Drivers on Broward Boulevard might have already noticedall of the green traffic lights.
For the first time in years, drivers commuting into or out of downtown Fort Lauderdale on Broward Boulevard can actually make it a mile, or two, or three, or four, or more, without hitting a single red light.
The same is true on University Drive in the center of the county, where drivers are hitting more green lights than ever. They're spending less time sitting at the reds.
The outcry from angry drivers finally has been heard. Broward County officials just announced that they've re-timed traffic signals on the eastern part of Broward Boulevard and much of University Drive, so drivers traveling the speed limit will hit green light after green light after green light.
The maddening stop-and-go that drivers endure all over will be eased by early 2011, county officials promise. Signals on 19 major east-west corridors, plus the entire north-south stretches of U.S. 1 and University Drive in Broward County, will be re-timed.
After that, a year's worth of more complicated and expensive synchronization is promised; it would re-time more of the road network, adding north-south roads to finesse what traffic engineers call the "basket weave" of intersecting streets.
"We can't promise all green lights," Broward public works director Thomas Hutka said, "but we're reducing the number of times you stop at red lights.''
Hutka was hired last year and made the synchronizing of lights "absolutely a priority.'' He brought the top traffic engineers into one office — they named themselves the Green Light Strike Force — and they work on re-timing signals every day. A website's been set up, and a phone hotline is ready; both will be used to solicit opinions from the driving public.
Hutka said the Strike Force set out two months ago to make a noticeable improvement to signal snarl using existing staff and hardware, at no additional cost to the county taxpayers. The team re-timed lights on Broward Boulevard from University Drive east to U.S. 1., and on University Drive, from Oakland Park Boulevard to Griffin Road.
With the exception of University Drive and U.S. 1, the team's initial signal timing efforts are focused on east-west roads because north-south commuters have high-speed options via Interstate 95, Florida's Turnpike and the Sawgrass Expressway/Interstate 75.
The next complicated step will be timing signals on north-south roads and coordinating them with east-west routes.
The work is part of a 15-year, $85.6 million overhaul of the signal network.
Timing traffic signals in a progression for drivers is an industry standard and "one of the most cost-effective ways to improve traffic flows and reduce motorist travel time," county auditor Evan Lukic noted in a 2008 investigation.
Drivers pleaded for it. County commissioners promised it.
Yet, the auditor's office found, Broward County failed to deliver it, falling far short of "industry best practice.'' The county devoted insufficient staff to the work and let years pass without revisiting signals on heavily traveled thoroughfares such as Griffin Road.
The result of the county's lackluster work: Drivers in Broward County the past decade spent more time at red lights than they should have, their drive times were longer than they needed to be, and they wasted gas, auditors said.
Before now, it was nearly impossible to travel east or west on Broward Boulevard without hitting half a dozen or more red lights. Now, drivers can make it through more than 20 green lights in a row.
On University Drive, Hutka said he hit a "small traffic jam'' every morning heading south between Sunrise and Broward boulevards.
The system isn't perfect. On any given day, traffic accidents, gridlock, trains, emergency vehicles that preempt the lights, or road construction and lane squeezes will screw up the light synching. But it'll still be an improvement on what drivers are used to.
Another facet of the fix: The county will improve traffic detection on side streets so drivers on the main roads aren't stopped unnecessarily.
"When you're driving on a major street and you see a red light turn in front of you for no apparent reason,'' Hutka said, "or because one or two cars are coming in from the side street, this is what it's all about. This will significantly reduce the number of those occurrences.''
Broward County is in the midst of a $14.5 million project to install video detectors at 700 intersections countywide. When the work is completed in about 3 years, 1,250 intersections in the county will have the new technology.
The detectors look like cameras mounted on traffic signal poles, but they don't take pictures or record video. Instead, they detect how many cars are lined up at intersections. The images are analyzed by computers that determine how much green time a traffic signal should provide.
Let's say a signal is programmed to give 15 seconds of green time for a left turn. If the left turn lane is empty after five seconds, the detector will turn off the left turn arrow and assign the unused 10 seconds of "green time" to drivers going straight through the intersection. That means the green light will last longer for the majority of drivers.
Drivers like Pete Tozzi said traffic signals on "pip squeak" cross streets hold up traffic on major roads.
Heading west on Pines Boulevard at rush hour, Tozzi said Pines drivers routinely get stopped for one or two cars entering Pines from 129th and 136th avenues. But the light stays green even though no more traffic is coming. Signals on Pines are scheduled for re-timing later this year.
"One would think those two streets are the main thoroughfare with their prolonged green lights," he said. "I could personally drive around and improve traffic with a little common thinking and light time changes."
On Southwest 10th Street, drivers complain of constant stop-and-go conditions between Federal Highway and the Sawgrass Expressway because of poorly timed traffic signals.
"At all times of day or night you get stopped at 90 percent of the traffic signals. It is intolerable," said Joseph Healey, who commutes from Coral Springs to Boca Raton.
That busy connector between I-95 and the Sawgrass is scheduled for re-timing later this year.
But rush hour drivers still likely will be held up at some red lights, as traffic engineers balance the need to keep traffic flowing on north-south highways that intersect it, like Military Trail, Powerline Road and even the I-95 exit ramps to prevent traffic from backing up onto the interstate.
"If you hit just one red light, you can be assured that you will hit them all," said Carol Finkelstein, of Boca Raton.
As the county gives new focus to drivers' frustration, Hutka said he's considering all options, including what Miami-Dade County does on some major roads like Biscayne Boulevard: putting signals into flashing mode — flashing red and yellow — between midnight and 5 a.m. to allow traffic on the major street to flow without stopping.
"It's something we want to study more,'' Hutka said. But if the signal re-timing is a success, he said, that might not be necessary.
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