Officials tasked with managing Lexington's traffic flow are met with daily challenges. The city's new director of traffic engineering is utilizing innovative communication technologies to help get motorists from one spot to another.
Dowell Hoskins-Squier is the first female director for Lexington's traffic engineering department. Hoskins-Squier came on board mid-summer. She says the city is examining using new technology to get real-time traffic pictures into the hands of residents. "If they hear that there is an incident on Richmond Road or New Circle Road or where ever it may be, they'll be able to pull up that camera and view the situation and see is traffic moving or is it stopped and gauge kind of do they want to leave the house or go a different way," said Hoskins-Squier.
Hoskins-Squier says the new feature requires further work before it is put into place. She says bluetooth technology is being used to collect travel time data. "What it allows us to do is kind of gauge. If we make changes along a corridor to signal timings, gauge, you know did that work? Did it not work? Is it negatively or positively impacting traffic flow? And obviously we want it to positively impact. So, it's allowing us to kind of check ourselves and make sure that we are doing things that benefit the public," added Hoskins-Squier.
Hoskins-Squier says tweaking traffic signal timing 'on the fly' is not feasible. She says there are changes made to traffic signal schedules for planned events with large crowds. ?
