Wayne uses artificial intelligence to help decide which roads get repaved

Well, every driver wants smoother roads, but deciding which streets get fixed first is not always easy. The town of Wayne is turning to artificial intelligence to help make that call. News 12's Amanda Eustis shows us how technology is helping the township decide where paving dollars should go. Potholes, cracks, and uneven pavement. They're something drivers know all too well. But when you have more than 200 miles of road to maintain in Wayne Township, figuring out which streets need attention first can get complicated. So we would do a rating system through our engineering department. People would call in roads they believed to be repaved. And then at the end of the year, they would put them together and try to come up with a list. But we were missing some of the roads that were in worse shape than others. That's where Wayne is trying a different approach. Using artificial intelligence to help prioritize road repairs. Anyone, they'll tell you their road needs to be paved. And up until now, it's been very subjective on our part. Township workers mount a smartphone to their windshield, open the Violytics app, and hit start. As they drive, the system automatically photographs the pavement and logs GPS data, helping officials assess road conditions across the township. So this is my street, Iron Place. So it's giving a rating of the entire street, but it takes little segments of the street as you go down. But the goal isn't just to identify damaged pavement. It's also to help officials spot roads that might otherwise go overlooked. Usually the homeowner would be the one that would contact us. There's no homeowner, so this way the software was able to tell us, Hey, Westbelt looks terrible. Now from the screens to the streets, this is where the technology becomes reality. These are the first 20 roads slated for resurfacing come the spring. And as you can see for the reasons below, Buens Lane is listed at number one. This way it's not. Us picking and choosing, it's the software is telling us what are the worst roads and then we can physically go out and just confirm that and that's what we're doing. Wayne has about 2.2 million set aside to resurface the 20 streets. And while the software helps identify which roads need the most attention, township officials will have the final say. The goal, a more data driven approach to keeping Wayne's roads in shape. In Wayne, Amanda Eustis, News 12, New Jersey.