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Green lights easier to get
By WILL VAN SANT BROOKSVILLE -- Over the past decade, the number of miles driven daily on county roads has ballooned by 50 percent to 3.3-million. Those numbers translate into road congestion and increasingly frustrated drivers, particularly during the tourist season and at peak travel times. Since October, the state Department of Transportation has been working on a project meant to ease traffic flow and make life easier for motorists. Though officials caution not to expect miracles -- even as they work, more people move to the county -- they figure to bring considerable improvements. "I will be disappointed if they don't see a difference," said DOT signals system engineer Keith Crawford. "We have a lot of effort in this." Crawford works out of the DOT's District 7 office in Tampa, which covers Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties. He is overseeing an effort to link traffic signals in Hernando to a central computer that will coordinate all the reds, greens and yellows in the county. Twenty miles of fiber optic cable is being strung on existing utility poles or buried along major county roads. Signals in more isolated areas are connecting to the system through standard copper wiring. Workers are installing detectors beneath roadways. When the system is finished -- completion is expected mid summer -- the detectors will transmit information on traffic volume to a computer in a control room at the new Department of Public Works building under construction in Brooksville. This information on traffic volume in hand, the computer will select a "signal schedule" for a given road and relay its choice to traffic lights. The signal schedule essentially tells a light when to be red, green or yellow. For any road, the computer will have several schedules to choose from. Currently, most lights in the county are on individual timers, an antiquated approach to signalization. In fact, Hernando is behind the times, being the last county in the DOT district not to have any centralized, computer-based signal system. Take the man sitting in his car at an intersection at 3 a.m. His fingers tap the wheel as he waits for what seems forever for a red to turn green. That man is a victim of an individual timer. The new system, according to planners, would let the signal know traffic is light and tell it to switch between reds and greens with greater frequency. Charles Mixson, director of the county Engineer's Office, said four employees are being trained to run the system and four more to maintain it. Outside hires are not needed, Mixson said, because there's not much work involved. "You walk in there first thing in the morning and see how it's doing, making sure there are no glitches . . . then maybe go in again around 5," he said. "It's not something that needs constant monitoring." There will still be red lights, of course, and driving at erratic speeds will confuse the issue, but Mixson said drivers should expect more "green time" on major roads like U.S. 19 and State Road 50. "Now when you come up to a light, the chances of hitting a green are like 50/50," he said, but with the new system "it might be 80 percent." The project, solely funded by federal grants to the DOT, is being completed at a cost of $1.5-million. -- Will Van Sant covers Hernando County government and can be reached at 754-6127. Send e-mail to vansant@sptimes.com
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