White to seek $300K to sync traffic lights

So Mayor Bill White will ask City Council today for money to synchronize more of the city's traffic lights — a continuation of one of White's first initiatives when he took office. According to KHOU, about 70 percent of Houston's traffic lights have been synchronized; it's not clear how many more the $300,000 White will ask for would take care of, but we hope that much money would go a long way.

Synchronizing traffic lights — making them change from red to green in sequence so that drivers who maintain a certain speed don't have to stop — is harder than it might sound. Not only do you have to consider the effect on cross streets (which are also supposed to be synchronized), but you also have to take traffic patterns into account: Lights have to be timed to allow for heavier traffic volume at certain times of the day. Taking all that into account, it's easier to understand how the price of synchronizing large numbers of lights could really add up. But it works: "On Westheimer, between 610 and Beltway, there was about a 16 percent increase in the speed that people could go through that area once we re-timed the traffic lights," White said. And synchronized lights really do make it easier to get around — if you don't believe us, try taking a drive northbound along Bagby Street downtown, where the lights all work against you. It's infuriating.

A $300,000 appropriation from City Council wouldn't only be used for existing lights, city Public Works spokesman Alvin Wright said: "It gives us a license for not only the existing lights we have right now, but also for the future lights we plan on installing," he said. "I think they'll have a good system, once they get everything coordinated, they'll have a good system going,” he said. "We'll be able to catch all of the green lights."