When two trucks collided on the 210 Freeway in Pasadena last month, not only was traffic backed up to Glendale, but the Metro Gold Line couldn’t travel beyond Lake Avenue because the power supply pole had melted from the truck fire.

The gridlock clogged the 210, 134, 2 and 10 freeways, jammed surface streets in Pasadena and dumped hundreds of unhappy train riders onto Metro buses.

“It left traffic at a virtual standstill and had motorists asking themselves, ‘When am I going to get out of this mess?’ ” recalled Sam Esquenazi, traffic manager for Caltrans District 7, which includes all of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

In two years, incidents that trap motorists for hours could become a thing of the past.

Caltrans and the U.S. Department of Transportation are readying the first integrated corridor management plan in the Los Angeles region, set to launch in 2016. The project will transform a 22-mile portion of the 210 Freeway into a “smart corridor” using roadway sensors and location information from motorist cell phones to funnel real-time data to traffic websites, media outlets, 5-1-1 operators, freeway ramp meters and electronic message signs.

The integrated approach will link traffic engineers from Caltrans with their counterparts in local cities as well as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates buses and the Gold Line light-rail line in the corridor, during a major incident, said John Augustine, managing director of the intelligent transportation systems office of the DOT in Washington, D.C.

If all local, state, federal agencies work together, the extreme traffic effects of a tractor-trailer crash or a mudslide that blocks vehicle lanes can be mitigated, Augustine said.

“We can start to talk to one another which is not something we do now, not very well,” Esquenzai told the Pasadena City Council on May 5.

For example, traffic engineers from Caltrans can post delays on freeway signs or adjust freeway meters at on- and off-ramps, said Patrick Chandler, Caltrans spokesman.

Real-time traffic flow on websites such as Google Maps and Caltrans’ quickmap would be up-to-date, Chandler said. Getting location data from cell phones — a form of big data — would be another bit of information used to make immediate adjustments and calculate traffic signal times on city surface streets, Chandler said.

Often, traffic lights in and around stadiums near the 210 Freeway, such as the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, don’t mesh with Caltrans signals or ramp meters. Often, city traffic signals revert to a default setting during off-peak hours when an event lets out, causing longer waits for motorists both nearby and a mile or two from a venue, Augustine said.

“Traffic signal timing is not as dynamic as it could be because there is not enough real-time data,” he said.

With more data, traffic engineers can change the timing on the red, yellow and green lights, he said, and transit officials can add capacity to light-rail trains. “We can reduce bottlenecks based on different techniques,” he said.

The concept involves gathering technical data. But just as important is breaking down the silos of government and getting jurisdictions to work together, Augustine said.

“Can we coordinate a little better and share information across boundaries and across agencies,” Augustine said.

For example, when a tanker truck caught fire on the 2 Freeway near the 5 Freeway in July, spilling 8,500 gallons of fuel into the Los Angeles River, segments of the two freeways were shut down but the massive backups occurred around Elysian Park, Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Echo Park and the incident affected traffic going to Dodger Stadium — miles from the incident.

Chandler said the city of Los Angeles was not called until the second day to help with traffic control. When officers were sent to direct traffic, the bottleneck was mitigated. “Sometimes in the past, they didn’t talk to others that well,” he said.

The first phase of the project would run from Pasadena to Duarte and include the cities of Arcadia and Monrovia, Esquenazi said. A second phase would run from the 605 Freeway to the 57 Freeway and include the cities of Irwindale, Azusa, Glendora and San Dimas.

The 210 Freeway was chosen as the pilot project because it has general-purpose lanes, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and light rail line running down the middle of the freeway, as well as nearby bus routes and bike lanes, said Carrie Bowen, director of Caltrans District 7.

The freeway experiences gridlock each day and transverses multiple cities and transit agencies, a testing ground for the coordinated approach to traffic management, Augustine said.

In 2013, the freeway experienced 6,000 incidents, or about 500 a month, Esquenazi said. Incidents are responsible for 60 percent of traffic tie-ups, he added.

There are no shortage of freeway incidents involving fires, overturned big-rigs or multi-car pileups in Southern California. Incident management will be the initial focus of the corridor management projects, Augustine said.

“If we are successful with this demo project, we will expand to 50 other ICM projects (in Southern California),” Bowen said.