Guest Commentary: We can better manage traffic lights

BY ORVILLE BRANNON

We have lived in DeLand for 42 years and love it. It is very obvious and no surprise our wonderful town and the surrounding areas have over the years attracted many new residents.

With this has come more traffic and more traffic lights. The lights are a necessity, but the way they are currently being programmed to operate is very inefficient.

Many times you are required to sit and wait for an unreasonable amount of time to turn or proceed when there is no traffic in sight to prevent you from going. This has gotten progressively worse over the years, at a time when today’s technology should have improved.

The new methods of traffic-light sequencing being employed, which I assume are supposed to reduce accidents, do not work and only result in road rage and more people running red lights.

For many years, the lights were controlled by sensors in the road, and if no traffic was crossing them, the light would change, but it seems those are no longer used and cameras or some other method has taken their place.

There are times when it seems the lights must be operating only by a timer because there will be no traffic in sight but the light will still not change.

This all comes at a time when energy conservation is in the forefront of everything.

There is no greater waste of energy than sitting unnecessarily at a traffic light or sitting in a drive-thru line at a fast-food restaurant, but drive-thru food pickup and the energy wasted there can be a topic for another day.

We have observed the same traffic-light issues elsewhere in Central Florida, but not nearly so much in other parts of the state, so perhaps it is District 5 of the DOT experimenting with perceived new methods of traffic-light control?

I don’t know what to say to whomever is doing it, it is not working!

We recently traveled to Europe, and it would be tax dollars well-spent for our traffic-control engineers to go there and observe how they deal with traffic lights.

I am not alone with these observations. I have spoken with many others who have made the same observations and are equally frustrated.

I realize this will probably fall on bureaucratic deaf ears, but it really needs to be re-evaluated. We have done better in the past and can certainly do better now.

— Brannon lives in DeLand.