GENEVA – Kane County highway officials could gain more remote control of some of the county’s busiest intersections in coming months.
The Kane County Division of Transportation later this year intends to award a contract for the construction of what KDOT is calling its “arterial operations center.”
In effect, the operations center, to be built at KDOT’s headquarters on Burlington Road near Silver Glen Road northeast of Lily Lake, would serve as a nerve center for much of the county’s highway system, said Carl Schoedel, KDOT director of transportation.
A network of cameras and sensors at dozens of highway intersections would transmit data and video in real time to the operations center. There, KDOT technicians would have the ability to remotely adjust traffic signals to move traffic through the intersections more efficiently.
Schoedel said the system could be especially useful to assist emergency personnel, such as police officers and firefighters, in responding to and clearing accidents at busy intersections on Randall Road, Kirk Road and other county highways, and in better dealing with traffic congestion.
“We’ll be able to change timing patterns with the signals to adjust to traffic,” Schoedel said. “Or we could share what we’re seeing with police, immediately, before they arrive, so everyone’s better prepared.”
When the operations center goes online sometime next year, it will bring the county much nearer to completing a project begun about four years ago.
Schoedel said the county for years has gradually installed cameras at intersections and has laid about 40 miles of fiber-optic cables from the intersections to KDOT headquarters, at cost of a little less than $10 million, 75 percent of it coming from federal grants.
Schoedel said KDOT has jurisdiction over about 120 intersections controlled by traffic signals. About half have cameras and sensors, or soon will, he said.
He said the cameras are one of two types: Pan-tilt-zoom cameras are dome-shaped and allow controllers to look around the intersection; detection cameras point at lanes of traffic and detect the presence of vehicles.
KDOT has estimated the cost of building the operations center at about $1.5 million, with the “vast majority” of the funding coming from federal grants, Schoedel said.
Local funds come from a blend of sales tax, fuel tax and property tax money, he said.
Schoedel said KDOT believes the work ultimately will save money because better control of county highways at peak travel times will allow Kane County to avoid building more traffic lanes to accommodate heavy traffic a couple of hours each day.
“In the big picture, these costs are relatively small compared to the cost of adding lanes,” Schoedel said.