'Nerve centre’ for traffic signals

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32589, 24 April 1971, Page 18

'Nerve centre’ for traffic signals

Control equipment for Christchurch city’s area-traffic-control system will soon be housed in Durham Street, in the vacated premises of Robert McLean, Ltd.

Eventually the control centre may include a computer for traffic signal control and television monitors for traffic observation.

Control equipment for the one-way street system, now situated in St Asaph Street, will be moved there during the next few months, the Christchurch City Council traffic engineer (Mr M. Gadd) said yesterday. The change would start in about eight weeks, he said, but it would be done progressively, and it would be several months before the new centre controlled the entire system; the Salisbury Street-Kilmore Street one-

way pairs were expected to be commissioned in August or September this year. During the control centre change-over there would be a few days when the one-way streets would not be connected to the central controller, which gives the progressive “green wave” flow, Mr Gadd said, but this time would be kept to a minimum.

The engineering department was also considering the provision of a small, basic “back up” controller in the centre, as an emergency measure if the main system developed a fault at any time, Mr Gadd said. As traffic became heavier, a system failure at a peak period could cause considerable trouble, but a “back-up” controller with even a fairly simple traffic-signal programme would keep traffic moving fairly well until the fault in the main controller could be repaired, he said.