You could easily localize this story.
USA Today reports that an engineering group says America's traffic lights are inefficient and outdated. They are so badly timed that drivers waste gasoline by sitting unnecessarily in traffic, they start and stop too often, and of course they add to air pollution.I hate to be such a homie, but my town, St. Petersburg, Fla., has figured out how to do synchronized traffic lights. If you drive on 1st Street North or South at the speed limit, you will not hit a red light for miles. It is efficient and, of course, saves gasoline compared to
starting and stopping.
The USA Today story said:
Two-thirds of 378 traffic agencies in 49 states don't actively monitor traffic lights, or they simply respond to problems as they occur, the Washington-based Institute of Transportation Engineers reported.
"While traffic signals do turn green, yellow, and red, they are not operating as efficiently as they should," says Shelley Row, the group's associate executive director. "The traffic changes during the day. (Agencies) need to be able to time the signals differently at different points during the day."
A study by a Maryland researcher last year found that 35 percent of the nation's traffic agencies had not retimed their traffic signals in 10 years. That means they haven't responded to business and residential growth that affects traffic patterns, says Philip Tarnoff, director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland.
"The costs (of traffic signal management) compared to building a highway are trivial," he says. "The question is why isn't it being done more often?"
The stakes are high. Ideal management of traffic lights would cut delays by 15-20 percent, reduce travel time by up to 25 percent, cut emissions by up to 22 percent, and reduce gas consumption by up to 10 percent, according to the transportation engineers, who conducted their survey with the Federal Highway Administration and other groups. The survey estimates that improving the nation's traffic signal operations would cost about $965 million a year.
Two cities that get stellar marks in the study for managing traffic lights are Bellevue, Wash., and Springfield, Mo.
Bellevue (population 120,000) connects 90 percent of 172 traffic lights to a centralized network that includes 20 cameras, says traffic engineering manager Mark Poch. "That allows us to make adjustments for events that are happening right now," he says.
An example: About 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, construction on northwest Fourth Street forced the closure of one westbound lane on the six-lane road. Engineers adjusted the timing of traffic lights on Fourth Street to take time away from drivers on intersecting streets to compensate for the closed lane, Poch says.
In Springfield, engineers use cameras to monitor 28 miles of roads and 100 traffic lights and alert drivers to problems, says Earl Newman, assistant public works director. Voters in the city of 156,000 have approved eight local sales tax initiatives to reduce congestion, which ranks as the public's top concern, he says.
Getting Local on the CPI
I didn't know until I started poking around the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics site this morning that journalists can get local consumer-level inflation statistics from the Consumer Price Index in a lot of cities. Go to this page, then go to sections 16 and 22 for information on how to access your local information.
The CPI, often called the "cost of living index," measures:
More than 200 categories are arranged into eight major groups. Major groups and examples of categories in each are as follows:
- FOOD AND BEVERAGES (breakfast cereal, milk, coffee, chicken, wine, service meals, and snacks), HOUSING (rent of primary residence, owners' equivalent rent, fuel oil, bedroom furniture)
- APPAREL (men's shirts and sweaters, women's dresses, jewelry)
- TRANSPORTATION (new vehicles, airline fares, gasoline, motor vehicle insurance)
- MEDICAL CARE (prescription drugs and medical supplies, physicians' services, eyeglasses and eye care, hospital services)
- RECREATION (televisions, pets and pet products, sports equipment, admissions)
- EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION (college tuition, postage, telephone services, computer software and accessories)
- OTHER GOODS AND SERVICES (tobacco and smoking products, haircuts and other personal services, funeral expenses)
Also included within these major groups are various government-charged user fees, such as water and sewerage charges, auto registration fees, and vehicle tolls. In addition, the CPI includes taxes (such as sales and excise taxes) that are directly associated with the prices of specific goods and services. However, the CPI excludes taxes (such as income and Social Security taxes) not directly associated with the purchase of consumer goods and services.
The CPI does not include investment items, such as stocks, bonds, real estate, and life insurance. (These items relate to savings and not to day-to-day consumption expenses.)
For each of the more than 200 item categories, using scientific statistical procedures, the Bureau has chosen samples of several hundred specific items within selected business establishments frequented by consumers to represent the thousands of varieties available in the marketplace. For example, in a given supermarket, the Bureau may choose a plastic bag of golden delicious apples, U.S. extra fancy grade, weighing 4.4 pounds to represent the Apples category.
The CPI only looks at urban prices, so those of you in smaller cities will have to find a larger city in the list near you. The feds want to alert you to what the numbers do and don't show by saying:
An individual area index measures how much prices have changed over a specific period in that particular area; it does not show whether prices or living costs are higher or lower in that area relative to another. In general, the composition of the market basket and relative prices of goods and services in the market basket during the expenditure base period varies substantially across areas. More.
Guardrail Probe
My friend, WSMV TV (Nashville) investigative reporter Nancy Amons, uncovered a great story that might have application for you.
Nancy found that posts that crews install while building guardrails are supposed to be buried 44 inches into the ground. But she found a road contractor who was just lopping off the posts when it became too difficult to sink the posts into hard ground. In some cases, Nancy said, the crews cut 30 inches off the posts.
The result, the story said, was that the guardrail could fail if a car hit it.
Who inspects guardrail construction?
Who Owns Your Name?
Senator Hillary Clinton has won a fight to get www.hillaryclinton.com from a man who owned the domain name. Mrs. Clinton claimed that her name was identical to her "Hillary Clinton" trademark and that the site had been registered in bad faith. I wonder if TV anchors, columnists, and other public people should trademark their names in order to protect themselves? Here is a good story on the issue from USA Today's Eric Sinrod.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts, and other materials from a variety of websites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed, and a link will be provided, whenever possible.
