Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Marc Giauque and Lori Prichard reporting Traffic engineers from various agencies are getting together to talk about synchronizing traffic lights in Salt Lake City. Traffic leaders from across the valley are trying to get more "green" in our drive. And they're finding plenty of obstacles.
Just about any factoid Web site you read says the average person spends about two weeks during the course of a lifetime sitting and waiting on a red light. As population and development here continue to explode, that time spent is only going to get worse.
Motorist Mark Anderson said, "It is very frustrating."
Frustrating? Maybe. A fact of life? Yes.
Timothy Harpst, of Salt Lake City's transportation department, said, "There are a lot of challenges in timing traffic signals. There are a lot of factors that have to be taken into account and balanced."
At today's meeting of traffic officials from UDOT and Salt Lake, they said those factors include fewer lanes downtown, downtown development, and long blocks in Salt Lake City.
And, Dave Kinnecom, a UDOT traffic operation engineer, pointed out, "You have trains, pedestrians, some intersections have left turn phases and others don't."
That's a recipe for waiting. But how much waiting? In our unscientific test, we used a stopwatch to time our drive through rush-hour traffic up 600 South, across 700 East, and back down 400 South. We drove a total of 2.8 miles. Total driving time? More than 13 minutes. More than half of that time was spent sitting at a red light.
Harpst says they're seeing a 20 percent improvement in travel times and reduced stops. But other transportation officials say it's unrealistic to expect you'll always hit green lights when driving a stretch of road.
Cities across the country have what traffic experts call traffic light synchronization, in which green lights cascade as you drive from one intersection to the next. But the problem here, it seems, is that the state owns one street, the county owns another, and the city - well, you get the picture.
"UDOT owns State Street and 7th East. We own parts of 5th and 6th South, and the city owns most of the rest," Kinnecom said.
When their traffic signals don't coordinate, you spend more time sitting stopped. That's something Salt Lake commuter Chuck Hess says he's gotten used to. But he says he keeps himself entertained rather than enraged. "Well of course I listen to KSL, and I don't get so upset. Otherwise, you get a little steamed," he said.
According to the National Transportation Operations Coalition, timing all of those lights would save you a whole lot of money in gas. If you use one tank of gas per week getting to and from work, you'd save about $240, because less stop and more go gives you better gas mileage.
