The East-West Gateway Council of Governments Board of Directors Wednesday approved the designation of $3 million in Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funds to help the City of St. Louis optimize its traffic signals.
The federal funds will pay for a private engineering firm to program, maintain and manage the city’s system of traffic signals. The work will focus on alleviating traffic delays on the city’s major arterial streets resulting from the reconstruction of I-64. About 300 of the city’s more than 600 traffic lights have fiber optic links and the coordinated operation of these linked signals is a critical aspect of the plan.
The I-64 reconstruction is scheduled for completion in October 2010, though all lanes in St. Louis County between I-170 and Spoede Road will be out of service in 2008 and all lanes between I-170 in St. Louis County and Kingshighway in the city will be out of service in 2009.
Barb Geisman, deputy mayor for development, says the project to improve the city’s traffic signals will have short-term and long-term benefits.
"We are extremely pleased that East-West Gateway has made this funding available to help the city deal with the impacts of the I-64 reconstruction,” Geisman says. “In addition to improving auto travel during the actual I-64 project, this funding will improve the city's long-term traffic management by getting our signalization system in good shape and allowing us to make the most of our new computerized signals."
Previous Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funds awarded the city were used to upgrade the signal system with computer hardware and fiber optics, though some improvements had not been achieved due to a lack of implementation and coordination. The hiring of Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. to develop and execute a plan to optimize the signal system includes a training component to enable city workers to maintain the system after the 30-month contract with Jacobs expires in December 2009.
During the I-64 reconstruction, the plan will include continuous monitoring of traffic conditions and support a rapid response capability to allow signal programming to correspond to actual traffic conditions.
Jerry Blair, transportation director at East-West Gateway, says efforts to ease congestion on roads affected by I-64 work should benefit city traffic overall.
"The signal system could be totally overwhelmed by what happens as a result of the I-64 reconstruction,” says Blair. “This will not only help the congestion caused by I-64, there will also be collateral benefits in other areas of the city."
Labels: Highway_40, Press_Releases
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2 Comments:
This money will go to "white contractors" to improve the affluent neighborhoods within the City of St. Louis, while the lighting signal in North St. Louis look like crap.
The black elected officials won't complain or fight for better lighting systems and the powers that be will buy them some "Colonel's Fried Chicken-it's the bomb to be quiet.
Money will be misappropriated and stolen like normal in the City of St. Louis by politicians.
6/28/2007 11:22 AM
Will St. Louis' aldermen keep the city in first place in the national "useless 4 way stop signs" contest?
6/28/2007 12:19 PM
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