Traffic Officials Blame Fast Drivers, Not Lights Driving Faster Than Posted Speed Limits Makes Lights Seem Ill-Timed, They Say

Contrary to what impatient drivers may think, Spokane’s yellow lights do stay yellow as long as those in other cities, traffic engineers said Wednesday.

And people who complain that lights here aren’t synchronized to create a smooth traffic flow are just driving too darn fast, they said.

“Everyone likes to blame their tickets and red light problems on ‘Well, someone didn’t set it up right,”’ said Don Ramsey, a city traffic engineer.

“For once they should blame themselves. Drivers are the biggest problem.”

Yellow lights are programmed according to the street’s speed limit, Ramsey said. Three-second yellow lights can be found on roads with 30-35 mph limits; 4-1/2-second lights for 45-mph streets.

Seattle uses the same speed limit formula as Spokane, and Portland engineers don’t allow any of their yellow lights to shine for more than four seconds. Ninety percent of them are set at three seconds, engineers said.

“You have four-and-a-halfs on some streets?” asked Tony Sepich, a Portland traffic signal supervisor. “That’s amazing. That’s plenty of time.”

Spokane drivers don’t seem to think so.

About 6 percent of all the accidents in the county last year were red-light related. That’s 1 percent higher than the year before.

News that Spokane was one of 32 cities nationwide to get federal money to educate drivers on the dangers of running red lights irritated some residents Wednesday.

“Give the money to fix the dumb lights,” said Nancy Beck, a 45-year-old carpooler who insists she gets hung up at “every light in town.”

“Everything is screwed up with the (signals),” complained Frank Henchon, a restaurant delivery driver. “You can’t get anywhere in this town anymore.”

Spokane engineers said they’re doing the best they can to synchronize traffic lights so drivers can keep driving. They believe most of the city’s signaling works well.

Changes in traffic volumes in certain areas may require fine-tuning, however, and Spokane doesn’t have a full-time engineer to stay on top of that, Ramsey said.

Both Portland and Seattle have entire staffs that do nothing but make sure signals are timed to match traffic.

“We have to rely on complaints from people before we know to check something out,” Ramsey said. “Not that we don’t get plenty of those.”

Ironically, Ramsey said drivers continue to run red lights and cause collisions even after engineers adjust the timing on some signals.

At Hamilton and Mission on the North Side, engineers recently changed the signals so they would stay red for two seconds in all directions before turning green.

The intersection is notorious for collisions caused by red-light violators, said Cpl. Harry Kennedy, who works in the police department’s traffic unit.

The change didn’t reduce accidents there, though.

“It just gave people more time to run red lights,” Kennedy said. “People push it even further now.”

Kennedy said drivers would be satisfied with the city’s traffic light patterns if they paid attention to the speed limits.

“I come into work and people are passing me and I catch up to every single one of them because I’m doing the speed limit,” he said. “The lights are working for me.”

“If our drivers were as efficient as our traffic signals, we’d be OK.”

Traffic-light complaints can be made to city engineers at 625-6480.

, DataTimes