The Ceres City Council took action at its June 24 meeting intended to make traffic flower better in Ceres by re-synchronizing the traffic signal lights.
The council specifically authorized Advanced Mobility Group (AMG) to provide professional traffic engineering services and on-going support services for the city’s traffic signal system. The contract is costing the city no more than $245,000.
The city synchronized its traffic signals for better flow on Hatch Road, Whitmore Avenue, and Mitchell Road years ago, but things are out of sync today because of traffic patterns have changed and increased vehicle volume since that time.
The consultant will also help the city fix the problem of the city’s recently upgraded Traffic Operations Center at City Hall not being able to fully communicate and remotely adjust the timing of most traffic signals in Ceres.
City Engineer Michael Beltran said it is imperative that the city update traffic signal timing, re-synchronize the main corridors, and ensure that all traffic signals can communicate with the Traffic Operation Center.
Beltran said the wait times at traffic signals is frustrating and that adding additional idle times during driving contribute to an increase in greenhouse gases.
“It should also be noted that traffic patterns are changing constantly. AMG will also provide active traffic management on an on-going basis for the city.”
Ceres resident Dave Pratt expressed his skepticism, stating that “the only thing we get out of this is more traffic lights and more congestion and more speeders through neighborhoods trying to get around all these lights that don’t catch up.”
We asked if the traffic surveys would be done in the summer when traffic is lighter than the fall when schools are in session.
“We are looking at re-timing all of the signal lights within the city,” said Beltran.
He said adjustments are made to the lights to accommodate the fluctuations in traffic volumes before schools begin and end, during lunch and the morning and evening commutes.
“Those are all taken into account when we do this.”
“School does get a little congested everywhere,” said Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra, “and we’ve seen traffic back up from Central on Service Road all the way past the new Walmart so it’s going over a mile in the mornings. I just want to make sure we can find a way to hopefully try to relieve some of the congestion as well. I know we’re having a similar situation in front of Ceres High School.”
Beltrans said the only traffic signal lights that the city has no control over are the ones governed by Caltrans near the freeway or the freeway overpasses on Hatch Road and Whitmore Avenue and coming off of 99 at Mitchell Road. He said the two systems at times cannot be synched.
“Their signals do get off timing sometimes to our synchronization and so it does create a backup and we can call Caltrans and we can work with them on that but …we won’t be able to actually synchronize their lights with our lights. We can look at their timing and we can have them adjust timing but … they won’t allow integration into our Traffic Operations Center.”
Having AMG onboard, Beltran said the city can respond to situations of backed-up school traffic real time by phoning the consultant a call and adjust timing as needed.
“That is something that we do have set up with this contract also so that we can literally move traffic through the city if things get backed up,” said Beltran. “Obviously that takes a call, it takes a little bit of time but we will definitely tackle those on a one-on-one basis as they come in.”
Pratt followed up by saying that trying to drive from Whitmore Avenue to the freeway on Sunday when there is less traffic is “ridiculous … it gets to the point where I hate even driving Mitchell Road.”
Councilman Daniel Martinez told Beltran to mention to AMG that school start times at both high schools have been staggered in the morning to alleviate traffic backups.
“The two high schools start after 9 in the morning instead of 8 like they used to,” said Martinez.
