Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Traffic Signals topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Keller staff pitch cloud-based Glance system to modernize emergency signal preemption
Summary
City staff and the fire department presented a choice to either rehab aging infrared Opticom equipment (estimated at roughly $123,000 for city-only work) or adopt Glance, a cloud-based connected-vehicle preemption system with a 10-year, $99,000 subscription; council asked staff to collect comparative response-time data before final contract signing.
Keller officials on April 7 debated replacing aging infrared Opticom equipment with a cloud-based connected-vehicle system called Glance as part of efforts to improve emergency-vehicle response and traffic management.
An agency official from the city’s fire/public-works team told council that the current infrared preemption hardware struggles with line-of-sight issues, failing receivers and inconsistent compatibility across intersections. “It’s going to cost us about 123,000 just to do this” to rehab the city’s infrared components, the presenter said, while noting costs would be higher if neighboring jurisdictions’ signals were included.
The alternative on the table is Glance, a cloud-hosted platform the presenter said the city has purchased access to for 10 years with a $99,000 subscription and equipment package; council materials list an installation line item that raises the figure to about $107,000. The presenter said Glance would eliminate line-of-sight limitations by relying on cellular and GPS-equipped transponders installed on emergency vehicles and would also provide second-by-second signal diagnostics, camera-based detection, traffic counts, crash and speed data, and integration with navigation services.
Council members pressed staff for local performance data before signing a long-term contract. “If we’re going to be making a switch to this, I’d like to see what that actually looks like for response times,” the Chair said, asking staff to collect comparative metrics from nearby users such as Addison and other DFW cities that have deployed Glance.
Other discussion focused on interoperability and transition costs. Staff noted gated communities that still rely on infrared emitters would require retrofits at an estimated $5,500 per gate (about 20 private gates cited), producing roughly $110,000 in additional potential costs if the city elected to subsidize conversions. Staff also described options to run both systems in parallel during a phased transition and to incentivize HOAs to upgrade rather than require immediate conversion.
Council did not take a final contract vote that night; staff said the Glance purchase was on the consent agenda for approval but recommended council either approve on consent and require data before contract execution or table the item to the next meeting to allow staff to return with response-time evidence. The city has already budgeted funds for the work as part of previously planned optical upgrades; staff said a phone call to regional partners about possible grant or shared funding sources was a low-cost next step.
The next procedural step: staff will gather comparative response-time and field-performance data from peer cities and report back at the next council meeting before executing a final contract.
