Governing Magazine/November 2007

TRANSPORTATION BRIEFING

FASTTRACK

FIXING TRAFFIC'S FLOW
 To keep cars moving in congested Los Angeles County, the county put
in a new traffic-control system that lets traffic engineers monitor
and control traffic flow in real time. From the new Traffic Management
Center in Alhambra, engineers pick up information sent wirelessly from
roadway sensors and closed-circuit television cameras. They then
adjust signals to clear traffic jams and dispatch maintenance crews to
repair malfunctioning traffic lights. The new center and wireless
communication system, which cost just over $7 million, links up 51
intersections. The Department of Public Works has plans to bring
another 900 intersections into the system--to not only reduce commute
times but air pollution as well.

A BOOST FOR BIKE LANES
 Given New York City's record--between 1996 and 2003, cars have killed
225 bicyclists and injured 3,500--the city's Department of
Transportation is experimenting with a new kind of bike lane popular
in Europe: a 10-foot wide strip of roadway that runs between the
sidewalk and a row of parked cars. New York's pilot lane, located in
the Chelsea neighborhood, is seven blocks long. Next to the bike lane
is an eight-foot section of pavement with plastic posts and large
planters that acts as a buffer and keeps cars from entering. The city
is adding a raised island to extend into the avenue for pedestrians,
reducing by almost half the distance they have to travel to cross the
street. City officials call it the street of the future, and if its
works well in Chelsea, will be replicated elsewhere.

SPEED TRACKING
 Delayed more than a year because of privacy concerns, a pilot program
in Missouri to use cell phones to track vehicle speeds is finally
underway. The project takes thousands of cell signals and follows
their movement from one tower to another. The information is laid over
highway maps to draw a grid of where phones are and how fast they are
moving. The state Department of Transportation began monitoring cell
phones in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas in September. Depending
on results from this phase, the state will expand the technology to
all 5,500 miles of Missouri's major highways. A similar study,
conducted by Florida International University, determined that the
technology is not accurate in congested traffic.
--compiled by Elizabeth Daigneau


CANDID CAMERA: TRAFFIC LIGHTS IN THE RED

After Sioux Falls, South Dakota, installed red-light cameras at a key
intersection, it saw its revenue from tickets for red-light
infractions plummet.
 In 2005, their first full year of operation, Sioux Falls' cameras
snapped 8,000 scofflaws. In 2006, it was 5,000, and as of August of
2007, only 2,000. Almost all the money collected from red-light
tickets at the intersection now goes to pay the vendor that operates
the system.
 Of course, those statistics mean that the cameras are having a
positive effect: Accidents are down. "From my standpoint, it's purely
a safety issue," says Lieutenant Jerome Miller of the Sioux Falls
Police, "and it works."
 Sioux Falls' fiscal experience with red-light cameras isn't unusual.
In 2002, a California state auditor's report found that only two of
seven cities studied were netting much money from their red-light
camera programs.
 As more and more localities install red-light cameras--a decade ago,
only a handful of communities had them, but now there are more than
200--the revenue concerns are spreading. Just in the past few months,
the subject has come up in Mesa, Arizona; Springfield, Missouri; and
Garland, Texas.
 There is, however, a silver lining to not making money, as Anne
Fleming, a spokesperson for the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety, a group that advocates for red-light cameras, points out. One
of the central arguments against the cameras, besides the Big Brother
angle, has been that they are just schemes to collect more revenue.
Now, there's growing proof that that complaint is off base. "There
are," Fleming says, "many officials out there who say, 'I don't want
to make any money at all.'"
 They are getting their wish.
--Josh Goodman

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