High-Tech Center Is Proposed to Ease Traffic Crunch

Hoping to save San Diego County from the snarls that have made driving on Los Angeles freeways “almost unbearable,” Assemblyman Larry Stirling on Monday unveiled plans for a proposed high-tech traffic center designed to expedite the flow of vehicles on county freeways.

“Traffic is an on-going issue in San Diego,” Stirling (R--San Diego) said at a press conference at the California Highway Patrol dispatch center. “With this, we will have a system that others will beat a path to our door to see.”

The center would be home to a host of computers and consoles that would allow about 20 officers from the CHP and California Transportation Commission to track traffic on major freeways in San Diego, Orange and Imperial counties, and parts of Riverside County.

The center would be composed of four sections--the command console, the communications center, the media console and the computer center--and would provide such services as:

- A CHP communications center for dispatching all mobile enforcement units and support services in San Diego County.

- A system of detection and identification of cars by remote sensors, computers, closed-circuit television cameras, changing message signs along freeways and emergency mobile units.

- Centralized management of a regional system for regulating ramp traffic.

- Surveillance and operation of the reversible express lanes on Interstate 15.

- Radio and telephone communications with maintenance and traffic operation field units.

- A color-coded map of the freeways that would indicate to traffic monitors the potential and actual points of congestion, with green meaning no traffic snarls, amber indicating slight congestion and red meaning a full-blown jam.

- Quicker access by news media to traffic information.

Stirling added that the center, which would be near Caltrans’ Old Town headquarters, is not meant as a replacement for existing monitoring devices but would be used mostly as “a cockpit for a series of sub-systems that are already out there.”

Furthermore, he said, the system would consolidate efforts by Caltrans and the CHP to facilitate traffic flow, which has increased in the county by 8% each of the last three years.

“We’ll all know what’s going on,” Stirling said. “We will be able to respond more quickly to problems at any point on the freeway. We can move out as a team (on) major accidents, toxic spills or whatever.

“Right now, the CHP is operating with too few frequencies and is pretty overloaded.”

‘Able to Work Together’

“We don’t have anything that acts as a hookup between what we have and what CHP has,” added Bill Dotson, a Caltrans supervisor. “With this, we’ll be in the same room and be able to work together.”

Stirling introduced legislation for a feasibility study of the monitoring system last July, a move that worked in concert with efforts by Gov. George Deukmejian to reduce tie-ups on California highways.

Deukmejian, who signed the bill July 10, 1987, singled out the proposed center as part of a $2.3-billion bond program for transportation.

Stirling said Monday that a preliminary review of the study showed the proposed center would work, and, he maintained, would be cheaper than building more freeways.

“It’ll be a small part of the total transportation budget,” the assemblyman insisted. “And we think the cost benefit will be much greater than it would if we built more freeways. We can solve this ourselves, without having to go to a bankrupt California government and asking them for money.”

He said he will push to have the system implemented in January, 1989.

“I don’t think I’ll have any trouble (getting the bill passed),” he said. “This is definitely the right thing to do.”

Still, Stirling said he is unsure of the costs of the proposed system and when it would open.

Despite this, Caltrans and CHP officials expressed confidence in the monitoring center.

“We think this will phase out (the dispatch center) we have downstairs,” said Salvatore DePaola, chief of the CHP’s border division. “It’s a very sophisticated system; there’s not another like it in the state or anywhere else, I don’t think.”

Highway Nerve Center

Dotson said the system would act as a nerve center for monitoring mechanisms now in place on Interstate 8 and California 94, two of the busiest highways running through San Diego County.

“We have about 70 freeway ramps metered now,” he said. “When we get this system in place, we hope to have about 200.”

Dotson said most of the sensors, diamond-shaped wires buried in the ground, are in ramps on Interstate 8. They are used to count the number of vehicles traveling on county freeways.

He said an average of 270,000 vehicles use Interstate 8 each day, just 30,000 fewer than the average number of motorists who daily use the Santa Monica Freeway, the most congested in Los Angeles--perhaps the country.

It is this similarity to Los Angeles’ traffic figures that has prompted such concern, CHP officials said.

“Avoiding the problems that Los Angeles has was the main point of this system,” said DePaola. “We can minimize and hopefully prevent gridlock with this. Driving in L.A. is terrible, almost unbearable. San Diego has a growing traffic problem.

“If we don’t think about it now, pretty soon, we won’t be able to get downtown.”