Melissa Bailey Photo
When a bicycle or car rolls up to this intersection late at night, there’s no system to trigger a green light — yet.
The city plans to install overhead cameras at this downtown intersection and eight others as part of a $3 million state project to improve local roads before the Gateway Community College relocates downtown.
The cameras will detect any bike or car that’s stuck at a red light and trigger a green signal so it can safely cross. The change will be part of a major rethinking of intersections — the first of its kind in the state — that uses “bike boxes” to give cyclists first priority at red lights, according to city traffic engineer Bijan Notghi (pictured above).
The project, which still needs final approval from the state Department of Transportation, is slated to be complete in the spring of 2011, in time for the new Gateway campus to open to students in the fall of 2012.
Meanwhile, the city is making more modest improvements at other intersections around town — including one at Middletown and Clinton avenues, and near the Southern Connecticut State University campus — so that traffic signals can “see” bicycles in addition to cars. When another 14 intersections the State and Ferry Street corridors are revamped with federal funds, eight will have video detection, too.
Notghi shared the news in an interview at the intersection of George and Church streets, where workers were climbing through the fast-rising framework of the new Gateway campus.
The traffic lights there are not equipped to react to changes in traffic demand, Notghi said. The traffic light cycle caters to the main stream of traffic that flows down Church Street into town. When a car comes down George Street late at night, there’s nothing to trip the system so that the car gets a green.
That means lights just cycle through a pattern, without regard to on-the-ground conditions. The traffic department can monitor the traffic patterns from its central office, but Notghi said the system is inefficient. “If there is no demand, the light shouldn’t change.”
The system can be dangerous, he said: Late at night, a car may give up waiting for a red light when no other traffic is in sight. The driver may run the red light. If a cyclist is coming the other way, “the poor little biker might get hit.”
Melissa Bailey Photo
At other places around town, the lights change for cars, but not for bicycles. Many traffic signals, including ones along Whitney, Orange and Whalley, use a “loop detector” that can perceive when cars are approaching the light. It’s done through wires embedded in the road surface. They’re laid out in a series of 6‑by-6-foot squares. The wires form an electrically conducting loop, which essentially acts as a metal detector. When a car drives over them, the large amount of metal in the cars disturbs the magnetic field, which triggers the lights.
Not so for dinky bicycles.
When a bicycle rolls up with no cars in sight, most loop detectors don’t take notice, Notghi said. (Click here for tips on how a cyclist can try to trigger them.)
“It won’t detect you, because there is no car,” Notghi explained.
He called that system one of “the olden days.”
“Smart” Traffic Lights
On a large white paper on the hood of his city-issued Chevy Cavaliere, Notghi laid out the plan for the future.
At George and Church, a 45-foot arm will extend over George Street, holding three traffic signals. A tube-like camera will sit on the middle of the bar with its eye fixed on the starting line for the red light on George. When a bicycle pulls into the “bike box,” the camera will see it, triggering the light to turn green. The same will go for cars.
“These are going to be smart traffic lights,” Notghi said.
The system is called “video detection.” It will be used on all nine intersections that are being redone as part of the Gateway project.
Of those, seven will also be equipped with a “bike box,” the first of its kind in the state, according to Notghi.
City of New Haven
Here’s how it works: On these streets (Church, Temple, George, College), there’s no regular lane designated just for bikes. Instead, there will be a mini-bike lane, about 4 to 5 feet wide, for at least 100 feet leading up to each intersection. Cars will pull up to the “stop bar,” the fat white line painted on the road at the red light. Bikes will be allowed to use the bike lane to scoot past that “stop bar” to a special “bike box” painted on the pavement in front of where the cars stop (pictured at center in photo, labeled BD1). When the light turns green, bikes will be the first vehicles out of the starting gate.
“You become Number One. The cars become Number Two,” Notghi explained. “You are a priority.”
Notghi said the new system may slow down traffic, because cars will have to wait for bikes to move ahead of them, but “there is no safer way.”
“We want to make sure you are safe,” he said. Letting bikes go first gives them a chance to “clear the intersection.” “If you are in front of everybody, they can see you up front.”
Notghi said the city doesn’t have good numbers on how many bikes travel through city streets. Human beings have tried to count them during limited times of the day. The new cameras will automatically count how many cars and bikes there are, 24 – 7, Notghi said.
Notghi said the city plans to equip all new intersections with cameras to detect bicycles and cars, moving away from the “olden days.”
For example, the city is preparing to redo 14 traffic signals around State and Ferry streets through a federal grant. Of the 14, eight will use the more efficient video detection system that perceives both bicycles and cars. The other six will use the loop detectors embedded in the road, he said.
Notghi said the reason not all intersections are using the new system is because the plans were drawn about two years ago, before the city started making the switch.
“On every new project starting now, every project will have video detection,” he said. The new detection system is slightly more expensive, but its benefits — including not having to worry when a gas company tears up the road, disrupting the magnetic loops there — outweigh the costs, he said.
The topic came up at a recent meeting of the aldermanic City Services and Environmental Policy meeting, said East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker.
Elicker said the topic hit home to him: About three years ago, he was given a traffic ticket for turning right at a red light on his bicycle. Elicker said he waited for the light to trigger green, but it never did, so he went through it.
He said the current setup, where lights can’t perceive bicycles, sets a “double-standard” where cyclists are required to obey the law, but also forced to break it.
“Cyclist should obey the traffic laws, and I feel strongly about that,” he said. The city should allow bikers to pull up to a light and go through it when it turns green.
“If you don’t make all the signals around town sensitive to cyclists,” he said, “then cyclists have to break the law.”
He urged the city to include video detection on all future projects.
Paul Bass File Photo
Since the city already has cameras on many intersections (like the one pictured), it could start using those to trigger the traffic lights. Notghi said that’s easy to do when there’s a bike lane, because the camera knows where to look for a cyclist.
But without a bike lane, it’s trickier, because the cyclist could pull up anywhere along the road.
“In order for us to do it, I have to know where you’re going to be,” he said.
Bike boxes are great.