FAA Testing Runway Incursion Prevention Technology

The FAA is testing a new system at SAN that illuminates red lights on taxiways to prevent aircraft from crossing runways while planes are taking off or landing. Sounds simple enough, but this is the FAA. While growing number of runway incursions are one of the most critical problems faced by the FAA, it will still be many years before the system is implemented at the nation's busiest airports.

:arrow: Runway system being tested could save lives [LA Times]

Instead of an expensive and potentially unreliable automated system, why not just put hockey goal judge booths at strategic locations on runways manned by humans that simply switch the light on and off when appropriate?

Runway guard lights exist at most major airports within the United States and consist of either a pair of elevated flashing yellow lights installed on either side of the taxiway, or a row of in-pavement yellow lights installed across the entire taxiway, at the runway holding position marking. I think what they are essentially engineering is a plan to convert the guard lights (and taxiway centerline lead-on lights) to a stop bar light complex (which are currently only used when the RVR is below 1,200 feet at select airports) and software to automatically control the stop bar system. It's going to be an interesting system seeing as controlled stop bars are currently operated mechanically by controllers, but the potential to use ASDE data exists if they can figure out how to fix the current system bugs. I'll have to ask my friend Gary more about this; he was involved with quite a few intricate airport lighting systems (mechanically, automatically, and magnetically operated) the FAA was engineering about 10 years ago after retiring as a controller and airport manager.

I know at DTW they have both the flashing yellows on the side of the taxiways and the in-pavement spinning lighting system. They installed both after the NW 727/MD-80 runway incursion incident many years back.

They've done limited testing over the years at DFW. I don't think it uses the wig-wag setup at all. I believe it's completely different. They use it in Europe and it's a pretty big success.