"Those savings go back to the public [and] you can add in the environmental impact in reduced fuel consumption. It also removes some of the aggravation of red lights."

The objective with this technology is to better optimize traffic flows, such as giving priority to buses running "a little behind schedule," or to deal with bottlenecks that develop around breakdowns or accidents.

"There are all sorts of different ways you might provide priorities to different vehicles, including emergency vehicles," Goeldner said. "With better models of traffic flows we have a good understanding of what the traffic is doing. We update it with sensor information when one of the inductive loops fires or comes within range of one of our cameras that reinforces our model."

With base stations at each set of traffic lights, the wireless network would form a mesh grid so that any one node on the network would have several neighbors, making it more robust.

As for the number of base stations needed for the RTA's network, Goeldner said the 3500 sets of traffic lights in Sydney is a good approximation.