Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012

Raleigh seeks to give drivers more green

$28 million overhaul aims to cut commutes by 10 percent

Commuters on major Raleigh thoroughfares may soon stop at fewer red lights, thanks to an overhaul of the city’s stoplight timing system that has been years in the making.

The $28 million project is intended to move the heaviest traffic through long stretches of green lights – an approach that eases congestion and reduces air pollution.

But before you start dreaming of a brake-free glide to work, keep in mind that city officials estimate the new system will cut commute times by 10 percent. In other words, if your drive now takes 10 minutes, it will take nine under the improved timing.

While that’s a modest benefit for an individual driver, the value comes from spreading it over the entire city, said Mike Kennon, the city’s transportation operations manager.

“When you multiply that by 50,000 vehicles a day (on a particular road), it has a huge impact,” Kennon said.

The project has encountered delays. Improvements were supposed to debut in late 2010, but planning and behind-the-scenes equipment work pushed back the schedule.

Bob Edmundson is among the local drivers eager for relief. He says the stoplight at Blue Ridge and Duraleigh roads in West Raleigh leaves him waiting for long periods, even when there is no opposing traffic.

“My fear is that these kinds of things...are years later than the need,” Edmundson said. “Such is life in a growing city I suppose.”

City officials aren’t giving a specific timeframe for each phase, other than saying the entire system should be installed by 2014.

The city is responsible for just one-fourth of the $28 million cost, with the rest covered by state and federal air quality grants.

Creaky network

In the basement of city hall, four staffers monitor Raleigh’s major roads on a bank of flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall.

Their job is to watch for traffic jams and adjust stoplight timing patterns based on what they see. The room might be small and windowless, but the work done in the city’s traffic control center affects thousands every day.

As part of the upgrade project, a consultant is reviewing signal timing plans and devising new plans for corridors that previously suffered from outdated technology under the old system.

It’s all part of an effort to modernize a creaky, copper-wired signal network that can no longer keep pace.

Contractors are almost finished stringing the city with 210 miles of fiber optic cable – some buried, some overhead – to link the traffic control center with new control boxes at 611 intersections.

With video cameras to be installed at 40 new locations, traffic engineers will be able to see more accidents and other problems that create instant traffic jams. They’ll have more power to change the red-light, green-light timing at nearby intersections, to break up the gridlock.

Sprawling Triangle

Traffic problems are, in part, a consequence of the Triangle’s sprawled development. From 1990 to 2000, the average commute time in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill metro area increased by 23 percent.

Here’s some better news: The typical Wake County commuter takes about 24 minutes to get to work each day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

That’s a minute quicker than the national time. With a new generation of “smart” signals, it’s possible to save an additional minute or two for Raleigh drivers, city officials say.

“You’ve got to look at the collective whole for a project of this scope,” said Jed Niffenegger, a senior transportation engineer.