Gresham Smith has been awarded a five-year contract with the Florida Department of Transportation’s District 5 office to manage its Safety and Public Outreach efforts.
The purpose of the program is to improve safety along Central Florida’s transportation network through the safe system approach. A focal point of the contract will be outreach and engaging the public about traffic safety. Gresham Smith will support FDOT’s Target Zero efforts as outlined in Florida’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan—which has the goal of zero serious injuries or fatalities—with the aim to create a network of safe, accessible and sustainable transportation options for all road users. To do so, the project team will incorporate engineering, education, enforcement, emergency response, information intelligence, innovation, insight into communities and investment/policies.
The project team will work with FDOT to develop innovative approaches to safety, which include outreach initiatives such as building safety champions and coalitions throughout the community and generating support for safe routes to school and community traffic safety teams. We will continue to combine innovative engineering solutions like complete streets and innovative intersections. The team also offers use of data from the firm’s proprietary tool, Empathic Analytics, which collects user stress along corridors to determine where tensions exist and need to be addressed.
“Our goal over time is to use FDOT’s Target Zero and safe system approach to move the needle and eliminate severe crashes by leveraging our expertise in safety, public outreach and innovation,” said Mario Dipola, P.E., PTOE, RSP2, Senior Transportation Engineer at Gresham Smith. “We want to make Central Florida a model for the rest of the nation.”
