Officials hope to put stop to traffic-light changers

Thursday, Oct. 16, 2003 | 11:12 a.m.

Southern Nevada officials are just beginning to investigate whether there has been abuse of traffic-light changers -- and at the same time, they are looking at finding ways to prevent that abuse.

Of approximately 900 intersections in the urban area, 600 to 700 are equipped with a device that keeps a green light green and switches a red light to green when triggered by police, firefighters and paramedics, officials say.

Local officials are concerned that the switching devices being marketed over the Internet could be used by the public, creating traffic problems for a community already balanced on the edge of gridlock. There's also the possibility that the traffic-light changers that have been distributed to authorized personnel are being used for simple convenience in addition to being used to speed emergency response.

"We do have a variety of agencies throughout the valley -- the city of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Clark County and Henderson -- who all operate and maintain traffic signals," said Niel Rohleder, systems manager for the new Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation, or FAST program.

The regional FAST effort is designed to bring together state and local agencies to run a seamless and smooth-running road network. Part of the effort would be to ensure that emergency responders can get where they are going quickly. Abuse of the traffic-light changers, a proprietary system called Opticom that is manufactured by the 3M Co. of Minnesota, could jam traffic and interfere with those emergency responders, some officials fear.

Rohleder has pegged the daily use of the switching system in the urban area at 1,200 to 2,200 each day -- 11,000 to 13,000 weekly.

All of the local jurisdictions use the Opticom system, Rohleder said.

"Each one has probably similar concerns for the abuse of them," he said. "It's been discussed -- How do we keep the abuse from potentially becoming rampant?"

Rohleder said the first thing the region needs to do is to gauge the existing level of abuse, a measure that officials from FAST, North Las Vegas and the Regional Transportation Commission are working on now.

To measure the abuse the agencies are upgrading the existing traffic-light preemption system along Las Vegas Boulevard from downtown Las Vegas to Nellis Air Force Base. The same upgrade, which will allow the system to read codes for the vehicles authorized to use the light-switching "emitters," can also be used to restrict access to the Opticom changers for devices that lack the codes.

"As far as the process of deploying (the upgraded system), that's minimal right now," Rohleder said.

The installation of the upgraded system is being handled by the RTC, which expects to have all 16 lighted intersections on the Las Vegas Boulevard route upgraded by early 2004.

The RTC is funding the upgrades as it prepares to launch the Metropolitan Area Express, a high-tech, subway-like bus system that will travel from downtown to Nellis next year. The MAX buses will use the Opticom system with a low-priority switcher than extends green lights for the buses by a few seconds.

The cost for the 16 intersection upgrades is $175,000, RTC spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman said.

While the work averages about $11,000 per intersection, Reisman said that some intersections might cost just a couple of thousand while others could be much more expensive, depending on a number of variables.

Rohleder said his FAST agency hopes to have data in hand on abuse and use of the system in about six months.

Upgrading all 600 to 700 traffic lights outfitted with the Opticom system could take years, and the funding for the work would have to be identified, officials have cautioned.

Part of the problem would be outfitting at least seven local emergency responders, including the fire and police for the three cities, Metro police and Clark County Fire Department, with code-ready devices to control the light-switching apparatus.

"It's going to be cumbersome," Rohleder said. "I'm definitely not saying it's going to happen overnight."

He said that once the lights and authorized vehicles are equipped with the encoded upgrades, beating the system would not be easy.

"Our encoding scheme that we already have developed is going to be held pretty close to the vest," he said. Losing that secret "could compromise the overall system."

Officials from the various affected agencies expressed concern this week that Internet-marketed devices that promise to beat the Opticom system could show up in the hands of unauthorized users.

Tim Gow, president of FAC of America Inc., a Minnesota company that makes the devices, has promised that his company will do whatever it can to ensure that the emitters are only used by authorized emergency workers.

But the existence of Gow's product, even if restricted to authorized agencies raises fears that other companies might market similar devices.

Gow said the advantage of his product is that it saves cash-strapped municipalities up to 75 percent of the cost of the devices sold by 3M and the other recognized signal-control companies. Far from trying to undermine Southern Nevada's traffic-control system, Gow said his company hopes to compete for bids to install the dashboard-mounted emitters in the vehicles of the area's public safety agencies.