Our trip to ACHD last week was very enlightening! After a quick bag lunch behind the Garden City Senior Center (at a picnic table installed Rotary some years ago) we headed over t the ACHD "Compound". We started in the Sign shop where we were told about building and maintaining street signs and traffic control signs (there are 160,000 of them in the county). Then we headed across the parking lot to the Traffic Control Command Center. There we met with a woman who monitors the goings on of up to 24 screens at a time watching for traffic tie-ups, accidents, debris on the road, etc. Every intersection in the county has a camera. And, yes, she can read your license plate. Across the hall we learned how to program stop lights and set intervals. (If you have one of those strobe lights that the fire trucks use, you can make all lights turn green). Then back outside to the "yard" where we got a lesson on their "toys", the Vacuum truck, road grader, snow plows, street sweeper. All in all, a fascinating afternoon! |