FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                   

Contact:   John Davis, Lee County Chief Traffic Engineer
                (941) 694-7600

DATA COLLECTION ALONG ROADWAYS PART OF TRAFFIC LIGHT STUDY

FORT MYERS, Fla. (March 22, 2002) – Over the next month, motorists along some of the county’s major roadways may notice people with clipboards taking down information. 

It’s part of a data collection effort for a major traffic light retiming study. 

The employees are not surveying motorists and walking out into traffic.  They are simply recording traffic movements through intersections, including turns – information that is difficult to capture with automatic count stations. 

The county recently hired Kittelson & Associates to do the major retiming of traffic lights at more than 100 intersections around the county – primarily along state roads, but also those in the county and cities – and study possible upgrades to the traffic signal system. 

The work will cost about $420,000 and the county will be reimbursed by the Florida Department of Transportation.  The county maintains traffic lights along state roads for FDOT. 

The consultant will provide expertise in the retiming of 110 intersections in 19 different traffic-light groupings.  Roads being retimed include Cleveland Avenue/U.S. 41, Palm Beach Boulevard, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Colonial Boulevard, Daniels Parkway, Pine Island Road, Bayshore Road, U.S. 41 North, Country Club Boulevard and Viscaya Parkway.  The work will include data collection, data analysis and documentation, timing implementation, and timing evaluation and fine-tuning. 

The other part of the project involves a detailed review of the Traffic Signal System along the roads, including communication functions and existing hardware and software.  The consultant will be looking at potential upgrades to the system so that individual traffic light “controlling” hardware and software – or controllers – can communicate better with master controllers for entire segments, and that information can be efficiently linked to the master computers at the traffic engineering offices. 

After this initial data collection during the busy visitor season, the consultants come back in the summer do a second set of data collections, and then possibly a third set next year. 

Lee County’s Transportation Department plans, builds, expands and maintains county roads, bridges, ditches and landscaping in the unincorporated areas of Lee County.  It also maintains the county traffic signal system and operates the toll facilities on the Midpoint Memorial, Cape Coral and Sanibel Causeway bridges.  It employs 374 and has an annual operating budget of $32.9 million.