By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

After its March 9 presentation to the City Council, TxDOT and Pflugerville seem to be in sync over the plan to sync up city traffic lights.

TxDOT maintains 15 signals along FMs 685 and 1825, and as many Pflugerville motorists are painfully aware, it can be hard to get in or out of town without being stopped by most of them.

“It’s a condition that citizens of Pflugerville have been concerned about for a number of years, because until recently it was the primary means to get in and out of town,” said Trey Fletcher, director of city development services. “We have better connectivity, but that need is still there to get those lights synchronized.”

Fletcher said last week’s update, which detailed plans and deadlines for the traffic project, was well-received by staff and council.

TxDOT traffic engineer Scott Cunningham told council members that the department will finalize plans for the improvements by May to be ready for bids by September. The news comes in spite of some speed bumps in funding that have caused contracts to be cancelled mid-project and workloads to be shifted.

“The year is going to be the leanest year in recent memory for pretty much every state in the country,” Cunningham said, referring to capitol improvement funds. “There have been significant cuts in funding, both federal and state.”

Originally TxDOT contracted Klotz Associates in Houston to do the traffic signal design for Pflugerville.

“Almost all of the consulting funding was cut statewide, except for a few select huge projects that couldn’t be stopped,” Cunningham said. “So 30 percent into the design Klotz was told, sorry, your contract’s been suspended, and consequently I was told ‘You have a new project to work on. By the way, it’s due in May.’”

According to Cunningham, the department is still on track to hit its deadline, and already has allocated funds to rebuild five signals along FM 1825 from the $1 million budget.

Wire-hung lights at the intersection of FM 1825 and Sarah’s Creek Drive, Vision Drive, Windermere Drive, 10th Street and Heatherwilde Boulevard will be replaced and mounted on mast arms. The new signals will also be synchronized to allow platoons of motorists to maneuver down the road without multiple stops.

“What happens is if one clock in one traffic signal is slightly different than the other clock in the other traffic signal, over time those differences cause clocks to drift, so all this programming that you’ve done gets out of phase, slightly off. So people start getting caught at the red lights.”

To remedy this problem, TxDot will install radio receivers and Ethernet into each light that will all be programmed to the same clock at a traffic headquarters. The radios will allow technicians to control the lights remotely, cutting down on maintenance time and cost.

“This system that we’re putting in – since each signal wirelessly will talk to a center point, they’ll actually be on the same clock via the system clock. That means that they wont be drifting anymore, and also it gives us the opportunity to change the timing if we have some special event or if something happens,” Cunningham said.

The technology as well as the timing of these improvements will pay dividends to the city as it officially tallies a population over 50,000 after this year’s census.

“It’s TxDot project. The city has been concerned about the effort and the implementation because of citizen concerns, but also because when the city of Pflugerville achieves its 50,000 population in accordance with the decennial census that we’re getting ready to take… the city becomes responsible for the maintenance of those signals,” Fletcher said. “So it’s been important to us to ensure that that package of signals that TxDot maintains along 685 and 1825 are synchronized correctly and in a condition which we can continue their operation maintenance most effectively.”

With deadlines in place and traffic signals planned out, TxDot navigates the final proverbial bump in the road as it plots pedestrian improvements for the sidewalks around its intersections.

“On this section of the roadway you have ditches on either side, so in order to get the pedestrian across you have to span that ditch,” said TxDot engineer Kevin Plumlee “It’s a little more involved than some other places in Austin… So that’s why we’re still deciding which intersections we’re going to do in that regard.”

In addition to accounting for the once-rural roads’ topographies, the department’s updates will have to meet standards set by the American with Disabilities Act, which Plumlee said can be ambiguous in some instances.

“A few of [the intersections] have very limited right of way. You combine that with the ditch sections and the ADA standards, and then it becomes a real challenge to get all that in there… which may require getting a little creative to try and get the pedestrian across the street safely and maintain the ADA requirements,” Plumlee said.

Despite their obstacle, Fletcher said TxDot seems to be moving in the right direction.

“It’s ok,” Cunningham said. “We’ll get them done.”

jrincon@pflugervillepflag.com