Philadelphia plans for new traffic lights control center

The city of Philadelphia is going to build it’s own control center to adjust and monitor traffic lights.

The city of Philadelphia is going to build it’s own control center to adjust and monitor traffic lights. [audio:100316TMTRAFFIC.mp3]

Clarena Tolson is Philadelphia’s Streets Commissioner. She says the city wants to monitor the traffic light system through an operations center to synchronize lights throughout the city.

Tolson: We’re going to deal with the problems with outages, problems with disrepair, some remote control of that – and the ability to manage traffic through timing, remote timing of our signals.

The center will be able to monitor how the lights system is working. If there is a major outage, workers would ask the streets department to dispatch repair crews.

The facility is expected to be operational by the end of next year.