Traffic system gets green light

Tuesday, July 9, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

The aging traffic signal coordination system that went on the fritz, causing slowed traffic during Monday's morning rush hour, is back in business.

Debby Hauth of the city of Las Vegas Public Works Department said the Las Vegas Area Computer Traffic System became operational Monday afternoon.

A technician from the system's maintenance contractor arrived Monday afternoon from Texas to further evaluate the system.

The incident caused minor traffic backups on Las Vegas Boulevard at Sahara Avenue and along Rancho Drive, Tropicana Avenue and West Sahara Avenue. No serious accidents related to the outage were reported.

It was the first major problem with the system since April 1995, when a similar computer glitch caused traffic backups. The system, which coordinates the lights to make traffic flow more smoothly, went down at 4 p.m. Sunday. The red, green and yellow lights continued to function.

Gerry de Camp, the system's manager, said the problem should be solved for good when a $11.3 million upgrade comes on line about this time next year.

While the new system also will operate from a central point, the upgraded system will employ the "distributed intelligence concept," de Camp said.

This means that when there is a computer glitch at the central point, the lights will continue to operate normally on localized components. Under the current system, the lights send a signal back to the central system and rely solely on that unit to function properly.

The 14-year-old system operates about 500 traffic lights throughout the valley -- about half in the city, more than 40 percent in unincorporated Clark County and less than 10 percent in North Las Vegas.