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Town crews trim low-lying trees, update traffic system and add fiber optic cable

Crews update traffic system, add ?ber optic cable

Bartlett Tree Experts cut and trimmed trees on S. Estes across from University Mall. They are clearing the area to install fiber optic power cables. The trees are chopped up and turned into mulch or taken to a recycling center.
Tim Horton of Bartlett Tree Experts trims the trees to clear the area for new fiber optic cables.
Bartlett Tree Experts cut and trimmed trees on S. Estes across from University Mall. They are clearing the area to install fiber optic power cables. The trees are chopped up and turned into mulch or taken to a recycling center. Tim Horton of Bartlett Tree Experts trims the trees to clear the area for new fiber optic cables.

Chapel Hill motorists and computer geeks alike might not mind the inconvenience of stray branches being trimmed by the road after new traffic and fiber optic systems are installed.

Town crews started trimming low-lying trees on communication cables earlier this month in order to continue upgrading its traffic system, a project started in 2010, town urban forester Curtis Brooks said.

The trimming is expected to continue through March, and the project is expected to be completed by August 2012.

The town plans to upgrade about 115 outdated traffic signals in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, said Kumar Neppalli, town engineering services manager. He said the new system will improve traffic flow.

“The existing technology is 14 to 15 years old. It is not efficient, which creates more delays,” Neppalli said. “The new system has 12 to 14 cameras that allow us to see any traffic condition problems so we can monitor from traffic control and reduce delays for the motoring public.”

When the town installs the updated traffic system, crews will also put in new fiber optics technology because the cables for both projects are in the same place.

About 30 miles of municipal fiber optic cable will connect 15 town facilities, like the police and fire departments. The project, for which planning began in 2001, would provide high-speed data communications to facilitate voice, data and video services between the facilities.

The new connections should speed communication between different town services, making them more efficient, Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said.

“We could see communication benefits that we can’t even conceive of today,” he said. “We hope to realize significant cost savings.”

The new cables could also be used to increase the entire town’s connectivity. The project might be used to boost connectivity for schools in the future as well.

Chapel Hill Town Council member Laurin Easthom said she sees many opportunities for the new system.

“From that backbone, you can provide wireless broadband services to everyone in town,” she said.

The project could be an advantage for the town as Google continues to consider applications for an experimental fiber network, which the company said will be more than 100 times faster than what most residents use.

Google announced in February 2010 plans to choose one or more locations nationwide to test the new fiber network by the end of the year. However, the selection was delayed in December until 2011.

“It was one of the appealing parts of our application for Google,” Easthom said. “We were actually going to save them a lot of money in the long run.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided most of the $5 million in funding for the two projects.

Contact the City Editor at city@dailytarheel.com.

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