Hogan announces $50 million signal upgrade on Maryland highways to improve traffic flow

The Baltimore Sun ^ | October 25, 2017 | Michael Dresser

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Drivers in 14 state highway corridors in Maryland will see their travel times cut over the next year as a result of a $50 million upgrade to traffic signals, Gov. Larry Hogan said Wednesday.

The new system, billed as the second phase of Hogan’s program to relieve highway traffic congestion, will use artificial intelligence to better synchronize signals and improve traffic flow, officials said. The governor said the adaptive signal control system replaces technology that is more than 20 years old.

“Nearly 700,000 Marylanders will benefit every day from these transformational improvements,” Hogan said during a news conference at the State Highway Administration’s operations center in Hanover.

The “Smart Signals” program follows Hogan’s announcement last month of a $9 billion initiative to add lanes to the Capital Beltway, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and Interstate 270. That announcement was fiercely criticized by environmental advocates, but his new initiative is receiving a warmer reception.

“This is a welcome approach that makes the existing infrastructure perform better,” said Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of the conservation group 1,000 Friends of Maryland.

The signals program is designed to adjust to changing traffic conditions in real time 24 hours a day, without the need for human intervention. Current traffic signals are pre-programmed according to highway engineers’ expectations, but can’t react to crashes, construction or unusual events.

While much smaller in scale than the road-widening plan, the second phase is expected to deliver more immediate congestion relief.

All of the 14 corridors are in metropolitan Baltimore or Washington. None are in Baltimore, because the city operates its own road system and receives annual payments to maintain state highways within its borders.

[babble-on]

Vote “sphinx” for Mayor of Nashville.

Seriously that is exactly what we are dealing with. Surrounding counties are experience huge residential growth, but the jobs are still in Nashville proper. The interstates are totally choked so the traffic is naturally migrating to surface streets and making those impassable as well. Drivers see the existence of traffic jams as a violation of the Natural Law and Basic Human Rights, and demand solutions from the city of Nashville, even though they moved out of it specifically to avoid paying the taxes that would fund those solutions.

[sphinx]

If you are not careful, the next stage will be to take some of these now-choked neighborhood streets and "improve" them by turning them into high speed commuter sewers. The first thing to go is on-street parking, which destroys the local businesses. Then you lose sidewalks and tree plats. The street becomes blighted, and this easily spreads into the surrounding area. I can point to many areas around DC and the older suburbs where this happened. People now realize that was a mistake (did they do anything right in the 60's and 70's?) and are trying to restore livable neighborhoods, but the smarter choice is to not destroy them in the first place.

The commuters need to live closer to work. Or ride a bus. Or carpool. Or accept the long commute as the price of their choice. When they get tired of that, they can move back in and help gentrify the salvageable closer-in areas.

[GreyFriar]

I’m cutting my travel time by departing Maryland for the Mid-west.