What is a smart street?

• A smart street may use a number of smart city technologies that include smart street lights, smart traffic lights, smart parking and other technologies that help to improve the flow of traffic, reduce commutes times, make parking easier and ensure the safety of pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers.
   

Smart street and smart city technology has been widely covered in the news as the future of urban planning. Along with self-driving vehicles, smart street initiatives are intended to address many of the challenges of transportation throughout an urban environment. But what is a smart street exactly, and how can it improve the lives of citizens while simplifying the job of managing traffic within the city? This short article, “What is a smart street?”, provides a brief look at this smart city technology.

What is a smart street?

A smart street uses a variety of sensors and Internet of Things devices to collect a broad range of data that can help smart cities better manage traffic flow, parking and public safety.

What is a smart street intended to achieve?

The goal of a smart street is to reduce congestion, shorten commute times, simplify parking and improve safety on city streets for pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers.

What is a smart street’s greatest benefit?

The most significant benefit of the smart street is the ability of deliver a real-time view of street conditions, allowing city infrastructure to respond quickly to manage and improve them.

What is a smart street light?

Smart street lights use sensor-enabled LED fixtures that can sense when lighting is needed and when it’s not. This prevents lights from coming on too early in the evening or too late in the morning when illumination is not needed, thus saving on energy costs. Smart street lights can save on power consumption by dimming when no one is around and brightening when pedestrians or vehicles are passing by. Smart street lights can also let street crews know when they need to be changed, making maintenance more efficient.

What is a smart street traffic light?

Smart traffic lights uses sensors to detect and manage the volume of traffic at intersections, dynamically adjusting red and green lights as well as walk and don’t walk signs to allow vehicles, pedestrians and bikers to move through intersections more efficiently and safely.

What is smart street parking?

Smart parking technology helps drivers find available parking spaces quickly and easily. Rather than endlessly circling city blocks to find an open spot, drivers can consult an Internet-connected device to quickly locate a parking space. Smart street parking systems use sensors, cameras, GPS and payment data to determine where parking spaces are available.

What is a smart street powered by Spectrum Enterprise?

One of the most important aspects of smart city technology is the connectivity that is required to communicate with thousands or millions of sensor-enabled devices and to transmit the data they provide to analytics platforms within various city departments. Spectrum Enterprise supports smart cities with a two-way, fully interactive digital network that provides symmetrical speeds up to 100 Gbps for government and enterprise clients. Spectrum also offers one of the country’s largest LTE cellular networks, along with thousands of WiFi hotspots that will soon have 5G and 802.11ax technology capable of wireless speeds up to 1 Gbps.

Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.