Surely if you drive at a steady pace you will hit every single one of those green lights. But the best laid plans often go awry and you curse your bad luck as the green light turns red. But here’s the thing. Luck had nothing to do with it. Not so far away, near the Stampede grounds in southeast Calgary, is one of those responsible for stopping your drive. The Calgary Mobility Business Center leader says the goal is to get motorists to their destination faster. Not later. “Sometimes you can feel that way,” Samer Patil said. “But that is not our intention.” Patil stands in front of a display wall made up of 14 screens that can display more than 100 traffic cameras across the city at once. It looks like a Hollywood movie and comes with a generous price tag. The city council approved $8.1 million worth of upgrades to the center — a more advanced control room, improved camera systems and more — that were completed in 2020. But for the city, it’s money well spent.
Have burning questions about your commute or pesky intersections that you want answered in a future article? Email reporter Joel Dryden at [email protected]
As Patil sees it, the mission is to ease traffic congestion. keep the roads safe. It’s no simple task in a city of more than 1.3 million people, where some 270,500 people enter the city center by car, transit, bike or on foot on a typical day. Data from 2021 shows the time lost annually in Canadian cities waiting in traffic. (CBC News)
The people behind the curtain
With a few keystrokes and mouse clicks, facility staff can bypass any of the city’s 1,200 traffic signals when necessary: say, when traffic is backing up after a Calgary Flames game or when construction has affected regular hours. It’s a big responsibility. And as for those frustrations residents might be feeling with those pesky red lights downtown? Calgary’s traffic management system—like that of any major urban city—is complex. In industry parlance, it relies on traffic flow theories to reduce overall delays. In simple terms, all these red lights are meant to serve the greater good. The Mobility Operations Center in southeast Calgary has a display wall with 14 screens, which can display more than 100 traffic cameras across the city at once. In the city center, traffic signals are programmed to convey the greatest volume as efficiently as possible. (Monty Kruger/CBC) Patil sketches it out as simply as he can, though he’s quick to point out that snow falling from the sky or construction going off-script can quickly disrupt the plan. Picture in your mind 150 traffic signals in downtown Calgary. These signals are timed and programmed to move as much volume out of the city center as efficiently as possible. Each model is configured in software equipped with the latest traffic data. The simulation results the software throws up help engineers set “green divisions” – that’s the available green light time each direction gets – reviewed regularly and tweaked if problems arise. All that to say: it might mean hitting more red lights than you’d like in some cases, but ultimately, the system, with its theories and models in tow, should get everyone home faster — if things are going according to plan. Data from the Calgary Mobility Operations Center dashboard shows incidents during the city since Oct. 27. (CBC News)
Entertainment over traffic
Angela Knight of the Calgary Eyeopener is happy to cover traffic in Calgary. Every weekday morning, he keeps a close eye on live traffic patterns, keeping listeners updated on the latest grunts. She has many questions, many of which are often voiced to her in calls to the station from frustrated drivers. Take a light years ago at the intersection of 10th Avenue and 14th Street SW It might, thought Knight, that a traffic light in that location made perfect sense. But it also feels like it was put in place to deliberately slow traffic there as drivers come down 9th Avenue, whether they were going north or south. “I don’t think I’ve ever hit it on the green, ever,” he said. What would the city say about that? At the Mobility Business Center, Patil is presented with this question on the spot. He goes along with the brain trust, shouting across the room, “Hey, what about the spot on 10th Avenue?” The answer reveals the complexity of the challenge. It reiterates that its strategy is not to deliberately slow down red-light traffic. Because the city had removed a traffic median at this intersection, for safety reasons, they had to install a traffic signal. This slowed down traffic that could previously flow smoothly. The intersection at 10th Avenue and 14th Street SW, pictured in 2009 and 2022. (Google Maps) Or, Angela wonders, how about the intersection at Macleod Trail and 25th Avenue SW? Trains at this location run frequently and motorists sometimes feel they don’t have their turn at the lights. This intersection, Patil explains, is especially challenging because of the proximity of the CTTrain lines on the east side. Because there’s no way to be sure a vehicle isn’t stuck on the tracks as a train approaches, the city must “clear” the tracks whenever a train is detected approaching the intersection. If there are no interruptions, the signal will run with the same sequence of green lights each time. But it is often interrupted. Sometimes several times per cycle. The intersection at Macleod Trail and 25th Avenue SW, pictured in 2022. The city says drivers will eventually get their turn at that intersection, but signals can often be interrupted by incoming trains. (Joel Dryden/CBC) For those who drive in the city every day, many of these details remain invisible. Take Chris Green, a 33-year-old developer at a Calgary tech startup. He drives to his company’s offices in Inglewood on a daily basis in his Toyota Echo. “I like driving. It’s peaceful, it’s quiet,” he says. Chris Green, 33, who regularly drives to his company’s offices in Inglewood, says the city’s traffic rarely bothers him. (Joel Dryden/CBC) As he reaches out to the Inglewood community, Green says maybe it’s his role as a developer that keeps him from getting too involved with traffic and red lights in the city. It assumes that there is logic behind freeing up the busiest roads so that traffic can flow. A few blocks away, at the Mobility Operations Center, dozens of engineers would almost certainly nod in glee at that assessment. “It can be complicated, as you can see,” says Patil. “It can be a huge, challenging job.” WATCHES | The Calgary Mobility Business Center uses red lights intentionally:
The Calgary Mobility Operations Center uses red lights on purpose
When you’re driving around town, do you ever find yourself hitting one red light after another? It’s not bad luck. The head of the Calgary Mobility Business Center explains why.
