Technology to ease congestion

Those traffic signals you think are turning red just for spite might actually be going your way in the future.

In a time of tighter street and highway funding, Omaha-Council Bluffs metro area cities are looking to smart signal technology to help smooth traffic flow.

The technology uses cameras and signal controllers that allow traffic signals to adjust automatically to traffic demands in real time.

In coming years, you can expect the systems to operate along 84th Street through southwest Omaha and Sarpy County, in La Vista along Giles Road and in several other spots around Omaha.

The City of Omaha, meantime, is taking steps toward starting a traffic control center to help monitor and respond to problems around Omaha and perhaps throughout the metro area.

Those projects make up just part of the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency's new $640 million in proposed construction plans for Omaha-area streets, highways and trails.

For the next four years, the metro area will undertake a series of major road improvement projects, including a new Missouri River bridge south of Bellevue, Interstate work through Council Bluffs and Omaha and several street widening projects in west Omaha.

With more limited resources available, however, some street projects have been pushed back from previous plans, including widening of Pacific Street from 168th to 180th and of Harrison Street from 156th to 168th, said Greg Youell, MAPA's transportation and data manager.

Those projects were pushed when new home construction in the suburbs was booming, but that now has slowed and traffic generally has fallen back to 2005 levels.

“There isn't enough funding to do what everybody wants to do,” Youell said.

Implementing new traffic signal technology offers a way to improve traffic flow without the higher cost of a street widening, said Todd Pfitzer, the City of Omaha's traffic engineer.

“It could make a huge difference,” he said.

The City of La Vista is looking to spend $114,000 to purchase controllers to coordinate traffic signals along Giles Road from Interstate 80 to 108th Street.

The City of Omaha wants to spend $587,000 for signal controllers to use around 144th Street and West Center Road and a traffic control system around 132nd Street and West Dodge Road.

In addition, 84th Street would get $938,000 for signal improvements. That project would stretch across multiple cities from Omaha into Papillion, Pfitzer said.

Omaha also is proposing to open a $4.7 million traffic control center by 2016, funded mostly with federal money. In 2011, the city plans to conduct a $75,000 study into the center.

Although Omaha is leading that study, Youell said other local cities and the State Department of Roads could join the project.

While automated systems would help at a select few areas, the traffic control center would have staff to help monitor and respond to problems at hundreds of intersections, Pfitzer said. If an accident is clogging I-80, for instance, the center could adjust signals on L Street or West Center Road to speed along traffic.

Currently, the city is not staffed to handle that, Pfitzer said.

“It just allows us a lot of flexibility.”

Contact the writer:

444-1128, jeff.robb@owh.com

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