Municipal News

Last Updated on Tuesday, 29 December 2015 00:27

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission’s (SPC) Regional Traffic Signal Program was established to assist local municipalities with improving traffic signal operations by optimizing signal timings and upgrading existing signal equipment.

New controllers and GPS synchronization equipment keep intersections in step with each other.

The Rostraver Township SR 51 Signals in Coordination with Equipment Upgrades (SINC-UP) Project is a signal equipment upgrade and retiming project with the goal of optimizing signal operations at the study intersections along the SR 51 corridor while considering all users of the intersections.

Project Area included:

SR 51 and Harper Drive / Concord Lane
SR 51 and Pfile Drive / Concord Lane
SR 51 and Finley Road
SR 51 and SR 981

Traffic Signal Coordination:

Improves safety since vehicles stop less often, which reduces the probability for rear-end crashes
Benefits the environment by reducing vehicle emissions
Reduces travel costs by reducing the amount of time stopped at red lights
Saves money at the gas station by reducing fuel use (with less stopping)

As part of this project, new controllers and GPS synchronization equipment were added to keep intersections in step with each other. The safety of the corridor was also improved by adding informative signs for motorists as well as the addition of new LED countdown pedestrian signals at Pfile Driveway / Concord Lane to increase pedestrian safety and save electricity.

Travel Improvements:

Travel times typically decreased by 0.3 — 0.7 minutes, with an average 21% improvement in travel time.
There were approximately 60% fewer stops along SR 51, and an average 73% decrease in signal delays.

Prior to this SINC-UP Project, motorists typically experienced moderate delays and the frustration of consecutive stopping at traffic signals. This retiming project coordinated the traffic patterns among these intersections which alleviated consecutive stopping and reduced the motorist’s frustration

Additionally, the broken video detection at the intersection of SR 51 and Harper Drive / Concord Lane was replaced with radar detection, which eliminated missed calls and false calls primarily for lefts turning vehicles arid side street motorists.

Before and after videos can be seen at: www.spcregion.org/trans_ops_traff_vids.shtml.