Santa Ana-based Iteris Inc., a maker of vehicle detection and traffic control software, will be providing South Carolina drivers with increasingly sophisticated highway travel information that will be especially helpful during hurricane season.
The company’s ClearRoute system has been deployed by the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) to help reduce congestion and improve mobility across the Palmetto state.
Iteris (Nasdaq: ITI) has been providing traveler information services to SCDOT since 2013 and now the company has upgraded and rebranded the entire platform, while extending the contract for another seven years.
The South Carolina contract has been worth just over $10 million to Iteris since 2013.
South Carolina is among the first to take advantage of the system’s new functionality, including integration of the Waze crowdsourcing app that keeps drivers constantly informed, officials said.
“That adds another whole layer of information to travelers,” said Ramin Massoumi, senior vice president and general manager of the transportation systems business unit. The improvements also include pop-ups warning travelers of accidents and construction.
ClearRoute, part of the company’s ClearMobility platform, provides traveler information via mobile apps, websites and interactive voice response in a more powerful, flexible and streamlined infrastructure. It will especially benefit traveling public who rely on the state’s 511 traveler information service, while guaranteeing there will be plenty of information disseminated at extremely heavy use times during emergencies.
Complete Overhaul
“We’ve done a complete overhaul of the mobile app,” Massoumi said. “Every medium that we use to convey these messages has really gone through an enhancement.”
ClearRoute also uses personalized email and SMS notifications, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
“More and more of our customers are accessing the information through the smartphone,” Massoumi said.
“The mobile app right now gets the biggest of the usage now” in South Carolina, Massoumi said, though he noted that in places such as the Bay Area riders use phone-in services to keep track of rail service and buses.
South Carolina’s proneness to hurricanes and other storms increases the importance of the system.
“Our transportation network has been challenged by severe weather last year and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, both of which demonstrate the need for a highly flexible 511 service such as Iteris’ ClearRoute,” said Jennifer Oswalt Rhoades, assistant state traffic management engineer at SCDOT.
Earlier this month, Iteris said it was chosen to deploy what it calls a “Safety and Operational Improvement System” at key intersections in Florida.
The company was also selected earlier this year to provide traffic signal maintenance and monitoring at more than half of the city of Irvine’s intersections controlled by a traffic light.
Shares in Iteris have risen about 60% over the last six months, and were trading at $4.26 apiece on Sept. 15 for a market cap of $174 million.
Iteris ranked No. 44 on the Business Journal’s June listing of top public companies in Orange County, moving up eight places from 2019.
Iteris is one of several notable vehicle-tracking businesses in Orange County. Others include Irvine-based CalAmp Corp. (Nasdaq: CAMP); Verizon Connect, formerly Telogis; and Teletrac Navman in Garden Grove.
