BATON ROUGE - Officials with the East Baton Rouge City-Parish say a years-long project to synchronize 470 traffic signals to a centralized location is nearing completion.

Cyndi Pennington, Chief Traffic Engineer for the City-Parish government, says they are about 80% done with connecting the traffic signals to the Advanced Traffic Management Center through fiberoptic cables.

“Our goal is to be complete by the end of the year. We want to get everything ready for the interstate widening project but also just everyday traffic. We want to be able to respond to that everyday traffic," Pennington said.

At the Advanced Traffic Management Center, conditions on the road are constantly monitored with live cameras. Traffic signals can be adjusted in real-time to mitigate congestion, allow emergency vehicles through and more.

“The most exciting part for us is to have that fiber connection to all the signals in town and be able to do real-time changes at all the signals that we need to," Pennington said.

Pennington says some of the technology was outdated and up to 40 years old, which is why the upgrades were badly needed. 

“Used to when we would send people out, it would take hours to get somebody through traffic to get to those signals and now we can do it with the click of a button.”

Plus, having a centralized location to monitor the streets will be a big help to drivers when major lane closures begin for the I-10 widening project in 2025. The light synchronization will help to manage congestion on surface streets when drivers are inevitably pushed to take alternate routes.

“We can give them some extra green time to get those cars through the corridor."