Inside Ottawa's traffic nerve centre

At Ottawa's traffic control centre, a wall of screens flashwith live video from cameras perched near hundreds of busy intersections.

The traffic team keeps a close eye on the monitors, as well as the computers on their desks that show the status of traffic signals across the city, ready topunch in a fix to alleviate congestion.

There's little room for error.

"We don't have the extra capacity to absorb the deviations anymore. Ottawa's grown," said Stuart Edison, the control centre's director.

Ottawa's rapid growth has made the job of handling traffic disruptions whetherplanned or not both more challenging and more critical than ever before.

To help handle the added workload, the control centre, which occupies a nondescript city building on Loretta Avenue in Hintonburg,is replacing its aging analogsystem with digital technology, allowing it to add more traffic cameras than the 250 currently in use.

The upgradewill also improve image quality and archiving, and make the whole systemeasier to maintain, Edison said.

Here's a look behind the scenes at Ottawa's traffic control centre.

Edison's team keeps watch overyour morning and afternoon commute, looking forcollisionsand other unscheduled mishaps that can tie up traffic in a flash.

The team can quicklycontact police, dispatch city crews or adjust traffic signal cyclesto minimize the impact.

"That could be as simple as lengthening the green for one direction or bringing on a left turn that's not normally on at that time of day," Edison said.

It's a balancing act between competing demands because a green light in one direction means a red in the other, Edison pointed out.

"You can't just manually ignore all the demands and turn from green to red and leave it that way."

The city's intersections have actually been managed remotely since themid-1970s, when staff would monitortraffic lights on a giant wall map.

This placeis lit

Ottawa has more than 1,600 traffic signals. They're assembled and maintained in a workshoplocated in the traffic centre's basement.

There's even a display of all the different sensors that are used to trigger the lights.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

The sign production facility down the hall from the signal shopis where all of the city's road signs, parking signs and postersfor municipal work are made.

The city also sells decommissioned signs throughitswebsite.

This is part of CBC Ottawa's special seriesNowhere Fast, a lookat how and why people commute in the capital region.

We'll be looking at the people, the numbers and the stories that make up your daily tripto and from work.