City of San Jose’s New Intelligent Transportation Network Uses Ethernet over Copper Solutions from Actelis Networks to Reduce Traffic Congestion and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
New IP-based network attracting officials from across the nation as a model to follow for 21st century municipal transportation networks.
FREMONT, October 15, 2009 - Actelis Networks®, the leading global supplier of Ethernet over copper solutions, today announced the City of San Jose in Northern California is deploying the company’s ML600 series of intelligent Ethernet Access Devices (EADs) and its point-to-multipoint Ethernet aggregation systems for Intelligent Transportation (ITS) applications to improve traffic flow and road safety while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The move is part of a major migration from a legacy communication system to a new state-of-the-art, all-IP-based Ethernet over copper network capable of supporting a variety of intelligent traffic monitoring and control applications. These include IP-based Ethernet traffic signal controllers being replaced at each of the City’s intersections, backhaul of IP video from cameras monitoring traffic flow, and response and dynamic message signs that include directing traffic for downtown events, as well as providing information on the availability of downtown parking spaces from the City’s Parking Guiding Systems (PGS) signs.
San Jose’s migration to a new IP-based network helps the City achieve its vision of Green Mobility: decrease its carbon footprint by helping to reduce traffic congestion on roadways, allowing Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) buses, for example, priority at traffic signals. San Jose is also improving the movement of VTA’s Light Rail Trains (LRT), while simultaneously reducing the time vehicles spend waiting for the LRT to pass. The end result is better traffic flow for vehicles, buses and LRT, leading to less time commuting to and through the City and, therefore, helping to reduce emissions into the atmosphere from idling vehicles stuck in heavy commuter traffic.
Actelis Networks has been a longtime good corporate citizen when it comes to developing products that are environmentally friendly, according to Eric Vallone, vice president of marketing at Actelis. For years, the company has been shipping Ethernet access products that are in compliance with EU Directive 2002/95/EC on Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS).
“Actelis Networks has been successfully implementing a comprehensive plan to support our environment and comply with the RoHS directives,” said Vallone. “Our products have been RoHS-5 compliant since 2006, and in 2009, became fully compliant with the RoHS-6 lead (Pb) free directive.”
San Jose, the nation’s tenth largest city, evaluated a number of vendors and selected Actelis as its infrastructure partner because of the company’s ability to provide the required bandwidth, reliability and reach across the City’s vast traffic signal copper interconnect network, which serves more than one million people.
“In addition to Actelis’ superior rate, reach and reliability, their ML platforms’ ease of deployment, scalability and manageability were also key strengths, and reinforced our decision to select Actelis for the project,” said Ho Nguyen, associate engineer for San Jose’s Transportation Operations System Management group. “Actelis’ bandwidth availability matched our field requirements, and their MetaASSIST™ EMS allowed our field engineers and electricians to deploy and provision the systems easily.”
The Actelis’ systems enable an IP-based Ethernet network over the City’s existing copper interconnect to be turned up in minutes, rather than the prohibitively expensive and time-consuming alternative of installing fiber-optic cables to every intersection.
“When evaluating our options for upgrading to an all-IP network, we found that utilizing the City’s existing copper interconnect in combination with fiber-optic cable backbones was the most beneficial and cost-effective solution,” commented Nguyen. “With the Actelis solutions, we were able to leverage our existing copper without sacrificing our need to implement a wide breadth of emerging applications over our new IP network.”
“What’s really exciting with this particular deployment is that other local agencies—both in San Jose as well as across the nation—are now taking a hard look at the City’s success with its new IP network buildout,” said Charles Clawson, director of enterprise sales at Actelis. “This is leading to creative and greener solutions by other agencies to leverage and adopt Actelis’ Ethernet over copper solutions to meet the needs of their specific communities.”