Muscat to get smart street lights, traffic signals

Muscat Municipality has been testing an intelligent central control system for the street lights network in Muscat to reduce costs and improve control.

“This system has many advantages such as that it allows timing of lighting, which helps the control staff to change the schedule using the program. They can adjust switch-on/off the lights as per the season and sunset/sunrise timings. They can also extract the status reports of the lighting network across the network,” the report said.

The Directorate General of Projects has been carrying out a number of projects related to the lighting of streets, roads, in addition to supervising traffic signals for maintenance density.

This year the maintenance teams of the service departments of the as per the traffic municipality were restructured — five teams for the morning, two for evening and a team to work during the midnight and early morning hours. The lighting projects in the internal roads have been completed in various areas of Muscat Governorate, including Amerat, Madinat Sultan Qaboos (MSQ), Muttrah, Seeb and Qurayat. The municipality is replacing the street lights with LEDS.

The Directorate General of Projects has replaced 1,045 LED lamps along the November 18 Street in Athaiba.

Municipal authorities have also installed green traffic light sensors that helped to reduce waiting times by 50 per cent.

The Light Signal Department has begun testing the system at intersections along November 18 Street, which operates on a green waves system that allows continuous traffic flows across several intersections in one direction.

Traffic signals are synchronised, according to sensor data from current traffic.

According to the municipality, the results of the November 18 Street sensors indicate that stoppage at intersections was reduced by 50 per cent besides easing traffic flow and lower fuel consumption.