County’s New Traffic Center Passes Road Test

As rain fell steadily over Orange County, 13 traffic controllers gazed at a gigantic electronic map of the county’s freeways, where green dots showed traffic moving smoothly everywhere.

Suddenly, the dots delineating the Costa Mesa Freeway turned yellow, then red. Within minutes the red had expanded into a firm line, indicating freeway gridlock.

The traffic controllers in Orange County’s new Transportation Management Center went to work, dispatching sign-bearing trucks to detour traffic and activating overhead freeway warning signs.

“Accident at Rte. 22,” traffic controller Paul King carefully typed on a keyboard that would be displayed on freeway signs to warn drivers.

From this room, Caltrans engineers and California Highway Patrol officers monitor traffic on most of the county’s 280 miles of freeway lanes and 19 miles of toll roads. Resembling NASA flight control headquarters, the Traffic Management Center is Orange County’s newest high-tech weapon against freeway congestion.

“This is state-of-the-art technology,” said Mahesh Bhatt, managing supervisor of the center, which began operating in November and will be be dedicated Feb. 15.

Here, 24 hours a day, engineers and officers watch an array of closed-circuit television screens and computer monitors, along with a wall-size, color-coded map showing the speed of traffic at every point of every freeway.

The staff can respond to accidents and traffic slowdowns almost instantly by dispatching tow trucks or work crews and controlling the freeway system’s 33 electronic message signs.

Located at Caltrans’ Santa Ana headquarters, the 6,000-square-foot center replaces one a quarter of its size, which had been on line since 1990. But for the first time, the center has its own computer system, which Caltrans officials say is one of the most sophisticated in the state.

Among other things, it receives signals from 3,700 loop detectors embedded in the pavement to measure traffic speed. The engineers also watch monitors for 18 cameras strategically placed at interchanges most prone to problems.

“We can get very detailed information and respond very quickly,” Bhatt said. “Working here is very exciting.”

As the traffic controllers monitored the problem on the Costa Mesa Freeway and watched for others one recent rainy morning, another warning began flashing on the screen: earthquake.

Conversation over coffee cups froze as the information from Caltech in Pasadena blinked on: A 2.0 quake had just occurred six miles outside of Hollister in Northern California. The minor quake was too far away for major concern, but the wary watchers took note nonetheless.

“We have peak hours, seven days a week,” said Joe Hecker, the Caltrans district division chief who oversees the center, referring to the center’s constant state of readiness.

The center’s computers are linked to the CHP’s computer system, Caltech and similar centers throughout the state and local traffic control centers in Irvine, Santa Ana and Anaheim. And in an arrangement described by officials as unique, the center is linked to laboratories at UC Irvine and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where researchers intend to use its data to study transportation systems of the future.

Ultimately, Bhatt said, Caltrans expects a 25% to 30% improvement in the time it takes to clear freeway congestion.

By seeing conditions firsthand rather than waiting for reports from CHP officers at the scene, Bhatt said, traffic engineers can shave three to five minutes off the time it takes to dispatch work crews or post warnings on freeway signs. The results, he said, can range from a 15- to 20-minute reduction in congestion during minor incidents to a reduction of several hours during major accidents.

And soon, with a few strokes on a computer keyboard, Caltrans staffers will be able to reprogram meters at 278 freeway on-ramps countywide to help keep traffic moving.

While most meters are automatically set according to time and traffic flow, Caltrans spokesman Albert Miranda said, workers at the center soon will be able to manually override programming at specific locations when problems arise.

“We’ve stopped building freeways, now we’ve got to manage them,” Hecker said.

As controller King typed in the message about the traffic jam on the Costa Mesa Freeway that morning, he paused to reflect.

“My dad worked on installing the first loop detectors in the early 1970s,” King said. “We’ve come a long way since then.”