No matter the time or day of the week, there always seems to be a heavy flow of traffic on Nashville roads. What makes congestion even worse is when traffic signals seem to be out-of-sync.
NewsChannel 5's Shannon Royster and photographer Nathan Sharkey took to the streets to see why Metro Public Works has undertaken its largest signal timing project.
“Right now, we are at 16th Avenue at Charlotte stuck at a traffic light. We’re going to see how long it takes us to go to white bridge heading out of the city.”
And almost immediately into the trip, they could relate to complaints about those out-of-sync traffic lights.
Before they made it to White Bridge Road, located just 3.8 miles away, it was more of the same stop and go traffic.
“It’s taken us over 12 minutes from where we started at the I-40 Interchange.”
Next, they wanted to see how long it would take them to drive from White Bridge and Harding to 9th Avenue downtown.
“We are approaching a light now but we are stopping at the green light because the light in front of it is still red.”
Now, Metro Public Works is working on a major traffic signal timing project to include 19 corridors and 560 traffic signals.
The signal timing project is in the analysis stage, but it should be completed sometime this year. However, until then, congestion is to be expected when you live in one of the nation's "it" cities.
