I have lived in MeadowBrook on 280 between Valleydale Road and 119 for 28 years. I am so frustrated with the traffic when trying to get to and from work and the continued failure by the “powers that be” to do anything about it. I understand there are a lot of details and a lot of money that go into major changes of the traffic system, but the simple, obvious solution continues to be ignored. Just change the timing of the traffic lights.
A few years ago when the big Eddleman golf tournament was held at Greystone every year, it poured hundreds – if not thousands – of additional cars into the 280 traffic flow. But a few days before the tournament started, workers were up in cherry pickers changing the timing of the traffic lights all down 280. As a result, the traffic during the week of the tournament was completely clear with no backup at all, even with all the extra cars on the road. But as soon as the tournament was over, they were up there changing the timing back again to the ridiculous settings of before. And of course the very next day, traffic was at a standstill ,and we were back to wasting an hour every evening trying to get home. This happened year after year.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out whatever they did during those weeks would drastically improve the traffic flow on a daily basis. We don’t have to have millions of dollars and complete construction upheaval to solve this problem. The problem isn’t the number of seconds the lights stay green, as you stated in your article in the paper. As they are set now, one light will be green, but the next light just a few yards away is red — so even though the light you are at is green, no one can go anywhere because the next light is red.
We don’t need to block side road access to 280; we just need to set all the lights to be green at the same time so the hundreds of cars can go more than a few yards at a time before having to stop at another red light. Come on guys; it’s not rocket science!
It was promised last Spring that the timing on the lights would be changed over the summer and by this fall, traffic would be moving more smoothly. Sitting in backed-up traffic an extra unnecessary 30 minutes a day, five days a week, for another 12 months equals 130 hours of my life wasted!!!!!
Please take this seriously and just adjust the traffic light timing so we can get home.
