Traffic Lights


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i noticed something cool when i went up to pa. they have little 'sensors' on the lights and if an emergency vehicle is coming, the senor picks it up, and turn all the other lights red except for the one in the direction of which the 911 vehicle is moving.

pretty neat. dont have anything like that down here.

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Down here in FLorida we have all our lights on the Opticom system. I bought a little device off ebay for about $399 that changes the lights to green when I press a button. It really works.

On some side streets it wont work, but I'm almost never late to work =) I'm sure the other people traveling along with me dont mind the constent green lights =)

Whats funny too, but I dont abuse this is....I can keep changing the lights to green. For example, I can pretty much backup traffic to a point of gridlock...If I wanted =)

Another trick is to flash your highbeams....Sensors on the lights detect that its an emergency vechile and will change the light to green as well.

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Another trick is to flash your highbeams....Sensors on the lights detect that its an emergency vechile and will change the light to green as well.

That really works? Cool, comes handy if your standing alone at a red light at night... Wish we had this. :angry: :(

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you can actually buy the RF boxes to change the lites yourself!!!

could be super dangerous when changing the lites on your own!!

News covered such things not too far back. You can technically buy the "light-changers" that emergency services use, even on Ebay, but most sellers have outright requirements you be emergency personnel to legally buy them (as I believe legally exists anyway).

Even if they're obtainable, using them personally is pretty flagrantly illegal if not police/fire/whatever, and there's a serious pile of legal problems one will find themselves mired in should one be caught using them, perhaps even owning them (let alone problems should an accident occur should such a thing be used without an emergency vehicle also being apparent).

Anyway, bad idea looking for a way to manipulate traffic lights like this. If lights don't change properly on their own within reason, contact the city and have adjustments made to the systems in place.

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Up here in Toronto, we have a total of 5 intermingled traffic systems that keep Canada's busiest city moving.

1) NAVICOM: Responsible for dynamically adjusting traffic systems during morning, afternoon, holiday and weekend traffic patterns to maximize flow into and out of the downtown core. NAVICOM is the heart of Toronto's traffic control centre.

2) ITARS: Intelligent Traffic Analysis and Reporting System: Every 100M - 200M in city streets/avenues (4 lane streets, 2 each direction) and on highways, sensors are embedded into the roadway (you can see the diamond-shaped cutter marks). These sensors relay back to the TCS (Traffic Control System) at the intersection that the roadway leads to (or NAVICOM for highway sensors) traffic patterns, including accidents, average speed of vehicles and number of vehicles per minute. This information is also relayed back to NAVICOM for later analysis to help chart traffic volume changes and traffic patterns.

With ITARS gathering this information, Traffic Operators (or NAVICOM) can make changes to the timings, durations and switching speeds of lights at intersections all throughout the GTA from one central office. It's quite a system, very similar to what is used in Los Angeles as seen in "The Italian Job."

3) COMPASS Traffic Camera System: Installed all along the major highways and arteries of Toronto (400, 401, 407, 409, 410, 427, DVP, QEW, Gardiner, LakeShore, Airport Road) are high resolution traffic cameras, made possible by MTO. These cameras can be accessed across the Internet to get real-time traffic images at the locations each camera is installed. News stations also have access to these cameras, except instead of static images, they get real-time traffic video from each location. The cameras cannot be rotated, but there are sufficient cameras installed on both sides of highways to see multiple angles of the same location.

4) Red Light Cams: As with any city, red light runners are a problem. To combat this, MTO installed Red Light Cameras at certain accident-prone & busy intersections in the Toronto downtown Core (Bay & Dundas, Yonge & Front, there are others) and major traffic arteries. These cameras, when they detect a vehicle entering the intersection when a light has turned red, takes a picture of your license plate, records your vehicle information by interfacing with the MTO Database and sends you a ticket in the mail. If you don't pay the ticket, you can't renew your vehicle's license.

5) Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) Billboards: Installed throughout the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), especially on the main highways (400, 401, 407, 409, 427, Don Valley Parkway, Queen Elizabeth Way and the Gardiner Expressway) are large billboards that have dynamically published messages displayed on them. With the information available from ITARS, each billboard can automatically rotate its message to state current traffic conditions up ahead on the highway. Many of us who travel the 400 series of highways have seen these signs that say "TRAFFIC MOVING WELL BEYOND NEXT TRANSFER."

For example, Highway 401 is a massive East/West freeway that runs along the Detroit/Windsor - Toronto/GTA - Cornwall/Montreal corridor of southern Ontario, some 850 KM's long. It's the busiest highway in North America. Mainly a 6-lane highway throughout the western and eastern regions, through the Toronto/GTA region, the highway swells to a 16-lane sea of pavement. Through the GTA, designers split the highway into 2 zones: the Express Lanes (inside 4 lanes of both the Eastbound & Westbound lanes), which do not have access to interchanges. These 8 lanes are designed for commuters/truckers who are just passing through Toronto to avoid the traffic headaches of the other 8 lanes: The Collector Lanes. These 8 lanes (the 4 outside lanes of the Eastbound & Westbound lanes) are designed for people who are going to be exiting at Toronto interchanges. As usual, the Collector Lanes are the busier of the two during normal rush hours. However, designers also integrated something called "Transfers" that allow commuters to transfer between the Express & Collector lanes without having to exit the highway.

With over 50% of the workforce of Toronto living in the outlying areas of the Greater Toronto Area (that's 2.5 million people), commuting into the city through the Express Lanes and transfering to the Collector Lanes when you get close to your interchange is hell, every single day. It's equally nightmarish during the afternoon rush hour, as commuters from the outlying areas enter the 401 on the Collector Lanes and attempt to transfer over to the Express Lanes to hopefully get into traffic that moves. It can take upwards of 2 hours to drive 60 KM during rush hour.

With these MTO Billboards installed every so often along the 401, realtime traffic data provided by ITARS is passed onto the drivers, allowing sufficient time for drivers to change lanes, or switch from the Express/Collectors or vice versa to avoid traffic problems. A very handy feature. An example message could be if the Collector lanes were moving slowly, yet the Express weren't, the set of billboards at that location would update to say "COLLECTORS MOVING SLOWLY BEYOND NEXT 2 TRANSFERS."

This is how MTO keeps Toronto traffic moving at the most optimal level the roadways allow.

This is the 401, looking Eastbound at Brimley. It was a weekend, so traffic was light heading out of the city, but things were different for commuters heading into Toronto (the westbound lanes). Notice the Express/Collector system.

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Edited by SimGuy
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