Chicago has no plan in place to effectively manage and maintain traffic lights at the city’s more than 2,800 intersections with signals, a weakness in oversight that can contribute to more crashes, congestion and air pollution, the city’s top watchdog says.
The city also falls woefully short of staffing engineers and technicians who can help improve the flow of traffic and make the streets safer, a new report from Inspector General Joe Ferguson found.
Following the findings, the Chicago Department of Transportation will develop a plan, a city spokesman confirmed Wednesday. Ferguson’s report asserts that a cohesive plan to maintain and retime traffic signals can save lives, reduce traffic jams and cut down on pollution.
“Rather than proactively maintaining and retiming traffic signals, [the city] conducts most of its work in response to 311 complaints, aldermanic requests and major construction projects,” the report concluded. “This approach to maintenance limits [Chicago’s] ability to address problems before they become hazardous or unnecessarily expensive to repair.”
What’s more, the traffic-light maintenance may impede goals set forth by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel to cut down on traffic fatalities and injuries, promote bicycling and improve transportation in general, Ferguson’s report said.
“There isn’t a plan in place that sets goals related to safety, congestion, air pollution and that also considers equity factors and overall mobility factors,” Ferguson said in an interview. “What we found almost immediately is we don’t have standards to measure against because the city doesn’t have any standards or a plan.”
Parts of the report point to budget issues that hold back the city’s progress modernizing the way it controls traffic.
According to the report, the Chicago Department of Transportation installed technology at 283 intersections that both allows the city from a control center to track operation of the signals and gather traffic flow data. The monitoring equipment will eventually allow traffic engineers to change signal timing remotely and helps technicians sort out problems with malfunctioning lights when they are responding to complaints, the report said.
By the end of this year, the department hopes to add the monitoring technology to another 229 intersections, but, according to Chicago transportation officials, “due to cost, the city will not add this technology to all signals for several decades,” the report said.
A department policy put in place last year requires that all new signals will have remote connectivity, spokesman Michael Claffey said.
Also, Chicago is understaffed in this area of operating traffic lights, according to Ferguson’s report. The city has four traffic signal engineers while federal recommendations say it should have 28, the report said. Also, Chicago has 27 traffic signal technicians, compared with a federal recommendation of 71.
While he said he understands the budget constraints, Ferguson added that the city cannot begin to address the issues unless it puts a plan in place “that connects with broader goals” of Chicago.
Brett Chase’s reporting on the environment and public health is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.
