City staff outline traffic-signal technology upgrades and detection data that inform timing and maintenance

North Richland Hills — Public Works on Feb. 24 briefed council on traffic-signal equipment and a monitoring platform the department uses to identify maintenance problems and optimize timing across corridors.

Beau Blankenship, the city’s transportation presenter, said the city operates about 61 traffic signals and has completed ClearGuide monitoring on 44 intersections, with five state‑maintained signals remaining under a 2006 municipal maintenance agreement with TxDOT. Blankenship demonstrated the Iteris ClearGuide interface and how it raised maintenance alerts — for example, a malfunctioning pedestrian push-button that repeatedly called the controller for 12 hours until staff repaired it — and showed before/after graphs where timing adjustments cut maximum side‑street wait times roughly in half.

Blankenship described equipment commonly found at city intersections: video detection cameras used for actuation (not recording), OptiCom receivers for emergency vehicle preemption, point-to-point radios for communications and battery backups inside signal cabinets. He noted the cameras are “line of sight only” and do not store recordings; they provide actuation data. The OptiCom system, Blankenship said, does not instantly turn a light green but interfaces with the signal progression to safely expedite an emergency vehicle’s movement.

Staff said 5 additional ClearGuide-equipped intersections are planned in the current fiscal year, with 12 remaining over the following two years; they expect work this year on the 26th Street corridor. Blankenship also described analytic outputs useful to economic development and planning — daily and hourly turning‑movement and volume data that previously required manual counts.

Council members praised the cross‑departmental value of the data; staff said the police department is already using the system for strategic traffic enforcement and response planning.