The City of San Jose implemented a city-wide emergency vehicle preemption (EVP) system by upgrading and integrating fleet tracking systems with a network of traffic signal controllers for less than $750,000.

This paper assessed the cost of implementing a centralized EVP solution in San Jose.

Made Public Date

08/30/2018

San Jose, California, United States

San Jose, California,

United States

Identifier

2018-SC00407

The City of San Jose implemented a more cost-effective centralized emergency vehicle preemption (EVP) system that leveraged existing infrastructure, communications, and software systems and eliminated the need for costly field hardware installation and maintenance at intersections throughout the city.

Centralized emergency vehicle pre-emption changed the overall method of how a pre-emption request was handled in the City. The information flow was re-directed. Instead of using equipment on each emergency vehicle to communicate with intersections individually, emergency vehicles communicated with a central control system. The central system preempted signal control at individual intersections based on the GPS position of emergency vehicles and their priority as they responded to an incident.

SYSTEM COST

Based on estimates developed with the vendors a budget of between $600,000 and $750,000 was established. This amount supports professional software integration activities as needed to enhance the central traffic control system (TransSuite), vehicle tracking AVL system (Hexagon), and traffic signal controller firmware (2070-D4).