FAYETTEVILLE — Experts say the timing of signals and restrictions on road access can be inexpensive solutions to Northwest Arkansas’ traffic woes.
Other tactics, like faster travel lanes and roads that change direction with traffic flow, won’t necessarily help, said David Schrank, a researcher with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
“Do everything possible to make the whole system work more efficiently,” Schrank said. “While it may take five to 10 years to build new roads, you can often make more minor changes in five to 10 months.”
Lights can be coordinated so a vehicle traveling the speed limit can move through an area with minimal stops. Other signal programs detect when traffic has built up and can change to allow the cars through.
Areas with heavy traffic flow can set up traffic signals to allow more cars to pass in one direction at certain times of the day or have traffic lanes that can be used for different directions at various times. These are called adaptive lights.
Chris Brown, Fayetteville city engineer, said access management designs are a less costly alternative to expanded roads when implemented on the front end of a project, but can be difficult to retrofit. He said the Fayetteville master street plan includes items such as boulevards and traffic circles.
“You get much higher safety and capacity when you limit access to a road,” he said.
Mike Churchwell, Bentonville transportation director, said traffic comes down to volume versus capacity.
“We have more volume of traffic than we have the capacity to move it efficiently,” he said. “I have to remind people that I also have to drive through the same traffic, and we are doing the best we can. You are behind the eight ball before you can even get projects going. Things in the transportation world don’t happen quickly.”
Nathan Becknell, Rogers project engineer, echoed that sentiment.
“In transportation terms, we deal in years and decades,” he said.
SIGNALING HELP
All of Northwest Arkansas’ largest cities use cameras to help traffic signals know how to respond and to give workers an opportunity to diagnose and sometimes fix problems remotely.
Becknell said Rogers has 93 signals and beacons, including two flashing lights and two pedestrian-only beacons. Onethird are adaptive, meaning they automatically adjust to changing traffic patterns to help alleviate congestion.
Adaptive signals have traffic sensors that collect data, and a program evaluates the information to determine when and how long lights should be green.
Dub Janczys, Springdale’s signalization supervisor, said the city has 80 traffic signals; three main roads have adaptive lights, and most of the rest are coordinated to promote traffic flow through a series of green lights.
Janczys pointed to construction on Arkansas 265 last year, which closed a section of the road for a while and shifted traffic to other roads. The signals on the detour roads were adjusted to ease the additional traffic.
“What we are seeing now is people trying to get off I-49 because of the construction,” he said. “We have not made many changes, but are in the monitoring stages right now. The challenge is to keep things moving.”
Fayetteville has about 105 traffic signals. Terry Gulley, the city’s transportation services director, said College Avenue is coordinated.
“If you can hit it just right and run the speed limit, you can make it from one end to the other without hitting a red light,” he said.
Bentonville has 41 signalized intersections, and 38 are monitored in a traffic control center with eight 46-inch televisions. The screens typically display four views at a time, showing all four directions at a given intersection.
Traffic technicians Brad Conley and Rob Kintz usually keep an eye on the screens during the busiest traffic times of 7-9 a.m. and 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Kintz said Arkansas 102 and all areas around the interstate are busy all day, and the biggest complaint they deal with is a signal not cycling. They can diagnose a problem and either fix it from the office or head to the site. They can also monitor issues remotely on an iPad.
“It is a pretty advanced system for a city of our size,” Churchwell said.
Janczys said all of Springdale’s intersections with traffic lights have cameras, but the video is just used to look at vehicles approaching intersections. He said the days of running out to a signal every time there is an issue are over.
Brown said a planned extension of Rupple Road from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Persimmon Street will include three traffic circles. He said traffic circles handle the traffic peaks and valleys better than stoplights because they keep vehicles moving all the time.
Well-designed traffic circles with the correct striping help prevent drivers from making mistakes, he said.
Access management is another way to control traffic. Tim Conklin, the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission’s transportation programs manager, said planners are examining partial access control on a portion of Arkansas 265 between Randall Wobbe Lane and Arkansas 264 in Spring dale. Limiting the number of entry points onto a road with medians and access roads funnels traffic to controlled intersections, he said.
Patsy Christie, Springdale planning director, said that stretch of Arkansas 265 won’t have any medians, but officials are exploring limiting the number of driveways. She said a road alignment has been mapped out, and the project is “a little further along than preliminary.”
“Too many intersections kill the traffic flow,” she said.