Hamilton traffic operations

There are more eyes on Hamilton streets than you may realize. About 80 cameras are watching the traffic moving through the city. It’s an entire system that is designed to ease traffic headaches and collect data.

They collect information like how fast someone is going and from there the control room operators are able to make adjustments, like how long a light stays green for, all in a matter of seconds.

A few clicks of a mouse is all it takes to adjust the time of an advanced green light.

There are about a hundred signals online right now. Each of the dots show intersections they can communicate with and you can tell which light is red and which is green by arrows.

Hamilton’s automated traffic management system gives these operators a birds eye view of the traffic moving around the city and lets them pinpoint things that may be wrong and allows them to make adjustments.

In 2014 when the Burlington Skyway was closed after a dump truck crashed into it there was traffic chaos. Thousands of cars were diverted from the QEW clogging Hamilton streets. It took staff all day to get to each intersection and reprogram the timing of the lights.

Now they are able to do it within minutes.

They can also collect real time information, like how fast cars are going on the Red Hill Valley Parkway and the Linc.

The cameras are similar to the MTO Compass system but they aren’t available to the public just yet.

It costs about $15 000 per intersection for the camera and software and the whole system cost about $2.5 million to implement.