Loopy Article

SmarTek Systems
Sensing and System Integration Solutions

Loopy
Hit & Run

By Paul Bass

Sunday morning, 9 o'clock. A man stands in the middle of Webster Street staring at a traffic light.

A small crowd gathers. The man notices them staring at him as though he were crazy. So he decides to play along.

"I used my Scotty voice. Don't you remember the Star Trek movie when he said, 'ComPUter!'?" It appears Scotty and the crew, traveling back through time to meet a scientist who invented aluminum, didn't know what to make of the computer mouse. "Scotty thought the mouse was a microphone. He spoke through it. He said, 'computer! Give me mathematical program!' The scientist was looking at him thinking he was a nut. So I said, 'Traffic signal! Give me green light!"'

The crowd keeps watching this man yelling at the traffic signal to give green light.

And wouldn't you know it? The light turns green.

"All the people go, 'Whoa! What's going on? How'd you do that?

The man's response: "It's magic "

'`You could call the man crazy. You could call his trick magic, or luck.

In fact the man knew what he was doing.

His name is Brian McGrath, New Haven's idiosyncratic head of traffic and parking. He showed up that morning at Webster Street and Winchester Avenue, in the Dixwell neighborhood, to test out the city's newest-fangled traffic light, one that responds to sound, not motion.

New Haven's messed-up traffic signals make McGrath crazy. They make a lot of us crazy. Ever wonder why you have to stop every 30 sec-onds on Whalley Avenue, even though no one's passing through on cross streets? Ninety loop detec-tors have broken in New Haven in recent years-and no one's fixed or replaced them. Now McGrath's determined to do so.

Loop detectors are under-ground wires with 12-volt current running through them. They have magnetic fields that sense when motor vehicles pass overhead. The city relies on them to switch on green lights when drivers on a side street arrive at an intersection with a major road.

From time to time a construction worker drilling in a street accidentally cuts into a loop detector. The city's central computer system then puts the traffic signal on an automatic cycle.

That means the light switches from red to green every minute or so whether or not cars come-until someone fixes the loop. Which New Haven hasn't done for 12 years. Intersections like Norton and Whalley, Grand and Jefferson, Chapel and Chestnut have become permanent nuisance-stop traffic-jammers.

McGrath convinced the state to give the city $1.5 million to fix all 90. The work should start this summer, after McGrath picks a contractor.

In the meantime, McGrath has tried to fix or install loops as soon as possible. He has run into his own roadblocks.

For months, neighbors near Webster and Winchester pressed him for a new signal, where a com-munity garden's fence was blocking drivers' views. The city put in a light earlier this month. But until it had a detector in place, the city had to keep the signal flashing.

Pressed by neighbors, McGrath promised to deliver a working signal.

"I had a week and a half of excus-es from my men. They blew the engine on the truck. The other truck did-n't have a trailer hitch. They didn't have a trailer I got 'em a trailer. That had a flat. The saw blade was too dull. Then the saw machine wouldn't start. I had to take off the gas tank and clean it out, because it hadn't been used for 12 years and it had gasoline in it. Twelve-year-old gasoline turns to sludge."

The Thursday morning before last, another excuse: The signal truck with the trailer hitch was still in the shop.

McGrath fumed about the latest delay at a meeting with staffers. In the room happened to be people from a Virginia company called SmarTek Systems. They had spoken to McGrath a day earlier, pitching him their new invention: a sonar traffic light. It's modeled on a Navy detection device used in

subs. The traffic light picks up the sound of your engine, your tires, as you approach the light. It tunes.out background noise, discerns whether a car is driving away from .the light or toward it.

The company wanted the city to agree to a test of its invention. McGrath had said no-too risky, unproven. But now, frustrated on this Thursday morning, he asked whether the company could have the $3,000 signal in New Haven, installed, the very next day. "They said, we'll drop everything."

They did. The signal went up.

That's why McGrath drove his city-owned Ford Contour there the following Sunday morning. He snuck up on the light, at 2 miles an hour, to try to trick it into not noticing him. The signal changed to green.

That's when he parked elsewhere and inspected the beauty on foot.

He didn't have to say, "Give me green light!." He could have said, "Paint my face in the washing machine!" The device might be smart, but they apparently haven't invented yet the traffic light that interprets words for meaning.

Which is good, considering what some of us yell at New Haven's traf-fic lights.

McGrath plans to proceed with lower-tech, underground loop detectors for most of the 90 intersec-tions. But he's keeping his eye on the above-ground sonar experiment. They're cheaper, since you don't have to dig up the street to install them. Soon there just may be more street corners where you can yell at a light-and get results.

E-mail: pbass@newhavenadvocate.com
News and Commentary from the New Haven Advocate (Published on 07/01/99, used with permission)

[ Home ] [ Up ]
This page was last modified 02/14/05 .