2024 - Blue lights in city traffic - Basel fire department wants to turn traffic lights to green themselves

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The fire brigade is increasingly getting stuck in traffic, which is increasing and is being calmed down at a speed of 30 km/h. In Basel she would like to be able to activate the green light.

The siren sounds in the emergency room and firefighters immediately put on their uniforms and rush into the vehicles. But out on the street they get stuck in traffic jams – everyday life for the Basel professional fire department.

She should be at the scene within ten minutes, but that doesn’t work more and more often, especially in the Basel rural community of Riehen.

Legend:

If an alarm goes off, the Basel firefighters are in their clothes within 90 seconds and rush to the emergency vehicle, sometimes using a slide pole.

Keystone/Gaetan Bally (archive image)

“Of course that’s not satisfactory for us,” says Silvio Richner, a firefighter for 25 years. “There is already more traffic – the behavior of other road users often slows us down.” Basel has specifically purchased narrower new electric fire engines to make it easier to navigate tight curves.

Not only are queues of cars, trams and buses in the way, but also traffic calming measures such as speed limits of 30 km/h, staggered parking spaces or Cape stops. The fire brigade used to be faster, says deputy commander Gilbert Schneider, who has been there for 35 years.

We have to adapt to the traffic because the traffic does not adapt to us.

If there is a fire, they are likely to exceed the speed limit, but on 30 km/h sections, 60 km/h is practically impossible in traffic, says Roland Schielly, who has been extinguishing fires for 30 years. “We have to adapt to the traffic because the traffic doesn’t adapt to us.” The firefighters felt a lot of pressure when they were on the way to a fire where lives were at stake and then found themselves stuck in a traffic jam.

For the residents, 30 km/h speed is a blessing, but the fire brigade has a harder time getting out of the way because of slower vehicles. Schneider fears that with even more speed limits of 30 km/h and more bicycle lanes instead of car lanes, the fire department will be slowed down even more in the future.

That’s why the Basel fire department is toying with a system that has already proven itself in Bern: a green wave from the base to the neighborhoods, i.e. activated traffic lights. Schneider would like this for Basel’s main axes, on which the fire brigade is deployed. Today she can only set the traffic lights to red right in front of her front door so that she can move out unhindered.

The fire department in the city of Bern benefits from a prioritization of light signals: 26 so-called traffic light routes lead emergency vehicles from the base via main axes to the neighborhoods. Traffic lights are turned green for the fire department and crossings are turned red to keep them clear.

It is not the drivers themselves who individually switch traffic lights to green, but rather the routes are programmed using “funnel control”, as the fire brigade commander of Berne Protection and Rescue, Alain Sahli, explains to SRF. The travel times have been tested and adjusted in practice so that the green wave for the fire brigade works.

As a rule, three fire engines respond together; each has a passive transmitter built in. Bern’s traffic lights are programmed to stay green for ten seconds after one has passed through them – if the three drive in a row, they reach their destination together.

System proves itself

According to Sahli, the system works “very well”; The Bern fire department now uses it to drive more than 60 percent of the time in green phases through the sometimes dense city traffic. The time gain compared to before is not known. It’s primarily about safety, and this is achieved: there are hardly any accidents involving fire engines.

The price of this fire department prioritization is also not easy to quantify: According to Sahli, the system certainly caused additional costs, but it was implemented eight years ago in close cooperation with the city’s traffic planning department when the fire department moved into its new location on Murtenstrasse. Then the old traffic lights were ready to be replaced anyway.

The bottom line is that the green wave has proven its worth for the fire department: “We don’t want to be without it anymore,” says Sahli.

With this fire department prioritization in traffic, Bern is ahead of other cities. In the city of Zurich, firefighters can also switch traffic lights to green using a button when driving away from the station, but not for the entire rescue journey.

The system is currently being expanded in a trial. Zurich is testing an application that locates the vehicles and enables their route to the location. In an emergency, blue light organizations are allowed to run red lights and exceed the speed limit – as is common practice across the country – as long as they do not endanger anyone.