TAMPA, Fla. — Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere now — including on Tampa roadways, where it is being used to help manage traffic delays.

Inside Tampa’s Traffic Management Center, Brandon Campbell says his team is always looking for ways to keep drivers safe on the road.

“As an engineer, it’s fun to see a project come into fruition,” he said.

Campbell says AI can now help his team spot traffic problems that they might have initially missed in the past.

“The AI platform can monitor and can identify things pretty early for us, which gives us a jump on responding,” he said of the Rekor platform the city uses.

Rekor pulls data from state and local agencies, like camera feeds, to see how traffic is moving.

It can find problems — like a car breaking down and blocking a lane — that a human operator might not catch right away, Campbell said.

“The platform can tell us that something is going on, so we can watch it,” he said. “If a backup starts to impact our signal system, we can push out new signal timing from the TMC."

In all, the city of Tampa controls 600 traffic signals, and AI has become very helpful to monitor them all, Campbell said.