Local
Muni to snap traffic with route cameras
By: Mike Aldax
January 5, 2009
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| Getting there on time: The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will be retiming many of its older downtown traffic signals to expressly favor Muni vehicles. (Examiner file photo) |
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is expected to approve funding for a 250-day project to install cameras and digital-messaging signs along some of The City’s most congested streets.
The cameras will allow the transit agency to monitor traffic conditions in real time and the digital signs will alert drivers to accidents, construction work and information on parking garage capacity, among other details.
The $1.07 million project — funded with a sales tax approved by voters in 2003 — includes seven messaging signs and 11 cameras along Third, Fell and Oak streets, as well as Octavia Boulevard and other hot spots in the SoMa neighborhood, the transit agency said.
The project is a significant part of the transit agency’s SFgo program, a long-running effort to upgrade traffic signals in San Francisco’s most congested areas, said spokeswoman Kristen Holland.
Most of The City’s 1,200 traffic signals do not react to road conditions, but the new SFgo technology will allow for monitoring and adjusting signals in real time along the busiest streets, particularly when unexpected occurrences such as accidents, protests or special events create gridlock.
The idea is not just to ease the frustrations of drivers, but to offer more green lights to buses and streetcars so they reach stops on time, the agency said.
“Full implementation [of SFgo] will help us respond to events and provide motorists and other travelers information in real time on how to move about The City,” Holland said.
Muni, oft-scorned for being unreliable, is trying to reach a voter-mandated on-time performance of 85 percent. The agency is unique among its public-transit peers across the U.S. in that a large majority of its vehicles must compete with automobile traffic.
Along with SFgo, the transit agency is also retiming many of its older downtown traffic signals to expressly favor Muni vehicles. By next spring, riders will see more green lights along Market and King streets and The Embarcadero when traffic signals at 60 downtown intersections are adjusted.
maldax@sfexaminer.com
It’s a go
The SFgo project will improve fluidity in the following areas:
- SoMa
- Oak and Fell streets
- Van Ness Avenue
- Third Street
- Doyle Drive
- 19th Avenue-Park Presidio-Lombard Street
- Bush Street
- Ocean Avenue
