CRANBERRY TWP — The township supervisors Wednesday night bought a new traffic management system that works with real-time data instead of the current program that works based on the time of day.

Township Manager Jerry Andree said the new system will be installed at several intersections on both Freedom and Rochester roads for $62,500, which is half the cost of the project.

The remaining 50 percent of the project will be paid for by a grant through the Southwest Planning Commission.

Andree said the new software will use real-time data to adjust traffic signals and the times they spend in green or red mode. The new technology, called an “adaptive signal system,” will be the first of its kind in Cranberry.

The township currently has a system that adjusts traffic signals based on the time of day. That kind of system can be faulty, Andree said, if hypothetically there’s an accident on Interstate 79 that pushes traffic onto Route 19 in the middle of the afternoon.

“If suddenly we see 79 is shut down and we get a glob of traffic at 2 in the afternoon, this new system would adjust,” Andree said. “They’re called adaptive because they adapt themselves to real-time traffic.”

Andree said the new technology is part of a master plan to update the entire traffic grid in Cranberry to more efficient technology.

This kind of “next-level technology” will be needed because roads are only going to continue to see more traffic as the population grows, Andree said.

“It’s expensive but it’s definitely the way we need to go to move traffic more efficiently,” he said.

After buying the software Wednesday night, Andree said it will take three to four months for it to be fully implemented.