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City tries to synch up traffic lights

Las Cruces Sun-News-April 9th 2006

Mario Delgado, a Las Cruces resident who works on a farm south of the city, pulls up to the intersection of Main Street and Boutz Road as he drives home from work.

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SUN-NEWS PHOTO BY NORM DETTLAFF

Traffic becomes congested Saturday at Lohman Avenue and Telshor Boulevard. The city of Las Cruces is starting to link all local traffic lights to a computerized system that may improve traffic flow.

Like most motorists, Delgado is anxious to get home. He said there have been days when the commute to and from work was frustrating because he had frequent stops at signal lights.

“Some days, I can understand a little why people get road rage,” Delgado said. “You’re in a hurry for whatever reason to get home, or wherever it is you’re trying to get to. But you have to stop at every single light. It doesn’t make any sense that every light is red when you’re driving on the same road, at the same speed. It drives you crazy.”

But changes are being made to improve the synchronization of traffic lights throughout the city.

Dan Soriano, traffic engineering administrator for the city of Las Cruces, said progress is being made to link all signal lights in the city to an Intelligent Traffic System (ITS), which utilizes information technologies to improve traffic flow.

With primary help from cameras and sensors mounted on the poles of signal lights, data such as the volume of traffic at a specific time of the day and traffic in a specific lane is sent to a computer that traffic engineers can analyze — almost instantaneously — and adjust the time it takes a signal light to change from red to green, and back.

“The city is focusing most of its efforts now on the area including south Main, south Valley Drive, and Avenida de Mesilla,” Soriano said. “It’s still not a perfect system because our roadway system is not yet fully developed and about a third of the lights have cameras right now. We’re getting there, but the city is in a real transition right now. We’re having growing pains.”

It used to be that a motorist could get to any place in Las Cruces in 10 minutes. But Las Cruces was half the size it is now, and that growth has increased the time it takes to get from point A to point B.

Soriano, who graduated from New Mexico State University in the mid-1980s, has learned that lesson.

“When I came back after the 10 years I’d been gone, I was surprised to see how much the city had grown,” Soriano said. “I left Las Cruces and the population was about 45,000, and now it’s pushing 90,000.”

Although Las Cruces is growing, Soriano said the city’s commercial area is still fairly compact. As a result, certain areas of Las Cruces — particularly those close to Mesilla Valley Mall and the two Wal-Mart Supercenters — are noticeably congested.

“It really doesn’t matter what part of Las Cruces somebody lives, to get to the mall or either of the Wal-Marts they’re going to have to drive to get there,” Soriano said. “Obviously, those areas are going to be prone to traffic congestion.”

Delilah Runyon, a Las Cruces secretary, said there are times of the day that she avoids driving in those congested areas.

“About quitting time, 5 o’clock, and on Saturday afternoons, it can be brutal driving on Telshor, near the mall, or on Lohman, near Wal-Mart,” Runyon said. “It’s gotten pretty busy around the new Wal-Mart (on Valley Drive), too. There’s a lot of people trying to get in those places, and it can get kind of crazy with cars trying to get in out of there.”

But data from those traffic patterns is being used to adjust the timing of signal lights at some of the busier intersections to prevent vehicles from backing up.

“It costs about $50,000 per intersection to install a complete ITS system,” Soriano said. “Ideally, we’d like to get at least another 10 cameras on signal lights at the busier intersections. To do that would cost another $150,000 to $200,000 to complete.”

There are plans to add another two cameras on signal lights within the next year. Soriano said University Avenue, Valley Drive, El Paseo Road and south Main Street are the most likely locations that will be considered.

“I really like the new light they put up here,” Delgado said of the new signals at Boutz and Main. “Everything moves a lot faster, and the new lights are a lot easier to read if you haven’t gotten to the intersection yet. If the city can do this with all of their lights then things should get a lot better.”

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