Traffic Engineering!

                    Traffic Engineering in Portland, ME

 Traffic engineers often play a key role in the design of roadways and intersections, especially in urban settings. The “Complete Streets” movement that is dominating urban environments these days demands that traffic engineers not only pay attention to the safe and orderly movement of private vehicles, but also other modes, such as transit vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. Our city streets are multi-modal and our street and intersection designs need to accommodate all of these needs equally.

The City of Portsmouth, NH is in the process of transforming Maplewood avenue an urban arterial feeding their downtown that is faced with all of these challenging issues. The City of Portland, ME is currently redesigning Congress Square in the heart of the Arts District in the City.  This project not only involves new lane use and traffic signalization, but also the provision for a whole new pedestrian realm and streetscape to better connect the Portland Museum of Art with Congress Square Park on the opposite side of the intersections.From a roadway perspective, traffic engineers find themselves needing to be creative when it comes to dealing with the issue of “congestion”. The days of building more lanes are gone, and now the challenge is to squeeze more capacity out of the pavement that al-road exist.

Traffic signals are another design element that traffic engineers are typically responsible for in an urban environment. These installations have gotten considerably more complicated in recent years, as more and more communities are seeking “Smart City Solutions”, which often mean adaptive controlled signal systems. Historically, the northeast has lagged the rest of the nation in deploying these types of advances in traffic signal technologies.

Unfortunately, many communities are still satisfied with signals that operate green, yellow, red, and nothing else.  Solving congestion in dense urban areas, though, demands more. Traffic signals need to operate as “demand responsive” devices rather than “fixed time” controllers.  The key to this type of operation is sound, reliable vehicle detection. Historically, this was achieved by using in-pavement inductive loops. Today, however, many communities are converting to above-ground cameras, which can not only detect vehicles but record traffic volumes and turning movements 24/7, which is critical for traffic engineers that are interested in keeping these intersections optimized.