BUFFALO, N.Y. — Technology already installed at hundreds of Western New York intersections — with plans to dramatically expand — will be able to give priority to emergency vehicles and transit, decreasing the amount of time it takes for an emergency response and make sure buses arrive on schedule.
Miovision devices are in use at more than 200 intersections in the Towns of Tonawanda and Amherst, the City of Buffalo and on roads owned by the New York State Department of Transportation. They collect data to help engineers better optimize traffic flows and make real-time adjustments.
They also allow for 'priority control', including emergency vehicle preemption (EVP).
"Being able to change a traffic light when responding to any type of emergency is super critical," said Shannon Bailey, Miovision's senior director for sales for public transit.
Bailey visited Buffalo from New Jersey — along with several of her colleagues from the company's headquarters near Toronto — to show 7 News the testing that is happening on Niagara Street, which has around 2 dozen intersections equipped with Miovision communication technology.
With emergency vehicle preemption, the concept is simple: as a fire truck, for instance, approaches an intersection, it sends a wireless signal to the stop light, which safely switches to green until the emergency vehicle passes through.
"That's the difference between saving a life and getting there too late," Bailey said. "So having the ability to drive through that corridor faster and more efficiently and safer without causing any accidents is the number one priority of emergency vehicle preemption."
Transit signal priority (TSP) is similar. If a Metro bus is behind schedule, as it approaches intersections, it can send a signal requesting a longer green or shorter red to try to make up some time. It's lower priority than with emergency vehicles.
"This can make a major difference for riders," said Nadine Chalmers, NFTA Metro's manager of service planning. "We're talking about savings in the 10% to 20% range in terms of travel time."
The NFTA is the process of installing hardware on the buses that will communicate with the Miovision devices that are already in use. Testing should begin soon on Niagara Street, which is the Metro's busiest thoroughfare, with plans to expand to other high-traffic routes.
Chalmers said this will help encourage more people to use public transit, which has environmental and economic benefits.
"The most important thing to people riding the bus is their travel time," Chalmers said. "And the critical thing that we can do to get more people on the bus is to reduce the travel time and make sure that the buses are accurate and reliable and on time."
Testing with emergency vehicles will follow transit.
Because Niagara Street is a "connected corridor", there's another benefit. If an emergency causes traffic problems on Interstate 190, cars and trucks are often diverted onto Niagara Street. In the future, workers at NITTEC — who constantly monitor traffic across the region — will be able to reprogram the signals to reduce congestion on the thoroughfare.
"Our operators will have a system that's connected into these signals, and they say, 'okay, we know this is situation one, so we run the pre-approved plan for situation one,'" said Andrew Bartlett, NITTEC's traffic engineer. "Once that situation is done, they'll set it back for what it would normally be for that time of day."
This would have been beneficial back in October, when a shooting shut down traffic on the 190 for hours and around Thanksgiving when the Peace Bridge was shut down due to an incident at the international crossing in Niagara Falls.
Adjusting the green time for signals on Niagara Street will help during those types of situations.
"Congestion means increased opportunities for crashes, which means increased opportunity for injury or loss of life," Bartlett said. "So we're always trying to keep traffic moving as smoothly and as predictably as possible in order to improve safety."
The Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council (GBNRTC), NITTEC, NFTA and other government entities are applying for a federal RAISE grant to start the process to add communication technology to every signal in Erie and Niagara Counties, though such an expensive process would take years to complete.
"We really want to take it to the next level and get the entire system synchronized so that everyone in the region can see the benefits and have it be tangible," GBNRTC's executive director Michael Finn told 7 News' Michael Wooten on "Voices" Thursday. You can watch the full conversation with Finn below.
