The team at the Folsom based Northern California Innovation District (NCID), recently sat down with Timothy Menard, Chief Executive Officer and Founder LYT.
Menard’s company has received two National Science Foundation grants to optimize traffic signal systems to reduce congestion, fuel emissions, and travel times. Before founding LYT, Menard’s company was a firmware engineer at Tesla in Palo Alto, California, having designed hardware and software simulation systems that autonomously tested the proper functionality of vehicle electronics used in Tesla’s Model S and Model X.
Prior to Tesla, Menard worked on connected vehicle technology at Toyota, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
NCID: Tell us about LYT
Our aim at LYT is to improve our community members’ lives and save them during emergencies through the use of our technology. Using state-of-the-art connected vehicle and machine learning technologies, LYT can prioritize the flow of vehicles in a city and across a corridor, optimizing public transport, emergency, and other vehicles to enable safer intersections, shorter travel times, less congestion, improved air quality, and more reliable mass transit. LYT is a cloud-based software platform revolutionizing the management of Traffic congestion. We have been in business for seven years and have a presence in Granite School, headquarters for the Northern California Innovation District.
NCID: Why did you choose Granite School as a location?
Menard: We chose Granite School as a regional base due to the connections we were able to make with the help of Phil Scott, the Economic Development Consultant for the NCID and Choose Folsom. The Greater Sacramento Economic Council (GSEC) was first made aware of LYT and our cutting-edge traffic solution platform in the Bay Area and knew we would be an excellent fit for this region. The connections made through Granite School have been invaluable, and we have been able to run pilot programs in the City of Folsom and the City of Rancho Cordova. In the city of Folsom alone, we were able to speed up emergency vehicle speeds by almost 30%. In Rancho Cordova, we were able to speed up the slowest emergency vehicles by 69%.
NCID: Who are your clients?
Menard: LYT’s clients include local municipalities, Regional Councils of Governments, transit authorities, and first responders.
NCID: What’s next for you?
Menard: We continue to promote the critical benefits of our emergency vehicle preemption technology throughout the west coast and beyond as these cities see significant improvements to their emergency response times using LYT.emergency.
Further, we continue to launch our cloud based, Artificial Intelligence-powered Transit Signal Prioritization (TSP) platform in multiple new cities, which helps those community’s transit vehicles to speak directly to networked traffic signals through a single-edge device. This leads to more efficient traffic flow and improved transit reliability and travel times.
The TSP platform also features a new reporting dashboard that enables transit agencies to track over 100 performance metrics in real-time, including red-light delay, green-light success, and route performance. Through the dashboard, transit agencies can gain critical insights and make operational improvements to optimize route performance and ensure the timeliness and reliability of their transit schedules.
Our cloud-based system is faster, more reliable, and highly customizable compared to other platforms and enables automatic signal prioritization without requiring the driver to interact with other technology. Transit and traffic agencies interested in learning more about LYT can schedule a free demo on our website.
Overall, LYT is a forward-thinking company that is committed to tackling the problem of traffic congestion. With their innovative cloud-based platform, LYT optimizes traffic flow and enables more efficient mass transit and emergency service response, improving the lives of millions worldwide.
About the Northern California Innovation District
The Northern California Innovation District (NCID) was founded by a group of exceptional thought leaders, sharing the common vision of fostering innovation, growth, entrepreneurship, access, education, and opportunity for all in Northern California and the Greater Sacramento Region.
NCID’s quest is to provide support services, educational curriculum, investment dollars, and make massively impactful introductions. We have no geopolitical boundaries and work to help businesses do more business. Foster Innovation, Economic Growth & Sustainability Across Northern California Communities.
Folsom’s Granite School is home to NCID’s headquarters and is the center of its growing ecosystem. Built in 1870 as a school– innovative for its time, it is now being used to teach and host entrepreneurs. With over 10,000 square feet dedicated to helping launch startups and scale ups, we host companies from across the region and round the globe, some physically present and some co-locating as a base to support existing operations.
Folsom Times and All Town Media LLC, in partnership with Choose Folsom and the NCID proudly brings you Nor Cal Innovation, a special section to www.folsomtimes.com designed to being you feature news of up and coming innovators in our area. You can learn more about the NCID at www.norcalinnovationdistrict.com
