Cities Try To Get Traffic Lights In Sync

Gas prices show no sign of going down, but what if changing traffic lights could save you time and money?

Since the 1990s, the Mid-America Regional Council and its partners have been working on a program called Operation Green Light. It is designed to help reduce the stop-and-go traffic on arterial roads during rush hour.

The program would have synchronized traffic lights on major thoroughfares, such as Bannister Road, that start in Kansas City and cross the Kansas border into Leawood, Overland Park and Lenexa.

Operation Green Light is attracting more attention now that gas is at $4 a gallon, KMBC's Bev Chapman reported.

The program needs to get 632 traffic signals to work together. The system is regulated with computer software and radio signals.

"The main benefits are reducing unnecessary stops. It's not that once the system is up and running no one will ever have to stop again," MARC's Ron Achelpohl said. "What we want to do is manage them better so they're actually responding better to travel on those routes, aren't making people stop unnecessarily long or idle unnecessarily long at those intersections."

One example of the program is on a two-mile stretch of Shawnee Mission Parkway. Its eight traffic signals from Pflumm Road to Mastin Street have been synchronized since 2005.

About 30,000 motorists use that stretch of Shawnee Mission Parkway during weekdays.

MARC said Operation Green Light has saved 231 gallons of gas each day and 298 hours of travel time.

MARC said the entire metro area is mapped for Operation Green Light, but only about 40 percent is operational right now. MARC wants to have it complete by the end of the year.

The Missouri Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration and all the suburban cities involved are working on the project together. So far, the plan's biggest problem has been finding free tower space for the radio signals, Chapman reported.

Eighty percent of the plan is funded by the federal government, the rest is state and local.

Operation Green Light started as a plan to reduce ground-level ozone, which is still a problem in Kansas City.

To learn more about Operation Green Light, visit marc.org.

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• sync
• MARC
• Operation
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