New State-of-the-Art System will Improve City’s Traffic Flow

Mississauga is laying the foundation to help control traffic flow and manage City intersections better in the years to come.  Members of Council recently received an update on the Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS) at General Committee.

This state-of-the-art system replaces a 30 year-old one; it will be more reliable and responsive to traffic, allowing all 757 traffic lights to work together to manage traffic and congestion in Mississauga, said Geoff Wright, Director, Works Operations and Maintenance.

“The current investment is about replacing dated traffic light technology and preparing ourselves for the future,” Wright said.

The $14.8 million ATMS project is a partnership with the Region of Peel and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO). All three levels of government have traffic lights in the City and will fund the project.

Transportation systems that will be upgraded through ATMS include

• Replacing the current Traffic Signal Control System
• Upgrading the Traffic Signal Communications with the City’s fibre network, Wi-Fi and cellular technology
• Adding a modern Traffic Management Centre to allow staff to better monitor and  make adjustments to traffic lights as needed.

The project began in January 2015 and is expected to be complete in 2017.

The ATMS project includes an Intelligent Transportation System component that will add traffic monitoring cameras, traffic sensors and vehicle detection technology to the system.

Future ATMS initiatives include the testing of new technologies along specific corridors in the City and to determine how they could address congestion issues and traffic flow.