Get Houston moving
blogHOUSTON sometimes questions the city's priorities, but Houston drivers will certainly appreciate this news from KHOU-11's Dan Lauck:
"Getting traffic signals timed right, getting the stalled or wrecked vehicle off the road quickly, making sure that the traffic signals you have replaced with the latest technology actually work," says Mayor White.
A good example is that buried beneath the street at many intersections throughout Houston are loop detectors that can sense whether there are cars waiting in the left-turn lane.
If no cars are waiting, the computer inside a box is supposed to skip the green light for that lane. When White's administration took over, they discovered that only 20 percent of the loop detectors actually worked.
They say their predecessors didn't want to pay to maintain them. That meant that drivers would sit and wait -- for nothing.
Drivers on Memorial, for example, have to stop for a red light at Brittmore, even when there's not a single car coming from the other direction.
"There's all kinds of situations at which we arrive at a light and there's no cars around. It's the middle of the night, that sort of thing, and it drives you nuts to sit through a long light," says one driver.
At a number of locations there are no loop detectors or motion-detecting cameras, and the traffic ends up tied in knots.
David Crossley, a transportation expert, says just take a look at Westheimer from above to get a better idea.
"You'll see these knots of cars, then a quarter mile of empty space. Then there is another knot of cars. That's because the traffic lights aren't working," he says.
Timing those lights is now a city priority....
Mayor White ran on a "Get Houston Moving" platform. He would be well served to spend more time on mobility and less time on Tasers, park boondoggles, smoking, and African American museums.
Posted by Callie Markantonis @ 10/28/04 11:08 PM | Print |
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
ADVERTISING
DISCLAIMER
All content © 2004-09, blogHOUSTON and the respective authors.
blogHOUSTON.net is powered by Nucleus.
Site design and Nucleus customization are by Kevin Whited.