Richmond Fire working on traffic light changing technology

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RICHMOND (NEWS1130) – How would you like to control traffic lights from your car?

Richmond Fire is working on new technology that will let them do that so they can get to calls more quickly by enabling crews to control traffic lights from their trucks.

Chief John McGowan says other cities already have similar technology, like Surrey and Burnaby, but this will tailored to Richmond specifically. “There are some impedances, or some features, that system doesn’t necessarily answer when you’re working in a very heavily, populated urbanized area.”

He says they’ve had a system in place for about a decade that lets them control traffic lights from the fire hall and it’s worked well.

“We know that the route is going to be clear so that starting and stopping at lights where you have hard deceleration at a red light and hard acceleration when you go through the light, that is alleviated when you have a green light pattern.”

The way it works now is firefighters control traffic lights from the hall.

City staff are working on the system now, but he’s not sure what the timeline will be.

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