It was such a pleasure to participate in Metroplan Orlando’s webinar with all of the specialists that are somehow involved in this amazing work that should be done due to 2045.
Planners, government representatives, organizations such as ITS America, Orlando Economic Partners.
At first, Mr. Shailen Bhatt from ITS America brought very good points regarding the reality of the roadways in the county by summarizing the number of 37,000 lives that are lost every year on American roadways.
The importance of the scope and the technological transformation toward 2045 is crucial to confront the general transportation goals are to save lives and make people’s lives better.
In terms of safety perspective, Mr. Bhatt said, “we are not doing great.”
As an example, several leading cities around the world such as Seattle, London, and Madrid are looking for a plan to reach 2045 in a definitely better way.
The topic also included answers for how we want to our community in the future, and probably switching priorities from expressways and turn them back to pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, and sort of new ways to give more space to people on the roads.
New York City served as an example, based on decreasing pedestrian fatalities.
These lives are lost most of the times at the intersections because people are still distracted, and the efficiency of NYC happened by relying on the deployment of technologies to increase safety.
At second, Mr. Alex Trauger, Senior Planner at Metroplan Orlando explained how important is to get different aspects to create a complete plan.
The five goals for Metroplan Orlando included health and environment, safety and security, reliability and performance, access and connectivity, investment, and economy.
However, these goals should be achieved with the smooth balance between key drivers of change and different dilemmas.
For the drivers of change, there are population, economy, visitation, development and land use, technology and climate.
Considering how many people live in the area, travelers, their purpose between tourism or business, and how the technology has been part of it. All of those elements help to identify the path to the future.
The forecast for new residents in Orlando is one million or 40% growth by 2025.
In Orlando, people are hesitant to use public transportation, which makes us believe the challenge to manage automobiles on the roads will last for quite a while.
One of the solutions that is already in place is technology, in particular connectivity.
According to the study Mr. Trauger shared with the participants, about 40% of the vehicles will be some sort of connected vehicle technology, between 50% to 60% will be connected to drive system features, and finally, 5% to the full automated system.
FTA agreed with the initiatives completely, and it is related mainly to the part of “saving lives and making people’s lives better.”
The systems that FTA developed to be offered to the clients were designed to be part of the solution to face challenges in traffic safety across the country.
FTA congratulates the whole effort of authorities, government, organization, and community that are working together to mitigate the dangerous in traffic through the Metroplan Orlando 2045 plan.
Degoncir Goncalves.