Vancouver mayoral candidate pitches $200-million city-wide plan for coordinated traffic signals, including signal priority for TransLink buses
Currently, there are city-wide issues where intersection capacity is limited by how traffic signal time is allocated, and it is often wasted through poor coordination. Green time may be given where little demand exists, while queues build elsewhere on a corridor, conflicting movements can slow both pedestrians and vehicles, and single-occupancy cars are prioritized in the same way as high-capacity buses. A modernized system can improve throughput by matching timing to demand, reducing conflicts, and prioritizing movements that carry more people.
Such a project amounts to upgrading Vancouver’s outdated traffic signals, which are largely disconnected from any operating network and are run on timers, with many traffic signal-controlled intersections also controlled by pedestrian crosswalk push buttons.
Azaroff deems the overhaul to be part of a new “city-wide smart grid,” enabling traffic light patterns to be managed centrally. The City of Vancouver’s traffic control centre would be modernized to allow City staff to make real-time adjustments to optimize traffic flow, with the potential added use of artificial intelligence to optimize the adjustments.
New traffic signals that are connected to a city-wide computerized network could measure demand through sensors, including differentiating cars, buses, and other vehicles. It would also enable the collection of data to improve traffic movement strategies.
According to TransLink, traffic-signal priority for its buses could reduce travel times for buses by up to 18 per cent, based on having systems that detect buses approaching an intersection and adjust signal times accordingly. TransLink’s 2023 report on bus speed and reliability in Metro Vancouver notes that growing congestion and the resulting delays to buses have increased the public transit authority’s annual bus operating costs by over $80 million — just from the need to deploy more buses to sustain the established bus frequencies and capacities.
So far, working with municipal governments, TransLink’s bus speed and priority measures have largely focused on curbside bus lanes, bus stop balancing efforts, and bus bulbs, with limited traffic signal-priority implementation. But that would change with TransLink’s future projects to build Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines.
William Azaroff. (Supplied)
There are many traffic signals across Vancouver, which makes Azaroff’s project and expedited timeline an ambitious goal.
Currently, Vancouver’s municipal government operates about 590 controlled intersections with traffic controllers coded with five to seven different signal timing plans — morning, peak, off-peak, evening, overnight, weekend plans, emergency mode, and special events. There are still 815 controllers in need of replacement.
There already is an effort by the City to modernize its traffic signals, with the project that first began in 2018 aiming to achieve 30 to 45 traffic controller replacements annually. However, between 2020 and 2025, according to Azaroff, the actual performance has averaged 16 controller replacements per year.
Azaroff states that at this current rate of implementation, it would take decades more, perhaps late into this century, to fully modernize traffic signals across Vancouver.
Instead, he wants to expedite all of this work under an eight-year implementation plan by 2035, which could cost roughly between $88 million and $200 million, including up to $73 million for 815 units of traffic controller replacements, up to $15 million for signal communications infrastructure, up to $9 million for traffic-signal priority and bus detection, up to $12 million for pedestrian detection systems, up to $35 million for traffic control centre upgrades, and $7 million for university research and evaluation efforts.
Under this program supported by such a budget, the City would increase its pace of traffic controller replacements to 102 per year — more than six times the average recorded in the first half of this decade. The effort would be phased, initially prioritizing select corridors with major bus ridership.
Azaroff suggests this project could be funded by the City’s existing capital cost reserves for street maintenance.
“Vancouver doesn’t need more chaos and excuses,” said Azaroff in a statement today. “We need competence and coordination — starting with the corridors people use every day.”
Examples of major municipal jurisdictions that have undergone such computerized traffic signal management overhauls include the City of Calgary and the City of Montreal. Both cities have upgraded their systems by adopting the TransSuite technology developed by Tennessee-based TransCore.
In 2020, Calgary’s municipal government completed the upgrade, connecting 1,100 traffic signals to its new central traffic control system using the new technology, which sends information on the traffic conditions on a per-second basis, as opposed to the previous system of per-minute. The system also interacts with the C-Train LRT system, some bus routes, and some fire truck routes by providing priority for these vehicles at signalized intersections.
Under this system, Calgary has 70 corridors and 540 signalized intersections with coordinated and synchronized traffic signals.
The City of Surrey also has plans to make major upgrades to its traffic management strategy through the adoption of similar technologies. Currently, the City of Surrey’s traffic control centre already receives automated alerts from traffic signals and sensors, which can monitor issues like collisions, stalled vehicles, and construction and road work.
For the OneCity party’s top nomination, Azaroff is running against Amanda Burrows. The party is scheduled to select their mayoral candidate on Feb. 11, 2026, with nominations for Vancouver City Council, Vancouver Park Board, and Vancouver School Board selected in May 2026. The civic election is scheduled for Oct. 17, 2026.
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