By Ginny MacDonald
The Birmingham News
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — It’s more than good driving and good luck that gets emergency vehicles through traffic snarls.
The city of Birmingham has a computer system that changes red lights to green to expedite Fire Department vehicles along a designated route.
Over the blare of sirens as an emergency vehicle leaves the station, a fire official will say something like ''Station 1, Route 1.’' That tells the Birmingham Traffic Management Center which route the vehicle is taking.
By computer magic, red lights turn green along the designated route. In the traffic center, a computer screen filled with 702 dots - each one representing a traffic light in the city - shows how the lights are changing as the emergency vehicles progress down city streets. There are 80 designated routes for Birmingham’s 31 fire stations.
The center cannot move emergency vehicles through red lights that are on controllers, only those on traffic center computers. Most traffic lights in outlying areas of the city are on controllers.
New software and upgrades including video capabilities were added to the Birmingham traffic center network last year. Birmingham Traffic Engineer Greg Dawkins said the upgraded system will allow the center to take feeds from traffic cameras and send them through the Internet to suburban cities. It also will allow Birmingham to receive the feeds.
''We’re equipped to be the hub for the surrounding municipalities if we ever have intergovernmental cooperation,’' Dawkins said.
''We can give passwords to other suburban departments to access the video and see what Birmingham traffic is like. That’s the main reason for it. If there is a major accident in Birmingham that affects Hoover, Hoover will see it and know they are about to get hit with traffic jams on I-65,’' Dawkins said.
Some suburban cities have devices called pre-empters on their emergency vehicles to change red lights to green. The Hoover Fire Department opts to use pre-empters to expedite emergency vehicles through traffic lights.
''We have pre-empters on every emergency vehicle that we have bought in the past 15 years,’' said Hoover Fire Chief Chuck Wingate.
The Rocky Ridge Fire District has pre-empters on its newer equipment.
The Mountain Brook Fire Department has pre-empters for use on the U.S. 280 traffic lights, but traffic on the corridor can be a problem.
''Pre-empters can help you get through a red light; but if you are backed up in traffic and can’t get to the red light, then they don’t make a difference. You have to get around that traffic to get to the light,’' said Mountain Brook Fire Chief Robert Ezekiel.
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