AFD: Stoplight switchers do not work

AUSTIN (KXAN) - An internal memo shows the City of Austin has failed to keep up maintenance on Opticom devices that allow fire trucks and ambulances to change the signals at stoplights to get to the scene quicker.

"According to Street and Bridge, we have between 125 and 150 Opticom devices installed but they estimate that up to 50 percent are not operational," said Antonio Gonzalez, a planner with the Austin Fire Department in the internal memo sent to the fire department's upper-level management.

Gonzalez said a full inventory of all the city's working and non-working Opticom devices would require about $20,000 in funding.

Warren Hassinger, spokesman with Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services said all of their ambulances, including new ones, have the devices installed.

He said the devices are installed on the light bars of the ambulances, so when an ambulances light flashes, the strobe should automatically change the signal.

"They work on those sites that are maintaned," Hassinger said.

When asked if there is a general frustration with the devices that do not work, Hassinger said, "There's a frustration any time you can't get through an intersection, Opticom or not."

Robert Spillar, the City of Austin's Transportation Director, said most of the Opticom units are installed downtown and said many of them are working. 

Spillar said many of the units in the suburbs of Austin are most likely the culprits of the malfunctions.

Spillar said the city installed the Opticom systems in the late 1990s and spent nearly $300,000 on the project.

The admission of the malfunctions comes at a time when Austin's Public Safety Taskforce has put a spotlight on Austin Travis/County Emergency Medical Services response time in the county.

The latest data from 2007, shows EMS responded to more than 23,000 calls in just more than nine minutes, 38 percent of the time.

It took between 18 and 25 minutes to respond to almost 5,000 people.

The Austin Fire Department has a goal of getting to a scene within eight minutes or less.

From 2007-2008, AFD showed up to a scene on average in 4.56 minutes.

Capital Metro plans to use a similar system starting in 2010 to allow busses to keep lights green along major north and south corridors in Austin.

The Transit agency plans to spend $590,000 on traffic signal technology along the North Lamar/South Congress.corridor and $490,000 along the Burnet/South Lamar Corridor.