City Completes Project to Synchronize Signals

With a simple flick of a switch, the final traffic signal was incorporated into L.A.’s massive signal synchronization project on Tuesday.   The Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System (ATSACS), which aims to reduce travel time for L.A. drivers by 12 percent, cost about $410 million to complete, said Clinton Quad, of the L.A. Department of Transportation.   Pacific Palisades, from Pacific Coast Highway to Brentwood, was wired into the system last August.   ’As of today, we have synchronized every traffic signal in the City of Los Angeles,’ L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement. ‘By synchronizing our traffic signals, we will spend nearly a day less waiting and reduce pollution by nearly a metric ton of carbon every year.’   The traffic control network is composed of more than 18,000 magnetic sensors, miles of fiber-optic lines and more than 400 hundred live cameras. Introduced during the 1984 Olympic Games as a way to improve traffic around the Coliseum, the system has been expanding outwardly since. Thus far, it has been implemented at more than 4,400 intersections, including 29 in the Palisades.   ’I think it’s wonderful,’ 11th District Councilman Bill Rosendahl told the Palisadian-Post on Tuesday. ‘I think our mayor has shown more leadership in infrastructure needs for the region than anybody I know.’   However, since its completion here last summer, some drivers have contacted the Post with complaints of traffic congestion through town (the result of shortened and uncoordinated green lights on Sunset) and on Pacific Coast Highway at Sunset.   Rosendahl said the he talked to Caltrans District 7 Director Michael Miles about the signal problems in the Palisades.   '[Miles] said that Caltrans will ‘change it right away and it will be fixed by this week,” Rosendahl said.   Adding the Palisades into the system required installing new communications equipment, traffic cameras and other hardware along Sunset from PCH to Kenter Canyon. The construction project, which included the addition of a traffic signal at Antioch and Sunset, impacted traffic in the area for months as the pavement was dug up and the lights rewired. Sensory information, which includes traffic speeds and levels, is transmitted to an automated hub located at Fire Station 69 and the data is then sent to a control room in downtown L.A. There, an operator can call up data for any of the City’s thousands of intersections. If an operator notices congestion at one of the intersections, he/she can call up a video to see how bad the traffic is. The cameras are installed at the most troublesome intersections, which in the Palisades include Castellammare and Sunset; Palisades Drive and Sunset; Temescal Canyon and Sunset; and Chautauqua and Sunset.   ’Right now Los Angeles, the second largest city in the nation, has synchronized lights’that’s a big deal,’ Rosendahl added.   According to City officials, in addition to improving the flow of traffic, the intricate network can be utilized by law enforcement and emergency response vehicles and for timing during major special events at venues like the Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, and Staples Center/LA Live, or even a visiting Presidential motorcade.