Surrey hopes new traffic management system will cut down on congestion

SURREY (NEWS1130) – Traffic congestion isn’t unique to Surrey, but the city is hoping their newest electronic solution to it will get some results.

“We’ve done coordination between signals, essentially like hitting a green wave as you go through. So we’ve done that on key corridors for a number of years,” says Jaime Bowen, the city’s transportation manager.

But the City is hoping a newly christened $1.5 million investment will make things easier for drivers at major choke points.

“We’ve just opened our new traffic management centre and that incorporates, right now, 250 cameras at key intersections,” says Bowen, who notes that same $1.5 million would only pay for around 300 metres of a major road to be widened.

“We can actually proactively adjust the signal timing and also keep tabs if there are any incidents. And what we will then do is adjust the traffic signals along key detour routes.”

City staff will monitor those cameras, which means they’ll be able to encourage drivers to use other roads, avoiding congestion. They can also unleash that green wave on detour routes during gridlock or an accident.

The city expects things to get even better as more improvements are made to the system and staff become more familiar with it.

A second feature is being gradually introduced; it is in place on 72nd Ave between King George and Scott Road and is called adaptive signal control.

“It is automatically detecting traffic flows on all legs of the intersection and communicates between a series of intersections and optimizes those signal timings to minimize delays,” says Bowen.

The city will expand that system to other major intersections next year.