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Takoma Park needs smart lights

On 12/14/05, Per of Takoma Park wrote:

I recently moved to Takoma Park, and am a consistent Metro rider, and am thus perhaps one of the new breed of influxers to the area. So here's my opinion, or perhaps my first impression, for what it's worth:

It's hard to come from places like Alexandria, VA, Asheville, NC, and Chicago, IL, where traffic flows relatively smoothly, even on smaller streets, to Takoma Park where it does not flow smoothly at all. This phenomenon was both immediately obvious, as I took my first trip to the Metro station, as well as shocking to someone who had heard the community touting itself as "the Berkeley of the East," which implies a sort of progressive urban bent. The main difference I've noticed is that Takoma Park has no "smart lights", traffic signals that "sense" the real-time needs of a given intersection, rather than those signals that are on pre-programmed timers. I don't know how many lights in the area I've had to sit at and wait for maddeningly long periods of time (a minute or two at a stop light feels like an eternity when no cars, including mine, are going through it).

My recommendation to ease our congestion situations, therefore, is to make our intersections more intelligent and updated for the 21st century, and that begins with smart lights. It's not a full fix, but it's a start.