City politicians hopeful new traffic management system will ease congestion in London

City politicians will be looking at a new way to help ease traffic congestion in London.

The civic works committee will consider giving a new advanced traffic management system the green light when they meet on Tuesday evening.

It comes at a cost of roughly $4.4 million and will cover 404 intersections with traffic signals.

Committee chair Phil Squire says the cost of the project is covered by transit funding previously provided by the federal and provincial governments.

“As part of the decision on bus rapid transit and transit projects that we made earlier this year, we made a list of projects we wanted,” Squire said. “Three of those were bus rapid transit routes but the balance were other things in the city that we knew were a priority, and this was one of the priorities.”

Squire added that the ultimate goal behind the project is to better streamline traffic in the city for vehicles and public transit.

“This is also really a transit project, because it’s important for buses, and it’s important for all kinds of transportation.”

The system, called Inter, is already used in other communities, including Vancouver, Halifax and Peel Region.

Future phases of the upgrade will include real-time cameras.

Squire is hopeful the city can build on the system to prioritize buses to help keep them on schedule and get people around the city more efficiently.

“The number one complaint about traffic is that the bus is late, but that’s often not the fault of the bus or the bus driver, it’s just traffic and traffic not flowing properly, so this will help with that,” said Squire.

“These are all important things that are going to help the transit system.”

Squire says there is no exact timeline for when the new system will be in place, but is hoping to learn more details when the committee meets Tuesday.