Austin working to shorten emergency response times with new system

AUSTIN, Texas – The City of Austin is getting closer to rolling out a new system designed to help emergency vehicles move through traffic faster.

After months of testing, the emergency preemption system is almost ready to launch. It’s designed to speed up response times.

What they’re saying:

In a city moving at Austin’s pace, every second counts when fire trucks and ambulances race to an emergency.

“Over the course of time, the challenges that we look at as far as volume growth and the ability to respond in a timely fashion,” said Rob Vires, chief of staff, Austin Fire.

Rob Vires, chief of staff with the Austin Fire Department, says the department is exploring a number of ways to improve response times.

“Our response goal time is 8 minutes 90% of the time or less, and so we are obviously running into some challenges with the city’s growth and trying to achieve that across the board,” said Vires.

Dig deeper:

One solution is a new system that could help save precious minutes. For decades, Austin Transportation and Public works says it has relied on traffic signal devices that communicate with transmitters on emergency vehicles.

“They’re prone to needing maintenance to fail over time to be replaced. So, you know, when we had. Implemented our transit signal priority system a few years ago the proverbial light bulb went off, and you know we started questioning why can’t we do this for emergency vehicles also,” said Brian Craig, Austin Transportation and Public Works.

Now, the city is moving to a system that doesn’t require extra hardware on signals or vehicles.

“We are receiving their location when they’re driving down the roadway and, once they enter geo-fenced areas, we’re placing calls to our traffic signals to preempt the signal and make sure that the fire and EMS vehicles get a green light,” said Craig.

When an emergency vehicle approaches a red light, the signal switches to green. If it’s already green, the system holds it until the vehicle clears the intersection.

“The anticipation is that this will reduce response times. So instead of there being a queue of vehicles at a traffic signal that has a red light, this would turn the signal green and the queue would dissipate and be able to move aside for the emergency vehicles,” said Craig.

The GPS tracking technology will be used by both fire and EMS. Every intersection they clear without delay could mean crucial minutes for someone in need.

“We’re excited to see what that will produce for us over the course of time,” said Vires.

What’s next:

All traffic signals south of the river have already been tested, and crews are finishing work on those north of the river.

The city expects more emergency vehicles to start using the system at the beginning of the year.