Clearing the Way to Fewer Collisions

Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) District 5

The region’s transportation network operated across fragmented jurisdictional boundaries, with freeways, local streets, and transit systems managed in isolation. As a result, traffic operations were largely reactive—major incidents on freeways like I‑4 routinely overwhelmed local roads because signal timing and corridor strategies weren’t aligned to support diverted traffic.

With more than 55 million vehicle miles traveled each day, this lack of coordination limited agencies’ ability to manage congestion proactively or view the network as a unified system.

EPIC Group, as part of a team led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), helped develop and implement the Regional Integrated Corridor Management System (R-ICMS).

EPIC solutions delivered:

Reduction in Incident Clearance Time: By enabling real-time situational awareness and multi-agency coordination through the IEN, the R-ICMS system reduces the time it takes for agencies to detect, respond to, and clear traffic-blocking events.

Improved Travel Time Reliability (TTR): A key metric for the I-4 corridor is measuring the consistency of travel times. The R-ICMS system reduces the buffer time—the extra time commuters must budget to ensure they arrive on time.

Increased Secondary Crash Prevention: By deploying predictive response plans and traveler information faster, the system reduces the likelihood of back-of-queue collisions that occur when traffic stops unexpectedly.

Enhanced Throughput on Arterials: Coordinated signal‑timing adjustments enable vehicles to divert onto surface streets during highway incidents without creating gridlock.

Data Latency and Accuracy Improvements: EPIC’s Data Fusion Environment reduces data‑to‑decision time—turning raw sensor inputs into actionable response plans faster.

Interagency Response Efficiency: Digital approval workflows replaced phone‑based coordination, cutting the time it takes multiple jurisdictions to align on and execute a shared response strategy.

FDOT District 5 encompasses nine counties with over 4.1 million residents and more than 55 million daily vehicle miles traveled across an extensive network of highways, arterials, transit, rail, aviation, and port systems.