Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

Brighton City Council on Tuesday approved more than $64,000 to upgrade the fiber network for the city’s Grand River traffic signal interconnection.

DPS Director Marcel Goch told council members the current fiber network controls traffic flow on Grand River from Challis Road to the Planet Fitness/Caretel Inn intersection, and is over 30-years-old.

"The whole strip from the expressway all the way down is all tied together," he said. "The goal, talking to the engineers a couple of years ago, but we were waiting, keep the system, but we're going to break the system up into two different areas."

"So now it will be the north part of north of Main Street, basically across to the bridge would communicate, and we have enough room in there that we could communicate, get the lights to communicate from north all the way to the city limits."

Because of the failures the city has experienced over the past few months, Goch said staff requested a quote from the city's traffic signal contractor, Severence Electric, to upgrade the hardware portion of the project.

The upgrade will allow crews to monitor live intersections and diagnose issues remotely, adjust signal timings in real time based on traffic pattern changes due to accidents, road construction, increased holiday traffic.

"Every time there's a timing change, I have to bring (the contractor) down here. I have to get (the contractor) to work with the county or the state with this bridge," said Goch.

"We've done it a couple of times, just for everything to go smoothly, but changes by the day depending on what they're working on. Luckily, it's been okay as of late."

Goch said it's the next phase of what the city needs to do to upgrade its own traffic system.