Here’s an illustration of what rejiggering traffic light timing can accomplish to ameliorate traffic congestion on a micro level: The Virginia Department of Transportation has cut in half the time it takes to drive a three-stoplight stretch of State Route 2 in Spotsylvania County, traversed by more than 22,000 cars a day.
Reports the Free Lance-Star:
VDOT has changed the signal timing to cycle more cars through the bottleneck. Now, once a driver reaches the Lansdowne signal, it should take about 2 1/2 minutes to pass Shannon Park Drive, which is adjacent to a Wawa gas station.
That’s down 46 percent from the previous wait of 4.7 minutes.
VDOT engineers added a new sequence of timing options. The three signals have weekday morning, midday and afternoon schedules, a weekend schedule, and an off-peak schedule. Under the old timing schedule, the signals had only morning and afternoon patterns.
So simple. So cost effective. Sadly, there’s no juice in it for the political class, so Virginia doesn’t give the attention to traffic light synchronization that it deserves.
