State to Open High-Tech Traffic Nerve Center to Aid L.A. Drivers

Caltrans officials today officially open a gleaming new traffic nerve center they hope will help steer Los Angeles area commuters through the 21st century’s postmillennial traffic jams.

Although freeways may still be something relatively new under the sun, even their custodians have a sense of history. So, naturally enough, among the invited guests will be--who else--the father of the SigAlert.

Loyd Sigmon, 89, will be at Caltrans’ downtown L.A. headquarters to dedicate the NASA-like control room from which traffic engineers will expand their use of sensors in the roadway and TV cameras on the freeway to detect and respond to traffic problems and warn motorists of what’s ahead--including, of course, those infernal SigAlerts.

The $8.5-million center replaces a smaller facility from the 1970s that has drawn traffic engineers from as far as China and Ethiopia to observe how Los Angeles handles its legendary traffic problems. The new center features advanced technology that would have been as incomprehensible in 1955--the year Sigmon came up with his traffic advisory system--as live TV coverage of a car chase.

“God, what a world we’re living in,” Sigmon marveled from his San Fernando Valley home Wednesday. “Sig” is his nickname, and it was former Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker who named Sigmon’s traffic advisory system after the former radio executive.

Four decades later, the new center, or “computerized brain” of the freeway system, as Caltrans district director Tony Harris put it, is more than twice the size of the old facility, which means its growth almost has kept pace with Los Angeles’ traffic problems. It will do many of the same things as the old center--spot trouble on the freeways and alert motorists through radio and TV traffic reports, freeway message signs and over the Internet--but do it faster, which is a word that L.A. motorists particularly like. In time, the center will monitor more of the freeway system.

Inside the war room, which can only be entered by signing in with a guard and using a card key, workers labor 24 hours a day scanning about 330 miles in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, using computers hooked up to closed-circuit TVs on the freeways and electronic sensors buried in the pavement. Screens in front of the room depict freeway speeds--green for free flowing, yellow for slowing, and red for, well, you know.

“There should be an improvement in traffic flow,” said Patricia P. Perovich, chief of intelligent transportation systems development at Caltrans’ Los Angeles office.

When the center is fully operational next year, the computer will respond to freeway problems automatically--such as adjusting ramp meters--although a human still will push a button to accept, decline or modify the recommended strategy.

In the new center, once a red dot flashes on a freeway segment on a map in the computer to detect a potentially “abnormal traffic condition,” a camera automatically will zoom in on the problem. The computer also will recommend a course of action.

The center is a key part of Caltrans’ strategy to make better, more efficient use of freeways because of the high cost and political opposition to building and expanding roadways.

With accidents and breakdowns accounting for half of all freeway congestion, traffic engineers have sought ways to clear them up as quickly as possible. Studies show that for every minute a car is stranded in a lane, there are at least four minutes of slowed traffic behind it.

Similar centers can be found in other counties and cities--the city of Los Angeles operates a center that adjusts 2,400 traffic lights to meet conditions on city streets, but none deals with as vast a network as the new Caltrans center, which serves an area recently named the nation’s most congested region for the 15th year in a row. A grander $30-million center that will bring Caltrans traffic management engineers and CHP dispatchers under the same roof is planned for 2002 at the junction of the Glendale and Ventura freeways, a Caltrans spokeswoman said.

The first nerve center opened in 1971 and monitored traffic conditions in a 42-mile loop around downtown Los Angeles. A second facility was built in 1976 and has been in use since. It has featured a plastic wall map with tiny lightbulbs that glowed red, green or yellow based on freeway speeds.

The new center is an even further cry from the system developed by Sigmon in 1955. Back then, Sigmon invented a receiver tape recorder that police could activate when something happened.

Initially, SigAlerts dealt with everything from rabid dogs to ships colliding in the harbor. The very first dealt with a train accident at Union Station. A call went out for doctors. “They had more doctors and nurses than they knew what to do with, and it caused a traffic jam,” Sigmon recalled.

Today, the CHP issues a SigAlert whenever one or more freeway lanes will be blocked for more than half an hour.

SigAlerts aren’t the only traffic matters that the new center will deal with. It also will seek to alert motorists about routine maintenance work and try to better manage normal congestion.

The facility--with enough blinking lights and push buttons to make an 8-year-old think he has entered Nintendo heaven--is tied into 120 cameras on the freeways--eventually to be 433--and about 25,000 in-road sensors.

A traffic engineer looking at a map of the freeway system on a computer can point the mouse toward a red light (denoting speeds below 20 mph) and click on a live TV picture of the scene and--for the first time--lane by lane information on the speed and traffic volumes. Workers can use the cameras to zoom in on trouble, but are prohibited from looking off the freeway because of privacy concerns.

The center also has a computer hooked up to Caltech that sounds an alarm when there is an earthquake.

As for Sigmon, he says: “If only I had a penny for every SigAlert. . . .”