Chapel Hill cuts down on traffic officers on gameday

Fewer Chapel Hill Police officers will be standing in crowded intersections during football games this fall after the town made major improvements to its traffic signal system.

Town manager Roger Stancil said during a recent planning meeting for game day activities that the group realized the town could assign about half as many officers to manage traffic on those days with the new improvements.

“Traffic flow can be managed centrally and more effectively,” Stancil said in an email to the Chapel Hill Town Council. “This reduction also contributes to officer safety in that we have fewer of our employees standing in the middle of heavy traffic.”

The town started a traffic signal system project in 2010 to upgrade the existing 14-year-old system of about 115 traffic signals in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

The town and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funded the $5 million project. The improvements were completed, accepted and put into effect Sept. 20, 2012.

The upgrade system includes many improvements, like the installation of pedestrian countdown displays and the installation of bicycle-activated signals at 40 intersections in the town.

“Every day traffic is definitely moving faster,” said Kumar Neppalli, traffic engineering manager of the town.

“We’ve experienced no problems thus far, in fact everything has been going very well.”

To gauge the effectiveness of the upgrade, the town has been collecting before-and-after data since the initiation of the new system, according to a traffic signal system update from the town.

Travel delays to motorists were reduced on all corridors for peak hours and traffic signal synchronization was improved, according to the update.

The town received positive feedback from the police and transit departments, specifically officers and bus drivers, regarding improvements to the traffic signal operations post installation.

Junior Caden McMahon said he drives a shuttle for the Rizzo Conference Center on football Saturdays and said he could see the improvement in traffic.

“The biggest things I’ve noticed are less time in stand still traffic and I don’t see a bunch of officers standing at every intersection, changing the signals by hand,” said McMahon.

“Every day traffic in Chapel Hill is bad enough and game days can get pretty brutal, so I’d say they’ve made solid improvements to something that really needed it.”

Neppalli said the system can be controlled from one location or from home, and the upgrades helped in rerouting detours for summer construction on campus.

The next step in the project will be another council report, which will be released in November and will include a before-and-after comparison for the one-year interval. The town’s staff is also working on a web-based traffic app capable of providing real-time travel data and congestion mapping.