LEXINGTON, S.C. — The Town of Lexington says they’ll be looking into traffic lights around the area and see if any changes need to be made.
Every morning Street Squad Lexington sits down with you and we talk about the things that are important to you. You tell us about the biggest concerns you have and what you want to see changed.
We've been following up for the last week on traffic lights within the Town of Lexington. Folks say two of the heavily traveled roads in Lexington, Sunset Blvd and North Lake Drive, are where a lot of the traffic issues are.
More specifically, people wanted News 19 to take a look at the traffic lights at the intersection of North Lake Drive and Abbie Lane.
Some people say they're frustrated because they feel like they never get the green light. They say it's always the flashing yellow to yield. Folks have told Street Squad they want to see a change with this light and others on the road.
Street Squad brought your concern to Lexington Mayor Steve MacDougall and asked him why this is the case.
“The camera sees a small box out in front of it in the intersection and it counts cars that are in that intersection. It's continuously talking to the other lights to see if it can go back green to allow those cars to get out of the intersection,” said MacDougall.
In Monday night’s State of the Town Address, Mayor Steve MacDougall announced they would be started Phase II of their project with the turning lights.
“The Town of Lexington is also beginning Phase II of our Adaptive Computerized Signalization System, which will include 16 signals,” said MacDougall.
MacDougall said they started the bid process for Phase II in January and anticipate to begin in March.
“In addition to having all 35 signals in town on the system, we are collaborating with Lexington Medical Center to include the 10 intersections in campus proximity. This project is currently out to bid and we anticipate proceeding by this spring,” explained MacDougall.
The town says the new system will “eliminate constraints on current signal operations and timing, improve travel time, operates signal ‘intelligently’, reduces accidents, and reduces fuel consumptions and emissions.”
The mayor says it is possible for the light on Abbie Lane to turn green but it all depends on how many cars are sitting in the turn lane. With that being said, you in the community want to see if changes can be made in the system to turn the light from yellow to green more often.
“Absolutely, we'll be glad to look into it. Our traffic engineer would take that call and say we need to look at this intersection. They go back and look at the tapes. We have tapes that go back probably a month or two months, but we only use those for informational purposes and we'll go back and look at those tapes and if it's warranted, then we can make adjustments,” said MacDougall.
There's no timetable at the moment but the mayor says they'll let us know if there will or won't be any changes made to this intersection.
If you have any other stories you feel like we should cover in Lexington, you can message us on our Street Squad Lexington page.