Stimulus Watch

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[edit] General Description

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[edit] Points in Favor

This type of project is important to the traffic operations in the area. I am a traffic signal engineer for a local agency in Washington State. I have Traconex controllers that are running 65 of our intersections. In the last few years, the Traconex brand has been sold several times, first from US Traffic to Quixote, then from Quixote to a Mexican company.

The Traconex line of controllers was an excellent line, during the 1980's, and into the 1990's. Unfortunately, the onstreet masters are not Y2K compliant (the vendor will tell you that they are, but if you enable a year beyond 1999 in the TMM500 C0 master (the current one that is available) the master will not operate properly, especially in Traffic Responsive mode.)

The Traconex PC software (Traconet) has not been updated since the mod 1990's. At this point, a traffic engineer needs to have a special computer, and laptop that is Windows 95, Windows 3.1 or DOS only, to run Traconet. The version of the Traconet software that runs the most advanced Traconex controller, the CJ-32 is exceptionally buggy, and causes stack errors, causing the computer to crash regularly.

The Traconex 390 line is difficult to get parts for. When I ordered two CJ-32's from Quixote two years ago, they were unaware that they even were supposed to build them, and asked me to send them a working model, so that they could reverse engineer it. They even had to ask me for a copy of a controller manual, since they did not have one, and needed to be able to photocopy it and give it back to me.

Quixote, and the new MExican company that currently owns the Traconex line is also unable to produce a manual for the TMM500 on-street master. The have provided the older A9 on-street master with the last C0 masters that they have provided. This should not be a problem, except that the masters are very different, and have no relevancy between the two. Quixote was unaware that they were supplying the wrong manual with the master, and when I pointed out the problem, once again, they asked me if I could provide them with a manual for the controller.

Quixote put a lot of effort into their Ubercontroller. This may, or may not be a good replacement. I find it interesting that the local vendor for Traconex will bring the Ubercontroller to IMSA and ITE trade shows, but won't plug one in. He also won't demo it, nor will he demo the PC based software. I don't know why, because I don't get a straight answer out of him. I would think that if he wants to sell them, he would show them off, which he has not for the last 3 years of trade shows I have attended.

Another problem is that the Traconex controller only communicates via FSK communications. This is not a problem, except that the internal modem is a special device, that only Traconex sells. At this point, the company is unwilling to say how many more of these modems they are going to sell, because their limited stock of chipsets for the FSK com is dwindling. In other words, there are a limited number of additional internal FSK modems available, and when they are gone, they are gone. There is a workaround for this, using an external FSK modem from GDI, but that appears to be a well known secret at best.

As far as the controller itself goes, it is a solid, though limited controller with few features. There are several significant problems with the controller. First the ring and barrier structure is very limited. The controller only handles 8 vehicle phases, peds and 4 overlaps. This means that if you want to do something like lead plus lag protected lefts, you can't. You can also not implement minus-ped overlaps, which can be a big deal.

The CJ-32 also had an interesting way of bringing back the upper 16 detectors. They did this by rewiring the traffic signal cabinet, and running these 16 detection inputs into the phase hold, and phase omit inputs into the NEMA pins on the controller. Blah Blah Blah. What this means is that because of the special wiring in the cabinet to accommodate the CJ-32, you need to replace the CJ-32 controller with a controller that allows you to reassign the inputs of the controller (NTCIP type) and always have to remember that the cabinet is "special". This is important, since with this hidden gem of the ghost of the CJ-32 controller in the signal cabinet, you may find that in the future, you have a vehicle call on the side street that actually omits the side street from being served, or a vehicle call on the main street that forces the controller to the side street. This can be worked around, in an NTCIP controller, however, it needs to be known.

There are lots of other things wrong.

The underlying problems are:

Traconex was a leader in the industry in the 1980's through the 1990's. Traconex is not consistent with the current traffic signal standards (either TS2 or NTCIP) Traconex has been eclipsed by almost everyone else in the industry Traconex is becoming very challenging to service Traconex 390 controllers have no PC software that will run on computers running Microsoft NT, XP or Vista operating systems There is a workaround for XP, where you have run the Traconet software in Virtual PC, however, this format does not work on PC's where there is no DB9 serial port on Com 1. Traconet will not run on a computer that has no serial DB9 port, even where the port is a virtual port with a USB connection. This is important, since most new laptops are being delivered without serial Com ports. Traconex is not Y2K compliant did I miss anything?

[edit] Points Against