule update in all these devices. This change meant technicians had to travel to each individual site and reprogram the devices manually. The County developed a plan to replace these devices with modernized equipment with cellular communications that would provide remote programming, time sync and troubleshooting capabilities. This technology eliminates the need to send staff to each site when schedules change and also allows the County to identify and correct problems more quickly, often without having to send technicians to the field. This project was implemented in the summer of 2015 prior to the start of school.