nothin He Sees Green Lights In City’s Future | New Haven Independent

He Sees Green Lights In City’s Future

TM_081709_031.jpgBijan Notghi is slipping new brains” into 102 traffic signals, and promises to give drivers a green light to cruise through downtown without having to make frustrating stops at every intersection.

Notghi (pictured), a traffic engineer for the city who oversees the city’s traffic signals, is putting together his plan with an anticipated $3 million from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It will allow the city to upgrade all downtown traffic lights. The improvements will allow the signals to communicate with each other and with a master computer, which will synchronize the lights and facilitate better traffic flow.

For motorists, that means less time sitting at red lights wasting gas and polluting the air.

But only if they drive the speed limit. Drivers who try to beat the light will get caught up at the next signal.

Notghi anticipates that the signal overhaul will go out for bids in the fall and be completed by summer 2010.

The matter is one of several multimillion dollar grant applications scheduled to come before the City Plan Commission Wednesday evening. The city also plans to apply to the federal government for $4.5 million for fire station improvements, $1 million for a secure wireless system, and $2 million for increased port security.

Standing at the corner of Orange and Elm Streets on Monday afternoon, Notghi pointed to the large green control box on the sidewalk. It’s all in the brain,” he said. These are just christmas lights,” he continued, gesturing at the traffic signals overhead.

Every signaled intersection has a brain” to control the timing of the lights. It’s these brains that will be getting an upgrade when the money comes in.

Bijan Notghi normally spends his days in an office in the bottom of the Hall of Records on Orange Street, where he monitors the flow of traffic throughout the city on eight wall-mounted computer screens. With just over 300 signals, New Haven has the largest traffic light system in New England after Boston, Notghi said.

Most of the current system was installed in 1991. Last year, after 18 years of service, the system crashed. New Haven’s traffic lights are now only partly synchronized, Notghi explained on Monday.

Some traffic lights are able to communicate with each other, to ensure that signal changes are timed appropriately. Others are not, which can result in a frustrating series of abrupt red lights for New Haven motorists. Even if the lights are just five seconds off from each other, that can make the difference between hitting all greens and all reds, Notghi said.

TM_081709_014.jpgThis problem is apparent as drivers travel east on Elm Street after it merges with Broadway, Notghi said. Pointing to a computer monitor showing the current traffic at the complicated intersection of Whalley, Howe, Broadway, Goffe, Tower Parkway, and Dixwell, Notghi explained that the signals there are newer, and synchronized. But the older signals just east of there, on Elm Street, are not. As you drive through Elm Street’s intersections with York, High, and College, You see people get stuck,” Notghi said. Because new doesn’t talk to old, and old doesn’t talk to new.”

The lack of synchronization means that drivers spend more time idling at red lights than they should, wasting gas and pumping pollution into the air, Notghi said.

With the help of the federal $3 million, signals at 102 locations will be synched with the master system. The improved lights will cover all of downtown New Haven and its major thoroughfares. Signals will be upgraded along the length of Dixwell and Whitney Avenues, from downtown to the Hamden town line; on State Street between Audubon and Water Streets; and on Whalley Avenue between downtown and the Boulevard. Past the Boulevard, a new system is already being installed on Whalley, Notghi said.

When the city’s traffic signals are all synchronized, Notghi explained, motorists driving at a reasonable speed will be able to move smoothly from green light to green light. If the lights are in synch, there is no reason for you to break the speed limit,” Notghi said. If you follow the speed limit it will guarantee you to go through all these intersections.”

Drivers who try to beat the light might make it through one extra intersection, but Notghi guarantees that they’ll be stopped at the next one.

Improvements to the traffic signals will include an expanded notification system so that the city can be more responsive to malfunctioning lights. If a light goes on flash, the system sends an email to my office,” Notghi said. If someone opens a cabinet door [on one of the signal boxes] the system will send an alarm to the maintenance crew.”

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