VIDEO: Making Timing ModificationsTo The Traffic Lights

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- The amount of time Columbus drivers spend at traffic lights will soon be changing.

As a driver, one thing everyone hates, is having to sit at a traffic light for a long period of time.

So to help combat this problem, timing modifications are being made to traffic signals at seven intersections throughout town.

“Most of these, you are not going to be sitting get a signal, if everybody clears out, usually for about a minute to a minute and a half,” said Kevin Stafford, city engineer.

It’s been a decade since any changes have been made to the city’s traffic signals.

Stafford said each intersection operates on either a traffic detection function or has a set timing.

Each light has a maximum and minimum amount of time it’ll stay on a certain color.

“Most intersections if they don’t have detection, they operate on the maximum,” Stafford explained. “Basically what this tells us is that this approach is going to get 40 seconds, and this approach is going to get 30 seconds and that’s how much time it gives for the traffic to free flow if it doesn’t have any type of minimum green. If it has detection with a minimum green and it goes past that time and no car is detected, it will cycle back and give the other person time to go and vice versa.”

Stafford said an evaluation was done on each intersection to determine what changes needed to be made.

“Step one is we look at a normal Tuesday to Thursday during the week, during normal traffic conditions,” he said. “We try to catch all of the peak hours, so we start about 6:30 in the morning and we will go until 6:30 in the evening and do what’s called a 12 hour turn and movement count.”

Crew members sit at each intersection and count all of the cars coming through and the direction they’re going.

“We count and we note whether they turn left, whether they go straight, whether they go right,” said Stafford. “We have the ability to count pedestrians that come through and it lets us look at a totality of what is coming through that intersection. We do it in a 12 hour session, but we also brought those numbers down into 15 minute intervals.”

They put that information into a program and it gives them suggestions on which timing changes they should make at each light.

“The times for yellow and the red is based on the size of the intersection, the geometry of the roadway, the speed that you are approaching an intersection,” the city engineer said. “Obviously the faster you go you will notice those yellow and red times are a little bit longer to give people that are going to not pay attention and just keep going, to clear from a safety standpoint, whereas slower speeds obviously have less times for the yellow and red.”

The timing adjustments are already being made.

The seven intersections receiving these timing modifications are 14th Avenue and Railroad Street, Military Road and 3rd Avenue North, 14th Avenue and 20th Street, Military Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Milirary Road and 18th Avenue, Military Road and Woodmont Avenue, and 14th Avenue North and MLK Drive.

Meanwhile, the intersections at Bluecutt Road and Leigh Drive, Military Road and Ridge Road, and Gardner Boulevard and Highway 50, will all have traffic signals installed.