A simple, cost-effective way to ease traffic congestion on local roads can be almost invisible to drivers.
When traffic signals along a busy corridor are synchronized to allow traffic to flow more smoothly, there are no exterior changes to the lights themselves, said David Royer, Lancaster County's transportation planning director.
"They'll see they're moving through the intersections in a more coordinated fashion," but otherwise shouldn't notice a change, Royer said of drivers.
In 2009, the county completed coordinated traffic signal timing on Centerville Road, Columbia Avenue, Lititz Pike and Rohrerstown Road.
On Wednesday, the Lancaster County Transportation Authority approved the hiring of consultants to prepare designs for timing changes for another seven corridors.
That work is expected to begin next year. The timing changes could be made as early as two years from now.
The new signal coordination projects are divided into two groups.
The first is for signals at eight intersections on Main Street in Mount Joy borough. Signals from Angle Street to the Mount Joy Shopping Center are included in the project, estimated to cost $500,000.
The second, larger project is for six corridors:
• Fruitville Pike, 10 intersections between Buch Avenue and Manheim Pike.
• Columbia borough, six intersections on 3rd and Locust streets and Lancaster Avenue.
• Millersville borough, six intersections on Manor Avenue and George Street.
• Oregon Pike, seven intersections between Landis Valley Road and Lititz Pike.
• Manheim borough, five intersections on Main and High streets.
• Lancaster city, seven intersections on New Holland Avenue between Plum Street and U.S. 30.
Coordinating those 41 intersections is estimated to cost $1.5 million.
Full funding for both projects is allocated in the county's transportation improvement plan over the current and next fiscal years.
Unlike the earlier signal coordination projects, these two involve more changes. In addition to the programming, most of these signals require the installation of fiber optic cable, timers, modems, computers and software.
Twelve corridors were studied for signal coordination in 2007.
With the completion of the two new county projects all of those corridors will be synchronized.
One of them, the 14 signals on Harrisburg Pike between the Lancaster General Health Campus and College Avenue, will be done by the state Department of Transportation. It was added to a project that includes improvements to the Dillerville Road and President Avenue intersection.
That PennDOT project is expected to begin in 2014. A preliminary cost estimate of $1.435 million for the project does not include the signal timing component, Royer said.
• Also on Wednesday, transportation authority members complained that already-delayed work on Route 72 may be pushed back another year.
The planned improvements are on Manheim Pike between Dillerville Road and East Petersburg. The work would include widening of the roadway in places, adding a new traffic signal near the Alcoa property, south of Route 283, and adding a right turn lane at Commerce Drive.
The county had expected to seeks bid from construction companies to do the work early next year. Now, acquiring the right-of-way from effected property owners and getting utility clearances is expected to take until March 2014.
