By: Rachel Hawkins, NDG Staff Writer
The Irving City Council approved a $300,000 agreement between the City of Irving and Taurus Technologies Inc., to update the community’s traffic system. The agreement was approved at the council’s Jan. 17 public meeting at the Irving City Hall. Irving accepted staff’s recommendation to move forward with the purchase of new monitoring equipment and controls for the traffic operating systems.
The existing traffic signal system is at the end of its 18-year life span. The new system is designed to provide a fully integrated wireless traffic management system which will improve traffic flow, integration of emerging technologies, system monitoring, traffic safety, and provide performance measures.
This project will provide replacement and upgrades of the traffic signal controllers, traffic signal controller software, and central management software system. This will also allow them to watch school zones and improve their traffic safety.
With the new update, the system will have the capability to evaluate the real-time traffic system, allow the traffic signals and traffic signal timing to be adjusted at any time. The can also evaluate intersections which appear to be malfunctioning from the traffic operations center via cameras; also the ability to monitor special events and emergencies.
The new traffic cameras will allow the city staff to look at the vehicles approaching the intersection and give them a better view, thus providing better reliability and response out of the system.
In 2017, The City of Irving’s Traffic Signal Division replaced traffic signal controllers at more than 200 intersections. This improvement allowed all 208 traffic signals to talk to one another thereby offering improved safety and traffic flow while passing on vital information to the new traffic operations center.
