R-58 school zone speed cameras and safety systems
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What was said
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All right. Bill, thank you very much. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you. In the interest of time, there's a item, item R 58. I'd like to go to that item before we hit the uh other R61 item. I think it's this is something that I read the agenda item and I was afraid of it. Um it turns out that this is a uh product that I looked at uh months ago and I thought it was a great project, so I want the people to come up and speak to it.
Morning everybody. My name is Jeffrey Montcallian. I'm the traffic operations manager for the microphone. Can you speak
up a little bit, please? Yeah, sometimes that you're speaking to the mic. Yeah.
How's that? Yeah. Okay. Um morning everybody. My name is Jeffrey Moncani and I'm the Pasco County Traffic Operations Manager. We're gonna have a discussion today about the school zone speed cameras and um the Intel Road School Zone Safety System pilot program. How do I go to the next slide? This? Oh, you got it. All right. The first part is the school zone speed cameras. Um,
some of the enabling legislative rules. This came up with House Bill 657, um, which authorized counties and municipalities to begin this program and And enact an ordinance at their discretion to use the speed detection systems, which are similar to the red light running cameras, for any violations of drivers going over 10 miles per hour over the school zone speed limit. Some
of the other legislative rules are the Florida State statutes 1896, 95, and 94, which basically allow for enforcement of speed limits in school zones, establishment of school zones, and to establish school zone school crossing card recruitment and retention programs.
So some of the school zone detection systems in surrounding counties and municipalities, Hillsboro County, they have the ordinance adopted and their program is active. Manatee County, they had their program established in, I believe it was 2023, and then it was discontinued in 2025. Um Pinellas, I was not able to find any activity for Pinellas County. Citrus County is working on their ordinance. Hernando, the board voted no for
the program. Sumter County, same as Hillsboro and Polk County as well. They have adopted the ordinance and their program is active. New Port Richey, last time I spoke with them, they were working on going through procurement and installing their cameras. Um and Dade City, again, last time I spoke with them, they were working on establishing their ordinance. Next slide please. So, the major steps and timeline for getting
this program established and installed, the ordinance adoption would be our next step after this meeting. We would work through getting the ordinance in, and then we would have to have interlocal agreements with. With the city of Newport Ritchie's Ephra Hills and with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. After that would be our community awareness plan, getting all the information out of all of the constituents in Pasco County so that they know
what this includes, then procurement and installation.
I if I could stop ya, I wanted to do this because I thought it was gonna be real quick, but I got I got a little concern as far as this goes with the with the cameras. Um it says while collecting non personally identified information, what does that mean?
Non personally identifiable information. Uh no no face. They can't identify you specifically. Uh
but you're taking a pictures of plates? Yes. Alright, I thought it was a different type of warning system.
So that's different. That is the Enteleroad system and um they're here to speak about that. I'm speaking specifically about the um school zone cameras.
All right, I'd like to I'd like to hear about that. Because again, what we just talked about with the Are we are
we voting on this today? Wait, can we f he finish his presentation?
I can run through it faster if you need to. Yeah, I think
he's only got a couple more slides. Once you get to your data and then really what we want direction from the board is is uh do you want staff to proceed and bring back an ordinance on this? Go ahead.
Continue? All right, next slide. Uh interlocal agreements. So for Newport Ritchie and Zephyrhills, we need to establish an interlocal agreement to borrow their special magistrate. to act as the local hearing officer Uh the interlocal agreement with Pasco County Sheriff's Office is for them to hire a traffic impraction enforcement officer to issue the citations and it will be a hired position at no profit to the Sheriff's Office.
Next
slide.
Resource requirements. We have properly established school zones throughout Pasco County with all the requirements set by FDOT. The vendor will install the cameras and maintain the cameras and then the personnel will be taken care of by interlocal agreement. Next slide please. Revenue management citations, um they are $100 per infraction. The revenue is divided as shown, $20 to the Florida Department of Revenue, $60 to
the County or Municipality, $3 to law enforcement and criminal justice, $12 to County School District, and $5 to School Crossing Guard Retention and Recruitment Program.
Any additional costs that would be a part of the program would come out of the $60 that come to Pasco County. So that would be the money to the special magistrates and to the sheriff's office. Next slide, please. So the location data, when we started working on the draft ordinance when this came up, there was, I believe, 30 or 31 school zones that were identified by the Sheriff's Office and the School Board for They
typically had issues. So we went through and gathered data on the posted speed limit, 85th percentile speed, active school zone speed, arrival and dismissal times, and then the average speeds that people were driving during those times to determine if there was an identifiable issue that would pose a Concern to the students.
I don't know if you guys want to go through each one individually, but
From what I'm seeing you've got five out of six that are all in looks like District Two. The Commissioner's not here today. Okay, good.
That's that. That's it.
Okay.
You wanna go ahead and bring up Intella Intelli Systems and then the board can have additional discussion?
Absolutely.
Alright, so I'll introduce them. This is the Inteleroad School Zone Safety System Pilot Program. They're going to go through the specifics of the program and what their product does and then get um your guys' input on it.
There you go.
I think it's still morning. Good morning, everybody. Appreciate the commission and and everybody's time here today. My name is Sean Poole. I'm managing director of IntelliRoad. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of Cura Solutions, which is based in Lakeland, not too far from here. And uh we are here to present an alternative solution around school zone safety. We've obviously heard all the concerns about your constituents around public safety, the uh how the data is being used, uh, different versions of
PII and tracking and other aspects, and we take a different approach to this. Uh, formally, prior to joining Cure Solutions and IntelliRoad. I worked at the U.S. Department of Transportation. We say all the time, as public servants or former public servants, we don't want to do what we used to complain about. We listen to the constituents and hear and come up with innovative technologies to either complement or serve as alternatives to what's in the marketplace today. So very quickly, I want to just talk about
how our solution. Works and how it's different. Yes, this is a camera-based detection system. However, what we are not doing is we are not storing any video, we're not collecting video, we're not collecting license plates, we're not collecting facial recognition, there's absolutely none of that. There's no PII, no tracking involved in our system. And let me be very clear that the county owns all of the data. That is collected. What we are collecting is we're using the detection pole there. You see
the two cameras on top that point in each direction. What that does is it does a real-time monitoring of traffic. So it creates a unique identifier. That way everything is kept anonymously, so we just know there is a vehicle traveling in this direction at this speed. We know how long it takes to identify the signs and how long it takes for that vehicle at their rate of speed and direction to make a safe stop prior to being in the intersection
or in the crosswalk where kids and parents and others are crossing. So with that in mind, we're able to in real time detect the traffic. We also have the other camera in the middle that is looking at the crosswalk itself. Again, no PII, no collection of any personal identifiable information. And all we are doing is when an individual is in the crosswalk, it will automatically trigger the beacons that you see. We have seen studies across the state of Florida that
there is upwards of an 80% noncompliance rate of pushing the button before you cross an intersection. If you don't push the button, it's just a static sign. All the other data that goes behind it doesn't Doesn't help. So what we're doing is using this passive detection system to automatically trigger those warning lights only when a pedestrian is present. Then Well, we can we can move to the uh the benefits uh for the county. Uh again,
this is a alternative uh type of solution uh to whether it be speed cameras, whether it be the flock style cameras that's that's been discussed. Um this is first and foremost to improve safety. Bring awareness to drivers and to the pedestrians because the one piece that I didn't mention on the previous slide is the ability that if we know a vehicle cannot make a safe stop, we can issue audio alerts into the crosswalk directly to the pedestrians
to let them know that there's an unsafe condition. We do work very closely with F DOT. We're also in direct communications with federal highways and working with them to ensure all of this is MUTCD compliant and does meet federal specs and regulations about what types of messages can be said because there are obviously a lot of concerns. You don't want to tell somebody To give them a direction and it ends up causing an accident. So we do adhere to that. Please.
And if you have a deaf student or a Then obviously there's no way to communicate with them.
Right. So we do have multiple ways. For the first pilot, it would be the beacons and the audio alert. We do have additional items that we can do within our system to whether it is send geofenced location-based messaging directly to cell phones with existing apps. Nobody wants to download another app. We got a million of them. On our phones. But the school safety apps we can integrate into those directly and send push notifications only
within that crosswalk or say five meters on each side to let folks know. We also have the ability that we'll be rolling out in the future for also in-car messaging directly to those vehicles through CarPlay with partnerships not only with the county, the state, but also through things like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and other aspects. So the crossing guards as well. This is not to replace any crossing guards. They are vital to the community and they're quite frankly I've spoken
to several of them around the state. And we've deployed this in Polk County and speaking with them there. The kids love them. They were in favor of our technology as well, and we're looking at the alternatives. What would be most effective to communicate with you? We're talking about maybe wristbands that vibrate, other aspects to be able to give them a notification, advanced warning as well of unsafe conditions. They described areas to us where they would stick the arm out to the side before they would walk because they were nervous about traffic
and other aspects. So
the only the only thing I would say having teenagers, they're not they would probably say I'm not wearing that bracelet.
No, no, no. That's just the crossing guard.
Oh okay. Just
the crossing guard so that we can communicate directly to them as well to give them those.
Yeah, because like our school where I live, our school zone, there is no crossing guard. guard.
Right.
Yeah. So.
And so the first step is the beacons and the warning lights as well as the audio alerts. Second phase as we because we're we're very big on the the pilot to deployment aspect, use the evidence base, show the benefits to the county and to the the constituents that use serve Before ramping this up, we will look at other types of technologies. We already have inbuilt. Cure Solutions does a lot of transportation technology. We manage traffic management centers around the state
as well as we've provided connected vehicle solutions to manage. any tolling agencies, F DOT as well, manage that connected infrastructure. So we have deep knowledge in that space and already inbuilt systems. For us it's like, layman's terms, it's like a light switch. Which which one over there do you want to turn on based on the features that you want? No way it's customized for each roadway and e and each users in that area as well.
Yeah. Commissioner Oakley. Yeah. I came here today with reservations about this project 'cause it seemed like in counties near us our neighboring counties were s saying their people are all upset, getting tickets, this and that. And then f I think about it further and I said well The reason they're upset is they're speeding in the school zone.
Yeah.
Yeah. So the only way it's not safe without 'em. So the only way you can correct that is start doing something like this, but Bring them aware that they need to so
I want to draw a stark comparison though because our system, yes, we are not collecting, no PII. Yeah. There is also no enforcement aspect to us. This is a proactive warning system. Okay, what um talked about earlier.
We are not issuing
tickets. This is
a separate tickets. So I understand that. But we still need to uh make sure it's safe in the school zones.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.
Mm shadows.
Yeah. Um I know we have another representative for the other for Red Speed. Um could we give him a couple minutes to talk about his the product? Okay. Okay. All right. Just so we can hear both. Sure. Because I I will say, um one of one of the things that concerns me is if people are not getting a real warning like a citation. Then we What makes them slow down. You know what I'm saying? And the other thing is one
thing that One thing that I like from the the the other program is that whatever money the county collects, I would love it to use it for sidewalks. to fill in all the gaps of the county and see if the school board would put their money that they collect. And I'm only saying and I have Chase here too, I my thought on these can these cameras if we went that direction would be however many, an hour before school, an hour after school, never on the weekends, never when school's in session. Truly
just targeting when kids are crossing. So if I could have a representative from Red Speed come up just
I wanna ask I want to c a couple more questions before we let it.
Okay, that's fine.
All right. So the thing that I liked about this program and and red l red light cameras, people get hooked on the revenue one way or the other, whether it be sidewalks, this, that, the other thing, and you're not gonna control the state. The state still wants a cut of their money too. So I'm not they're gonna get that away from them. Um but I I I just find that If you want to really make it safe, putting out better notification for people is a better is a better way to go. I've driven down and even just down in Port Riche Midy P Lock in front of that. Not Mini P Lock, one
of the side roads anyway. It's like you're driving up to it, is it is it warning? Is it safe? Is it not? You can drive little road straighter, which you don't really show a problem on it. But it's a 45 mile on a road goes down to 20. And if you're driving along sixth lane, if you're on the outside lane, you don't see the stuff on the side, doesn't need to get looked at, yes. What they'll do is they're gonna look at every single area, isolate them, and if they wanted to take the six areas, they can go put detection. And if we found That after they put their data in or their
their machinery in to go kind of warn people to slow them down so they get better notification and clearly when a school zone is going on, that you could actually then take another step to go take further, because the data they'll show you is like how many speed is going, et cetera, et cetera, continually, but also warning and affecting and I think getting a better result without. going through all this data collection that's what I just saw earlier today with these flock cameras, same type of thing. And again with the cities,
um you know, they love the Ray Light cameras, they're gonna love this too. I just don't want to see it proliferate. I think this is a much better solution.
So So thoughts on after we hear from Red Speed, thoughts on both.
Okay.
As a warning system, and then if people are speeding I don't know. I just feel I feel very strongly about kids' safety and um If no one's enforcing it, I'd you know I'd be for both. But I would like to hear from Red Speed as well.
Absolutely. If I could just make one more point on on this as well. And I agree with you the kids' safety is is primary focus here. Um one thing that we are doing, like with with Polk County, they do have speed cameras throughout Polk County. Uh this isn't a one or the other type of solution. Uh we have we can put it in areas where we complement the existing speed cameras. Yeah
that's what I'm saying both.
Yeah, or it can be an al alternative for other counties who have removed those types of ordinance. So totally want to be very, very clear on that.
In Red Speed you have about two minutes, so talk quick. Then it's lunchtime.
Uh good morning uh Chair Commission. I can be well under two minutes. I appreciate the opportunity to speak and I do want to echo the uh other gentlemen. Ours is complimentary to that. I I think they'd work great together. I'm not familiar with it until today, but we'll be willing to explore it. We uh Red Speed is the uh largest provider of automated school zone cameras. Uh we serve about 70% of the market in Florida and a case study directly south of you is Hillsboro County where we've been for a couple of years now. And speeding
is down 95% in school zones since we've been there with a very low repeat violator rate, that it is modifying behavior. And I do want to concur with Commissioner Yeager and I mention most of the folks that some method of enforcement or stick and carrot work well together to modify behavior. And I think our solution is proving that. So, and also ours comes at no taxpayer expense. And I totally concurred no government should do this for the money, but if you don't have to invest money uh to achieve these results.
I believe that's kind of a best of both world scenario. And to stay within my two minutes, and then there may be questions, I hope there are. I d was here for your discussion on the ALPR vendor. We don't sell any data. We had to sign an affidavit for the city of Tampa, one of our customers, that we would concur with everything you stated today. We're very willing to do that here as well, because we don't believe in that either. Okay.
Great. Thank you. So both.
And as far as data goes, um tell me what goes on, like how do you get the information? Where does that go and could that ever be hacked, taken out?
Well good good question, thank you. As far as could it be hacked, I guess anything, there's no superlude in the world. We've been a business since nineteen ninety-four and have not been hacked once. So we we have excellent places. We meet a number of standards. inlets and sieges which are federal agencies that have incredible high data security standards in order to get DHSMV makes us run incredibly tight audits on that. So the only thing we're capturing is the license plate, the rear of the vehicle The license plate is captured. if
it's going 11 miles over or greater. During the school day in front of the school. So there are egregious violations. I think everyone would agree with that. Two humans in the United States. Send that data to either DHSMV securely within Florida or to NLETs, which is a uh national warehouse uh data that I know Pasco County subscribes to for out of state drivers on the seven biggest provinces of Canada. The registered owner information comes back, it
is vetted, it is then sent to the Pasco County, assuming that you became a customer of ours, it is Set to Pasco County for a deputy or a traffic infraction enforcement officer to have a final up or down. We have no purview in that. Is this a violation we're citing? If they say yes, it is printed, mailed, Uh once it's either paid or adjudicated, it's destroyed.
Mm-hmm. Well, you know, I I've had one red light ticket camera in my uh history and it was like a quarter of a second. Find it very offensive. Um and and and and I could go track the timing down, but by the time you track the timing down, spend the money to go do that. You you've wasted the money you did, it's not gonna affect your points, they say, if you pay it up quick, then you're done. Um so Even with them having their own people to go look at these things, it could be a one off thing
of all of a sudden you're going from thirty f from forty-five to fifteen and all of a sudden bam you got a ticket. And you could be just off slowing down to the safe area. Uh I'll say this. I like the other system that doesn't give the tickets, that it puts a safety out there. It collects data, it can go. I'm I'm comfortable moving those forward right away. If we put those in place and we still find more problems, if you want to bring it back and go look at the ticket situation, because I know these things are hard to get rid of and I I don't
trust the process, um, so be it. But the the other presentation is much more comfortable to me. Commissioner Starkey.
I'm gonna echo everything that Commission Commissioner Yeager Yeager said. I I think it's the ticket that's gonna change the behavior and if I would not be for them anywhere else in the county. Um but I am a hundred percent for them in school zones. And my understanding is once they start giving the tickets the speeding starts dropping drastically. Drastically. So Um and as far as Mitty P. Lock, I I've called I've called the school district on that one because There is no school at Mini Pilock anymore. I
didn't
mean
Mini P Lock, I got my
Well Mini Pilock still has the flashing lights and they don't have a school there anymore.
Yeah, that's it.
Mark.
Marlowe? Massaves to Main Street. That that one
on that road there. I don't know one on Massachusetts.
It's below Mass Ev.
I think it might
be below.
Okay.
And I I just would like to call Chase up. You have like one minute, but I would appreciate you just to chime in on this and some of the things we'll
Let me let me ask a question first, just to address something first before we bring Chase, if you would come on up. What do you find the success rate is as far as safety goes after you've installed your systems?
Um so we have just deployed the first system in Polk County and so that is actually going live today uh with the new start of the school year and so we are working on those case studies with the numbers, uh the data that we have seen in the labs, the test facilities, and the other studies that have been done around the state. Uh our focus is all is primarily around The crosswalk itself and getting vehicles to stop because of the non-compliance at the crosswalk. And
so the difference in the speeding is yes, we are reducing the average speed in that area because vehicles are coming to a stop at the crosswalk. But the speeding being addressed by the regulation. Whereby the speed cameras are a different method. We're focused on the actual to and from of the kids from the school, specifically around the crosswalk itself. So what we're tracking, yes, the vehicle number of vehicles, the
vehicle average speed, but then we're also looking at the compliance rate for stopping, because state law is the stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk and increasing that compliance significantly. We've seen a very large number in our data labs as well from that aspect.
Can we hear from Chase and then take a break for lunch?
Sounds good.
Good uh good now afternoon, uh Chase Dangles, Pasco Sheriff's Office. Uh th thank you, Commissioner. Uh so we in the school district have been in uh numerous meetings regarding this uh proposal. We stand fully uh ready to support and enforce this program depending on which direction the board goes. If it's the tickets, we we stand ready to provide the uh ticket enforcement officer, provided it it's revenue neutral for for us, which we understand it it would be. Um we we can attest, certainly speedy and school zone. is a significant problem. Unfortunately we do not have the capabilities to be in every school district in in this county um twice a day, every every
single day. So sometimes this would certainly be be helpful if it's the the desire of the board.
Okay, thank you. Please quick question. With the six zones that seem to be trouble zones, would it be trouble for you to go look at those six zones in the mornings?
Uh so we we do that. Uh so what we do is especially around the start of the school year, uh we provide uh community engagement deputies or other deputies that that uh aren't necessarily responding to immediate calls for service, and we ask them to put a special focus on those school zones around the start of the year. And we work with our school crossing guards to kind of identify uh those areas where they're seeing the the primary speedings.
Can you I know we're collecting data it looks like from all these intersections. Is that different at ongoing collections. If it is, can we get a comparison of when the deputies are out there compared to not?
We we would defer to them on that.
Alright,
so
I think this this is a a conversation worthwhile, but it's I think I need more information, so we'll cancel for lunch now and we'll talk about all afterward. Break for lunch, back at one thirty.
In the central happening, and then um to do okay. And a regular item we haven't gotten to yet, right?
So I don't know if you want to do it now or later. Harold's gonna be here this afternoon. We have a statewide meeting I have to jump on.
But
it's here.
Whatever you like.
Okay.
Go
right ahead.
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm I'm actually gonna be here for a little bit. Um but Harold's gonna be here this afternoon. I am
Uh can't see.