Officials want new LR lights to ease traffic
Signals track congestion, adapt times to vehicle flow
Little Rock wants to ease congestion on major corridors without embarking on a major construction effort to widen those heavily traveled roadways.
Officials in the state’s capital have said they believe they can improve traffic flow, reduce congestion, spur faster commute times and decrease fuel costs by installing traffic-signal systems on key corridors that adapt to traffic conditions.
The cost for those systems is estimated at $4.8 million, which is a little more than it would cost to widen a single mile of an urban road from two lanes to five lanes — $4.7 million, according to the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.
What’s more, city officials have said the systems also would reduce traffic crashes, the resulting injuries and deaths, and, thus, emergency response costs.
“The city believes they will have a tremendously positive impact on the traveling public in the city of Little Rock and in the central Arkansas region,” Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said.
Most traffic signals can only be programmed to change intervals at set times to synchronize with traffic volumes engineers know will occur at certain times, cycling through green, yellow and red one way for the evening and morning rushes, and cycling at different intervals at other parts of the day.
The new technology, however, continually measures traffic flow along a given corridor and sets signal-light intervals to correspond to the most optimal traffic flow, given the amount of traffic, backers have said.
The city has formally applied for a grant from Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas, to install the new system on seven major transportation corridors. The corridors include: Cantrell Road from Kavanaugh Boulevard to Taylor Loop Road — The 6.8-mile stretch averages 36,000 vehicles per day and has 16 intersections with traffic signals. The estimated cost of installing the adaptive signal-control system is about $60,000 per intersection, or $960,000.
The West Traffic System — It encompasses four major roadways in west Little Rock that the city classifies as one system — Chenal Parkway, South Shackleford Road, Kanis Road and West Markham Street. The average daily traffic count ranges from 19,000 vehicles on Kanis to 35,000 vehicles on Chenal. The area already has 11 adaptive signal-control systems in place; the city wants to add 18 more at a cost of $1,080,000.
Other corridors the city identified as candidates for the new systems include North Rodney Parham Road
(12 intersections), Geyer Springs Road and Base Line Road (nine intersections each), and Roosevelt Road from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Interstate 30 and John Barrow Road (eight intersections each).
Maumelle also is seeking a grant to fund a similar project focused on Maumelle Boulevard, also called Arkansas 100. North Little Rock and Pulaski County also are participating in that project because the heavily traveled highway crosses all three jurisdictions.
That project calls for adaptive signal-control systems on 13 intersections — six in Maumelle, five in North Little Rock and two in Pulaski County. In a letter of interest submitted earlier this fall, Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson estimated the cost at $30,000 to $42,000 per intersection, with total cost not exceeding $546,000.
He noted that a state Highway and Transportation Department study found an adaptive signal-control system was warranted and would have a “significant impact on vehicle delay along the Highway 100 corridor.”
The road carries up to 45,000 vehicles daily.
A total of eight jurisdictions have submitted letters of interest seeking a total of $10.7 million for 16 projects under Metroplan’s Regional Strategic Network Optimi- zation Improvement. About $10 million in federal transportation money designated for Metroplan has been set aside for the program, which focuses on improvements to the regional arterial network, a system of noninterstate highways in central Arkansas.
Eligible projects include the signal coordination projects, intersection improvements, bicycle connections and transit technology.
Metroplan has been looking for a way to enlist the technology for several years, said Casey Covington, the director of the Central Arkansas Regional Transportation Study, which is Metroplan’s ongoing cooperative effort to implement a long-range transportation plan for the region.
Most recently, the agency hosted the president and chief executive officer of a company that has developed and marketed its own adaptive signal-control system so the region’s mayors and county judges can see how the technology works.
“But this is the first time we’ve had the opportunity to fund these kind of projects,” Covington said.
The projects still have several hurdles to jump before they are funded, Covington said.
All the projects will have to undergo a preliminary engineering analysis to determine whether the system will ease congestion enough to warrant moving forward with the projects, he said.
The Maumelle-led project is a little further along because it already has the Highway Department study showing such a system is warranted.
Each of the projects also will be reviewed by the agency’s technical coordinating committee, composed of the region’s traffic engineers.
That committee will make its recommendations to the full Metroplan board of directors, which will have the final decision, Covington said.
He anticipates that “several corridors will be funded,” he said.