Aaron Vnuk lives in Green and works in Twinsburg. That’s a lot of driving. And that’s why he was excited about the potential of the $18.4 million “Intelligent Transportation System” being constructed along interstate highways in the Akron-Canton area.
Thus far, only seven of the 18 message boards are up and running. But Vnuk passes two functioning boards as he’s heading north and three more on his way home.
He loved the concept. If there’s a big delay ahead, the electronic signs would clue him in and he could steer clear. At least in theory. In practice, that hasn’t been the case.
Vnuk’s assessment of the project: “epic failure.”
Two times in recent weeks he has headed straight into a massive traffic jam because both times the boards failed to offer him one iota of help.
In the first case, a multi-vehicle crash took place in the southbound lanes of state Route 8 near the Perkins Street exit. Neither the message board at state Route 303 in Hudson nor the board just south of Howe Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls gave him a whiff of the impending 30-minute standstill.
His misery had even more company in the second incident, when a truck spilled granite across all four southbound lanes of Interstate 77 near Waterloo Road. That shut down one of Akron’s busiest highways for five hours.
The mishap took place shortly after noon. Vnuk was heading that way a full three hours later and suddenly found himself at a dead stop in the middle of the Route 8 bridge.
At the time, the Howe Avenue board was advertising a long-planned closure on Interstate 76 rather than the emergency shutdown only a few miles ahead.
“What a waste of taxpayer dollars when modern technology cannot be used to help the situation it was designed for,” Vnuk says. “Maybe we should have just used the $18.4 million to buy the entire Akron population GPSes with live traffic updates.”
Excellent point. Why have these boards if they’re not being used to alert drivers to monumental traffic jams?
Amber Alerts have been posted on the new signs, as well as numerous alerts about missing adults, so we know the technology is in place. Are there staffing problems? Ineptitude? What?
A spokesman for the Akron district of the Ohio Department of Transportation pleads for patience.
He points out that fewer than half of the messages boards are functioning and only a handful of the 64 cameras.
All of the devices are physically place, but ODOT is waiting for utility companies to establish the rest of the communications links. A decision was made to bring each message board online as soon as it is connected, rather than turning them all on at once.
“It is an extremely new system, and we have to work out the communication kinks so that we can effectively post messages [about] lane restrictions and closures,” Justin Chesnic wrote in an email.
“Currently, we rely on communications between our Freeway Service Patrol Trucks, the city of Akron police, the Public Information Office and the Traffic Management Center to relay information about nonplanned lane closures.
“We will have a meeting with other local governmental agencies in the very near future to give them all the proper contact information so that they can call in incidents once the system is 100 percent operational.”
Seems to me that meeting should already have taken place. And somebody should have been able to alert somebody about a five-hour closure of an interstate.
Chesnic says part of the current problem is that the folks in charge of posting things are supposed to rely heavily on the cameras, which, when completely hooked up by the end of October, will enable them to spot problems instantly. That operation will be staffed 24/7.
So maybe we ought to give ODOT another eight weeks before writing off the whole system as an abject failure.
But not one day longer.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.
