CIMCON is adding road condition monitoring to its smart lighting deployments in the town of Spencer in the company’s home state of Massachusetts.
Town officials have been looking to improve driver safety, meet state environmental guidelines, and reduce costs from ineffective road monitoring and maintenance. Spencer, originally an agricultural and mill community, has a population of around 12,000.
CIMCON said the town’s ageing population prioritised road safety, particularly during winter months. “We try hard to recognise and be responsive to the needs of the community,” said Bill Krukowski, superintendent for the town’s highways department.
The town identified four areas on roadways that commonly freeze during inclement weather, including two areas along a causeway beside the water ways (Stiles Reservoir and Cranberry Meadow Pond), and two in the northern part of town, where the elevation is higher and the temperature is lower than the town centre.
The town selected CIMCON’s NearSky smart city platform with a road condition monitoring application to improve public safety. Real-time data from road temperature sensors will be relayed back to the town highways department via the NearSky platform so preventive measures may be taken.
Funding has come from remaining grant money received from the Massachusetts Area Planning Council (MAPC) and National Grid for the LED streetlight conversion. The platform will pay for itself within four years through savings on road salt and reduced equipment wear and tear, the town calculates.
The system is expected to be fully deployed by May. Krukowski said: “Our collaboration started with an LED lighting conversion. We had funds available in our project budget and grants from the state and decided to use them to improve the safety of our streets.”
Anil Agrawal, chief executive at CIMCON, remarked: “Communities like Spencer are an important part of our customer mix. They often come to us with a singular focus, usually lighting, but quickly see the additional possibilities that our NearSky smart city platform can provide. We are very pleased to be working with the Town of Spencer to help them in their efforts to improve public safety.”
