Rustem Khamitov: «Road traffic should be managed by intellectual system»

The President of Bashkortostan Rustem Khamitov spoke about traffic lights facilities modernization and city illumination systems with employees of "Ufagorsvet" municipal company on Wednesday.

The head of the republic visited the Control Centre of external illumination and traffic lights facilities of Ufa, examined the programming and testing system of traffic lights.

"Ufagorsvet" modernises traffic lights and system of external illumination, changing old power-intensive lamps on economic light-emitting diode lamps. According to the general director of the enterprise Oleg Malikov, upgrading allowed our city to save 1,3 million megawatt of electric energy, or 17,5 million rbl. in money terms for two years.

About third of traffic lights are updated in Ufa. They are equipped with controllers and are directly connected to the dispatching office.

Having familiarised with principles of work of Ufa traffic lights facilities, Rustem Khamitov paid attention to necessity of introducing modern intellectual control systems. He gave the South Korean experience as an example.

“In Seoul there are five million inhabitants, the number of cars is five times larger than we have. And they do not have traffic jams,” the head of the republic said.

But for today there is no software product, a working system, capable to operate traffic lights complex. According to Vice-premier Dmitry Sharonov, large manufactures are not interested in this subject due to its small volumes. Rustem Khamitov marked that orientation to the markets of other regions or manufacture by forces of small-scale business can be possible variants of solving this task.

New traffic lights with countdown system reduced number of road accidents near traffic lights twice. According to the head of the State Inspectorate For Traffic Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on RB Dinar Gilmutdinov, such traffic lights should be established in Ufa everywhere: they are capable to raise traffic safety considerably.

In the future it is planned to equip the system of traffic lights with cameras. Theoretically cameras will fix intensity of traffic, and intellectual control system of traffic lights will react to the arriving information in appropriate way.