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NoTraffic Plots Growth Using AI to Reimagine Intersections

The company provides hardware, AI and other services to help state and local governments make roads safer and more efficient. The company’s services can also add clarity to infrastructure decision-making.

traffic light
As traffic management becomes more dependent on artificial intelligence, data analysis and other cutting-edge technology, an Israel-based startup called NoTraffic is eyeing big growth in that area in the coming months.

The company, founded in 2017, has developed an AI-powered traffic signal platform designed to improve the flow of vehicles, as well as bicycles and pedestrians.

The company touts that its technology can not only improve driving efficiency and safety but also cut carbon emissions, and give public agencies a powerful analytics tool that can help officials with other tasks related to road infrastructure.

“What we are doing is future-proofing the intersections,” Norman Tutnauer, chief business officer of NoTraffic, told Government Technology. “For the past 70 years traffic lights have been running more or less that same way they’ve always been running.”

To change that, he said, NoTraffic — unlike many companies in the gov tech space — focuses on providing what he called a “hardware platform” to agencies, one that “fuses video and radar,” and which can handle a variety of “communication capabilities” including 4G and 5G mobile network technology and other protocols that are emerging or even in the works.

“The sky’s the limit,” he said.

The technology can provide 24/7 monitoring of intersections, which results in insights and alerts for various issues including stalled vehicles, accidents and traffic jams. The technology also can boost larger smart city and smart lighting initiatives while also offering the data needed to help officials make better decisions around dangerous intersections and similar problems.

Tutnauer emphasized that NoTraffic is not an enforcement company and does not collect personally identifying information or perform facial recognition or license plate reading.

And, he said, the hardware offers a path to the main revenue stream for the company, which is selling services on top of the platform to, say, police and fire departments, or the private sector, or insurance firms.

A typical deployment at an intersection of the hardware takes about two or three hours — but, Tutnauer added, it can take three months to a year for a potential client to decide if and how to deploy NoTraffic technology.

So far, the company has installed its technology in such places as Arizona, Texas and Palo Alto, Calif. But 2022 promises a surge of activity, he said.

“This year is the year of expansion,” Tutnauer said.

Last year, NoTraffic raised $17.5 million in a Series A funding round that was led by Nielsen Ventures, which was founded by Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, a former Uber and Dropbox executive.

Earlier this year, NoTraffic also announced several major leadership hires.

That includes Tutnauer, a retired Israeli Air Force pilot who oversaw sales at Flash Networks, Pontis, Sapiens and Atidot; along with Orna Shalev, who became vice president of R&D after serving as a software development manager for Amazon Prime.

As of early April, NoTraffic employed about 60 people, a number that has doubled over the previous eight months, Tutnauer said.
Thad Rueter writes about the business of government technology. He covered local and state governments for newspapers in the Chicago area and Florida, as well as e-commerce, digital payments and related topics for various publications. He lives in Wisconsin.