The DeKalb County Georgia Traffic Engineering Department is like many Traffic Engineering Departments around the Country. As our population grows, our traffic engineering assets increase as well, all in an effort to accommodate the needs of our community. Currently the Traffic Engineering Department is responsible for the operation and maintenance of a fully functional Traffic Control Center, 714 traffic signals, 300 school flashers and 74 intersection beacons. The County owns 34 CCTV cameras and has operational access to an additional 390 cameras in the Metro Atlanta area. Two thirds of the County's traffic signals are in coordinated systems and are connected to the Traffic Control Center with dozens of miles of fiber optic cable, copper interconnect cable, and telephone dial-up. Like most municipalities, Dekalb County has struggled in the past to strike a reasonable balance between responding to emergency traffic signal malfunctions, a 'fix it when it breaks' mentality, and establishing a more formalized traffic signal preventive maintenance program. In the fall of 2005 the DeKalb County Traffic Engineering Department took the plunge and implemented a formalized traffic signal preventive maintenance program. As a part of the program there was a scheduled visit to each traffic signal, intersection beacon, and each school flasher within the jurisdiction of DeKalb County. A detailed inspection of a previously determined list of components of the signalized devices was performed. Those components were inspected, cleaned, and replaced as needed; an effective preventive maintenance approach. Each device was formally inspected again in 2006, and again in 2007. The benefits resulting from those annual inspections and preventive maintenance activities have been outstanding. This paper will share the preventive maintenance activities undertaken by the DeKalb County Georgia Traffic Engineering Department over a three-year period and show the enormous benefits received as a result of those efforts. DeKalb's efforts and results have once again proven the old adage, "An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure".
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