Traffic light program aids vehicle flow, air quality

Back in 2008, several members so the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission noticed a chronic problem across the region: Traffic lights were in generally poor shape, both in their physical condition and their coordination.

So the planning agency created the Regional Traffic Signal Program that has invested $10.5 million over three four-year cycles to upgrade 148 intersections in 10 counties. The cycle completed last year spent nearly $4 million to improve 15 traffic corridors.

“A lot of these communities don’t have enough money to manage or coordinate signals well,” said Domenic D’Andrea, who oversees the program as SPC’s manager of operations and safety programs.

“The goal is to improve the operation of these intersections for all users of the corridor. The costs are not high, but the benefits can be great.”

Mr. D’Andrea said municipalities can apply for their projects to be included in the program, in which 80% of the costs are paid by federal funds and the municipalities pay 20%. Projects must involve more than one traffic light and intersection, and proposals

are ranked higher if they cover multiple communities.

The projects come in two categories: signals in coordination and signals in coordination with upgrades, which gets most of the requests.

The program is particularly important in Pennsylvania, Mr. D’Andrea said, because the state is one of only eight across the country where local municipalities actually own traffic lights. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation authorizes and issues permits for the lights, but maintenance and improvements are the responsibility of the municipalities.

Once a project has been approved, the corridor gets a full traffic study that becomes the property of the municipality.

“We’re involved from the study all the way to construction,” Mr. D’Andrea said. “They get the data; we get the benefit of improving the corridor for the region.”

The program usually involves improving equipment, coordinating the timing of lights and safety improvements at intersections at an average cost of $12,000 to $15,000 per intersection. It has installed a few adaptive signals, where computers control a series of lights on a main road to create free-flowing traffic, but they cost $50,000 to $75,000 per intersection.

Cranberry manager Jerry Andree said his growing community has used the program several times for improvements.

“We’re very aggressive in identifying where there might be money available,” he said. “Obviously, we’re becoming a more pedestrian-oriented community here, so we’re making changes at intersections to give people more time to cross the street. That SPC program has been really helpful.”

Funding for the program comes from the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program with goals of improving traffic and reducing air pollution. Based on a study by the agency, the 15 projects completed last year should reduce travel hours by 1.3 million a year, fuel consumption by 976,000 gallons and vehicle pollutants by 118 tons.

Drivers will also stop 18 million less times, improving travel time by about 23%.

For example, the agency says a project to coordinate lights on Route 356 in Butler and Butler Township allows drivers to move through the 1.8-mile corridor 20 seconds faster with only one stop at the seven traffic signals instead of five stops. A similar project on Walnut Street in McKeesport reduced travel time by 31 seconds with one stop at six lights instead of two.

Mr. D’Andrea said the SPC program also shed light on the traffic signal problem across the state. As a result, PennDOT created two additional programs.

Under the Automated Red Light Enforcement program, cameras catch speeding motorists on Roosevelt Boulevard near Philadelphia and mail them traffic tickets with the money earmarked for signal improvements across the state. Since it began in 2010, the state has spent $8.5 million in this region, all of it state money.

Through the Green Light Go program that started in 2014, $14 million has been spent on signal improvements in this region, 80% of it federal money and the rest state or local.

“I would say the last five, six years have been a really good time to improve traffic signals,” Mr. D’Andrea said.