LongHaul ST Helps Manage Traffic at the SuperBowl

Snow and black ice, combined with arrival of thousands of visitors, posed challenges for the City of Fort Worth in the week leading up to the Super Bowl (Photo by Becky Cowart)

The LongHaul ST has proven instrumental in managing weather-related traffic conditions at the Super Bowl.

Last weekend’s Super Bowl brought more than 100,000 people to the Dallas Cowboys Stadium—as well as unusually cold weather for Texas. The massive influx of people combined with the extremely low temperatures, high winds, and snow made for a public safety operations nightmare.

Cameras installed in downtown Fort Worth, normally used to monitor traffic, were crucial in helping the staff of the Traffic Management Center (TMC) manage the dangerous, weather-related traffic conditions.

One of these high-definition cameras is backed by a LongHaul ST, which transmits the image data from the camera to the TMC, housed within Fort Worth’s new Emergency Operations Center (EOC). The EOC is made up of emergency response personnel and public safety officers.

CBS mentioned in a recent article that the EOC has been holding bad weather exercises and training drills for the last month. The traffic cameras and other equipment, including the ST, have been carefully positioned to “keep traffic following in key areas in a weather episode like the one the area is currently experiencing,” said a CBS spokesperson.

“The ST has worked flawlessly especially under these unusual Texas weather conditions,” said Jake Smith of Cactus Computer, the company that installed the equipment purchased by the City of Fort Worth.

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