{"id":60671,"date":"2026-01-05T18:20:55","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=60671"},"modified":"2026-01-05T18:21:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:21:00","slug":"lakeland-turns-to-ai-to-spot-potholes-and-road-cracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/01\/05\/lakeland-turns-to-ai-to-spot-potholes-and-road-cracks\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland turns to AI to spot potholes and road cracks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sensors on city vehicles will collect daily data about pavement conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lakeland will soon use real-time sensor data and artificial intelligence \u2014 instead of surveys every couple of years \u2014 to keep tabs on road conditions, potholes, and cracks across the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, the City Commission unanimously approved a four-year, $240,000 contract<\/a> with Roadway Management Technologies<\/a>, a Little Rock-based company that provides pavement-monitoring tools for local governments. The city will pay $60,000 a year, with an option to extend the agreement after the initial term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal is to help city crews spot problems sooner, schedule resurfacing projects more strategically, do preventive work rather than emergency repairs, and \u201cspend our dollars more efficiently,\u201d said Public Works Director Heath Frederick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThis is a super cool project,\u201d City Manager Shawn Sherrouse said, echoing City Attorney Palmer Davis and several commissioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, Lakeland has conducted a full pavement assessment every two to three years, Frederick told commissioners. \u201cIt was kind of old information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new system will install sensors on city vehicles and survey Lakeland\u2019s roads \u201cevery single day\u201d to see which ones need attention soonest, said Eric Pope, manager of construction maintenance for the Public Works division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contract begins March 1. Pope said RMT can begin installing sensors \u201cwithin a couple of weeks.\u201d He said the initial installations will likely be on Public Works vehicles like Ford F-150s \u201cand possibly code enforcement vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the AI-based system works<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the equipped vehicles drive their normal routes, the sensors will collect vibration and road-surface data. When vehicles drive over potholes or rough roads, the wheels move up and down more than on smooth pavement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The information will be uploaded to the cloud via Wi-Fi at the end of each day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sensors on city vehicles will collect daily data about pavement conditions. Lakeland will soon use real-time sensor data and artificial intelligence \u2014 instead of surveys every couple of years \u2014… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDFcL2Rvd25sb2FkLTIud2VicD9maXQ9MjU5JTJDMTk0JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiTGFrZWxhbmQgdHVybnMgdG8gQUkgdG8gc3BvdCBwb3Rob2xlcyBhbmQgcm9hZCBjcmFja3MiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.AOC_TWPwDjxgnjBCOTDE4st_9WpkxKhTCAF8ibdfGT8MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":60672,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/download-2.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[13099],"class_list":["post-60671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-lakeland-turns-to-ai-to-spot-potholes-and-road-cracks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60673,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60671\/revisions\/60673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}