Generators recently purchased by the District Department of Transportation will keep traffic lights on during inclement weather and other emergencies, officials said Tuesday.
The District used a $3 million federal grant to buy 200 generators, each about the size of a 26-inch television set. If any of the city’s 1,600 signalized intersections loses electricity, a crew will be dispatched to hook up a generator to the traffic lights and power will be restored within 90 minutes. If power is lost at more than 200 intersections at once, priority for the generators will go to traffic lights along the city’s evacuation route and on other major roads.
“These generators will help protect our citizens and our neighborhoods,” Ward 1 Council Member Jim Graham said. “They are going to get the lights back up very, very quickly.”
Wind and rain from heavy storms knocked out power to traffic lights on Constitution Avenue last summer, snarling the major thoroughfare for hours. District officials hope the new generators will prevent similarly bad situations this year.
In fact, the generators already have been put into use. They arrived in D.C. last month, and city crews used them to restore power to signals on Constitution Avenue after an early morning manhole explosion and fire knocked out power at numerous intersections.
“These generators are very important to helping traffic flow in and out of the District of Columbia,” said Emeka Moneme, the city’s transportation chief. “The generators are a strong response to thefloods of last year, and they put us in a good position to deal with problems in the future.”
