Lesson
Identify a single agency to be responsible for maintenance of an emergency vehicle preemption system.
The experience of multiple agencies with emergency vehicle preemption systems.
January 2006
Fairfax County,Virginia,United States; St. Paul,Minnesota,United States
Background (Show)
Lesson Learned
The key to the successful maintenance of an EVP system is to identify a single agency to be responsible for scheduling, coordinating, and funding system maintenance. Maintenance can be handled by either the traffic engineering department or the fire/rescue and EMS departments. Many traffic engineering departments will want to maintain the equipment themselves in order to control access to traffic signal controller cabinets. Should the fire and rescue departments perform maintenance, either in house or by contract, it may be necessary to have a memorandum of agreement with the traffic engineering department to document important procedures, such as access to controller cabinets, service call precedence, service log requirements, and any other necessary site-specific coordination issues.
Based on the experiences of two jurisdictions, the following issues were identified to improve EVP system maintenance:
- Develop a maintenance problem reporting channel. The purpose of a maintenance problem reporting channel is to enable the users of the system to easily report problems so that problems can be screened for response priority, minimizing the potential for dangerous situations. In Fairfax County, Virginia, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) provides a technician to oversee the maintenance of the EVP system even though system maintenance is contracted by the fire and rescue agency.
- Ensure that a standard fault isolation protocol is in place. Having a documented process for trouble-shooting will reduce the repeat/recur rate as well as the false alarm rate for problems requiring maintenance.
- Perform concurrent EVP system maintenance with traffic signal equipment maintenance. In addition to servicing maintenance calls, there may be benefit in performing preventive maintenance in conjunction with regular traffic signal equipment maintenance. A task such as detector lens condition inspection can be done in conjunction with signal lamp replacement. In St. Paul, Minnesota, they report that this practice has helped reduce the number of service calls.
Countries
Focus Areas
Major Initiatives > Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems
Major Initiatives > Mobility Services for All Americans
Major Initiatives > Integrated Corridor Management Systems
Major Initiatives > Emergency Transportation Operations
Major Initiatives > Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII)
Other Program Activities > Public Safety
Other Program Activities > Rural ITS Deployment
Goal Areas
Keywords
preempt, emergency preemption, traffic signals, EVP
Lesson Comments
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