Description
PLEASSEEEEEEE work to better coordinate the lights on RT7 and Battery. Many times your light turns green and you get to the next light and it turns red. I am pretty sure the lights on RT7 add more issues to the traffic problems than they solve. I am no traffic engineer but it makes sense to move the main flow of traffic efficiently as a first priority. Many people complain about this issue.
4 Comments
Acknowledged DPW Pine Customer Service (Verified Official)
Traffic Signal Engineer (Verified Official)
Traffic Signal Engineer (Verified Official)
Closed Traffic Signal Engineer (Verified Official)
Going to close this for now. Was considering changing phase rotations, meaning the order the movements come up, for a possibly better flow. This makes more sense with a signal upgrade at Home Avenue, which would allow such a thing if necessary.
Responding to the "Light turns green, then you hit a red" statement, where it appears the expectation is green, green, green.
There is always room for improving traffic flow through a group of signals. Watch for trends. Tweak, adjust, modify. In the real world though, as much as we can throw technology at the problem, there will never be a "perfect" progression, meaning catching green, green, green in normal traffic flow.
We can do this to a certain extent on one-way streets. At 25 mph, it took 29 seconds, then 27, and so on to hit the next green on Park Street southbound, for instance. North Street's pattern changed years ago so this is no longer possible. On two-way streets progression will always be a compromise. What helps one direction almost always comes at the expense of the other.
Battery Street has a pretty decent progression both ways, all day. Not perfect, but it handles the major flows well. Going uphill, north, after it goes green at College, you may catch a red light at Cherry. When Cherry turns green maybe another small delay at Pearl. Once through Pearl, you are just about guaranteed to make it through Sherman on a green. Not perfect, but pretty good as these go.
Same with Shelburne Road. There is a pretty good chance of making it from Prospect Parkway to Ramp C (I-189) on a green. Or if stopped in the middle, making it the rest of the way on green. By design. Again, not perfect, but pretty good.
There is an annoying problem now on Shelburne Road at Prospect Parkway. A loop sensor, wires embedded in the pavement, has broken again, so we are obligated to have the signal change to account for the possibility of traffic wanting to cross. We end up stopping Shelburne Road over and over for no reason. It has to be done, but is highly frustrating. The pavement is a private driveway, and has deteriorated to where trying to patch it again is not worthwhile. If the property owner wanted to repave the driveway, we would be glad to repair the loop, and the signal could dwell in green, like it used to, for lack of side-street traffic. It is a larger problem than "just go fix it."
Took a close look at Shelburne Road today. Two of the five signals were three seconds off, which was corrected. Not bad. Battery Street was looked at closely last week. Just about perfectly in step with each other, by design. There are ways to gain even more efficiency out of groups of signals. They don't come for free, costing thousands and thousands of dollars to add detection and communication equipment to each signal along with coordination software. It is a major undertaking.
For our given infrastructure, in which signals run pre-planned patterns for known traffic peaks, and keep synchronized with each other through a very stable 60 Hertz line frequency, Burlington is fortunate that we can move so many people through our system both safely and efficiently.
The Department of Public Works has resolved this request. Thanks for helping to keep Burlington a great place to live and work.