‘Smart’ lights near for busy thoroughfare

Signals to adapt to traffic on Maumelle Boulevard

There are 13 traffic signals along the Maumelle Boulevard corridor waiting to get “smart,” something North Little Rock and Maumelle officials said will happen by summer to help with traffic flow, five years after initiating the project.

The InSync adaptive traffic control system, developed by Rhythm Engineering of Lenexa, Kan., is an “intelligent transportation system” that enables traffic signals to adapt to actual traffic demand. Maumelle contracted with Rhythm Engineering to install the system that North Little Rock’s Traffic Services Department will then operate and maintain.

The adaptive traffic signal control system will operate traffic lights along Maumelle Boulevard, also known as Arkansas 100, and a small part of Crystal Hill Road off one end of the boulevard and Arkansas 365 at the other end. Six of the traffic signals are within Maumelle city limits, five in North Little Rock and two in an unincorporated part of Pulaski County.

“The adaptive equipment is starting to be acquired,” North Little Rock Chief Engineer Chris Wilbourn said recently. “That’s the equipment necessary to run their adaptive system. It interfaces with the traffic controllers.”

Getting a final design plan is the next step, Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson said, then implementing the “smart signals” that “talk” to each other to synchronize themselves to move traffic along.

“The plans are how you do everything,” Watson said. “The equipment is just something that goes inside the controllers. It will takes several months to get it installed and let the system learn itself for a few weeks.

“Rhythm Engineering will do the actual programming of the signals, get them talking to each other and syncing with one another,” Watson said. “I think by summer it will be operational. It may be earlier, but they’ll have to tweak it and do other things. It will probably be in by springtime, then finally working correctly by summertime.”

It’s a project that has been in the works since 2013, with project bids opened in 2015. Meanwhile, traffic has steadily increased along Maumelle Boulevard, the only way in or out of Maumelle. The city has an estimated 18,500 residents, Watson said. Plans for a third entrance for Maumelle have also been slow to develop.

Maumelle and North Little Rock have completed an extension of Counts Massie Road, which comes off the boulevard and will eventually tie into a planned interchange at Interstate 40.

Maumelle will be responsible for the interchange’s construction and has scheduled a March special election for a proposed new 1 percent city sales tax, with one-half percent to go toward backing a bond issue to build the interchange.

With the addition of a residential expansion at the North Little Rock end of the boulevard and an increasing number of businesses on it, a way to relieve traffic congestion has been needed for some time.

“In 2013 was when I made my first trip to Lenexa, Kan.,” Watson said of his push for the adaptive traffic signal system. “Anytime you get involved with these type of projects it just seems to take twice as long as you ever thought it would, and sometimes longer than that.

“If you had asked me 11 years ago about the interchange, I would have told you we’d be done with that and be using it by now,” he said. “There are things you don’t realize you’ll have to do, especially if you have environmental issues involved.”

The Maumelle Boulevard project has taken longer than others that have been installed in Little Rock and Conway because of the multiple jurisdictions involved.

The project involves not only Maumelle, North Little Rock and the county but also Metroplan, the region’s longrange transportation planning agency, and the Arkansas Department of Transportation because the boulevard is also a state highway.

The 13 traffic signals extend from the traffic light at the NorthShore Business Park entrance off Crystal Hill Road past the Interstate 430 interchange off Maumelle Boulevard/Crystal Hill Road to the current Interstate 40 interchange off Arkansas 365 in the Morgan area.

“So there are five entities involved who have to look at it and touch it and feel it and see it and all that,” Watson said.

Because Maumelle doesn’t have a traffic services department, the Maumelle City Council in 2015 agreed to allow its neighbor to run the system once it’s installed. The Federal Highway Administration requires there be a primary control center.

“At the end it will be turned over to North Little Rock to maintain,” said Wilbourn, who is also North Little Rock’s traffic services director. “My department will run it, and we’ll probably have a maintenance agreement set up with the InSync folks.”