bombermwc said something in another post that reminded me of something that I've been wondering about. Pretty much every other place I've lived/driven (even small villages/cities) has had the standard strobe-detecting traffic signal preemption devices (Traffic signal preemption - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_signal_preemption#Line-of-Sight)) on major streets. OKC doesn't, at all, pretty much from what I've seen, at least on the north side. Edmond has them, though. I used to see all kinds of emergency vehicles having to stop at each intersection going down the NW Expwy and creep out and hope nobody gets hit/hits them, and I think it's just absurd for them to have to deal with that on an almost hourly basis. Do these kinds of devices cost *that* much money that OKC is not putting them in, do they not believe they'll get an ROI (yeah, they probably won't, at least not monetarily, but not everything should be measured absolutely in $$$ and nothing else), did they do a study and decide they just weren't needed, do they not care, ...?

Good to see you back, Sid.
I sort of wondered the same thing about sidewalks and traffic controls when all of the auto traffic was hindered on the north end of the Urban Sprawl. Personally, I find the walking conditions in Downtown OKC to be Superb. No kidding. Wonders have actually been Worked.

I know that it doesn't involve, directly, Sidewalks (per se) . . . Still, I hope that the TraffiKKlusterFukke in the vicinity of the offramp from the Kilpatrick onto westbound Memorial (frontage road) is still under consideration. =)

Not to mention making Northbound Penn and Memorial (the intersection from hell) more autopedestrian friendly within the paradigm of Chisholm Creek Crossing---or whatever name the "development" was sold under.

S Penn also has it Sid (south of I-240). ^^

It wasn't that long ago that somebody had figured out a way to hack the system. They switched it over to red all ways when the emergency vehicles pass through. I have seen many intersections where people still run the intersection even when the preemption signals are activated. Just the other day I was at 89th and Penn. It took an OCPD officer to block the intersection for traffic to stop. Two cars tried to go around him however, he flagged them over after the fire trucks passed through. I don't know if he wrote citations or not because I had to be somewhere when all this went down.

Thanks for the replies, especially Sid... Did not know the equipment cost that much per light, and thought it would be cheaper for the vehicle equipment since I thought they already had strobes, and it'd just be a matter of setting them to the right pattern or the detectors to the pattern of the strobes. And yeah, even with them, emergency vehicles would have to slow down anyway (they did in IL, but it was still faster than coming to a complete stop and/or trying to get through a jam), they just wouldn't have the massive traffic jams to deal with stuck at a red light. And I wasn't really thinking about every street, just the major ones that would get/are used most often by them... And actually, I don't think NW Expressway has any preemption, I don't remember seeing any devices anywhere between May and Rockwell (the area I most travelled when I worked at MacArthur and Expwy).

We are going to have to deal with this issue with regards to the new MAPS 3 streetcar. Apparently, on some levels, it will actually have to be City Council policy to make it happen. We want it treated as a High Occupancy Vehicle and only yield to emergency vehicles. Nearly all of the traffic lights in OKC are "smart". It is just that the policies in place that prompt the programming of them do not discriminate and make auto traffic secondary to other uses. And, while they are "smart", the programming simply has not happened to prioritize traffic flow on most corridors. This is supposedly happening however due to the 2007 GO Bond issue although I haven't seen an announcement that has stated that it has actually occurred.