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By LISA GREENE
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 9, 2001
You are driving across Pinellas County and the lights turn green before you, as if they know you're coming.
They will, say local officials planning to time traffic lights, monitor traffic delays and use electronic message boards to notify motorists of accidents and alternate routes.
But roads don't stop at city limits. So to make the $18-million system work, cities and the county must work together.
For that to happen, key questions must be answered: Who will operate the system? Who will supervise employees? Who will buy and pay for equipment?
County Commissioner Karen Seel will meet today with St. Petersburg City Council members and next month with Clearwater city commissioners in an attempt to answer these questions.
"We want to be sure it's efficient and that you don't have several bosses trying to run the show," Seel said. "Let's say we have a disaster and we suddenly have three different directors telling three directions."
The current plan calls for a central county center, eventually to be built near the sheriff's Ulmerton Road office, to control traffic signals and signs along main corridors. And local satellite centers, electronically linked with the main one, would control local streets in St. Petersburg and Clearwater.
Locals say they should control lights on most local streets because they know where traffic backs up, when a Clearwater drawbridge breaks or a Devil Rays game ends.
"People in Clearwater are familiar with beach traffic, where someone on Ulmerton Road who doesn't know what happens on Clearwater Beach is going to have a hard time," said Paul Bertels, Clearwater traffic operations engineer.
County commissioners want one government, presumably the county, to manage and direct the system. But Bertels said he will recommend to Clearwater commissioners that employees from all three governments be used.
While local officials decide how the plan would work, the Florida Department of Transportation has hired a consultant to design a traffic system for four corridors in Pinellas: U.S. 19, Ulmerton Road, Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard and McMullen-Booth/East Lake Road. The FDOT would begin construction in 2003 and complete it in 2004, said Bill Wilshire, district engineer in charge of intelligent transportation systems.
Engineers couldn't say how much time motorists would save when the system is in place. But Bertels said that in 1988, when today's less sophisticated traffic signal timers were put in place, traffic delays dropped 25 percent.