By Jerome Burdi
Sun-Sentinel
Copyright 2007 Sun-Sentinel Company
All Rights Reserved
BOCA RATON, Fla. — It’s rush hour and traffic is as thick as mud. It’s not firefighters’ favorite time of day but when the alarm goes off, the sirens are blaring and still it can take several traffic cycles before the truck goes through, fire-rescue officials said.
Palm Beach County and Boca Raton Fire-Rescue departments are trying to combat this problem with preemptive traffic lights, which are controlled remotely to turn green as firetrucks approach. There are two different methods.
Boca Raton has 27 lights operating on a light-to-light basis by remote go through a normal cycle and turn green as the firetruck wails through. The city is scheduled to install 17 more by the year’s end at $6,000 per traffic light unit. For three years, the city has had 20 vehicles with remote control sensors attached, which cost $2,600 each.
“It takes the guesswork out of what’s going to happen when we approach an intersection,” Boca Raton Fire-Rescue spokesman Frank Correggio said. “It’s been working very well.”
The Global Positioning System remote control system is activated as soon as the trucks approach a traffic light and the cycle is set into motion. “It keeps the traffic flowing in the same direction the firetrucks are going,” Correggio said.
Boynton Beach Fire-Rescue tried a similar system out for about a year in the early ‘90s but it didn’t work out, Deputy Chief Jim Ness said. The system used was like a strobe light that was easily distracted if a tree was in front of a traffic light.
“When it’s working properly and the system is working well, it’s a great system but there are always problems you can have with it,” Ness said. “Traffic lights are pretty complicated. They’re not just put out there and switched on and off. There’s a whole science behind controlling traffic.”
Depending on the time of day, firefighters get to a fire on an average of five to eight minutes, firefighters said.
County Fire-Rescue has set aside $2.1 million for a computer-aided dispatch system that will control whole pathways of traffic lights, rather than individual lights.
“This concept is untried,” said Dan Weisberg, director of the county traffic division. “Hopefully it will work out well. There’s no experience on this.”
The traffic lights will respond to the dispatch system and open up traffic for firefighters to battle blazes without having to struggle to get through traffic as well.
“It will change traffic patterns to modify them so the cars flush out before the firetruck even gets there,” Weisberg said.
The system should be used at about 50 percent of the suburban areas in the county, including about 12 intersections in Wellington, county fire-rescue said.
County Division Chief Litch Slater said that during a traffic test in Jupiter at least a minute was shaved off response times using the system.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot but if you were to stand there with a stopwatch and click it, it would seem like forever before a minute went by,” Fire-Rescue Capt. Don DeLucia said.
Not only for fires, but for medical calls and traffic accidents, the reduced response time could help fire-rescue better capitalize on the “golden time” after an emergency occurs, DeLucia said.
The issue of traffic buildup during rush hours is still what brings Weisberg concern. “The holdup on the side streets I haven’t fully understood,” he said.
Delray Beach Fire-Rescue Battalion Chief Russ Accardi said the city is not looking at preemptive traffic lights.
“When you look at number of traffic lights that are around it could be very costly,” he said. “It’s something not actively being pursued right now.”
Without the preemptive lights, firefighters approach red lights with caution before speeding through to an emergency, firefighters said. People don’t get out of the way sometimes because there is nowhere to go or they are afraid to go through a red light.
“Our goal is to get those response times down and save lives and property,” Ness said. “You can’t do that if you’re stuck in traffic.”