GRIDLOCK GURU : Early riser waits alone at stoplight
Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Gridlock_Guru/221722/
J. B. Hunt Transport Services employees surely love the traffic signal at Dixieland Street and Arkansas 264 near the Lowell company’s headquarters.
It used to give them fits as long lines of cars would wait and wait for the signal to turn green so they could turn left off Dixieland toward Interstate 540.
These days, it’s much better. They get lots of green time when heading home in the evening.
The signal’s timing, however, isn’t worth a hoot to Lowell resident Brad Higbee who drives on Arkansas 264 around 4 a. m. toward work at Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport at Highfill.
The Guru follows Higbee’s issue by helping Fayetteville adjust a traffic signal, then he fails to explain the logic behind gas prices.
Question: “Help !” Higbee writes. “The traffic signal at Arkansas 264 and Dixieland Road has been malfunctioning since the heavy rain. It seems to be in a default mode and turns red for Arkansas 264 even when no traffic is on Dixieland.
“ This is a camera-operated intersection so it should not be going through the whole cycle. It stays green longer for the side road than it does for 264.”
Answer: Perry Long fretted about the traffic signal before he became Lowell mayor in January 2007. He’s still fretting.
“I’ve done the same thing, but not at 4 in the morning,” Long said. “It’s aggravating to sit there on Sunday night and wait when no one is there.”
Long asked for help from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department in December. Highway Department spokesman David Nilles said that Mark Lyons, a staff traffic engineer, will meet with Lowell officials sometime in the next two weeks to discuss the signal.
Q: “As you go east on Joyce Boulevard in Fayetteville, and try to make a left turn onto Steele Boulevard in front of McAlister’s Deli, the left-turn arrow never shows up,” writes Jack Sluder of Fayetteville. “I had to wait three light changes before I could turn. Finally, traffic was light enough I could turn; still no green arrow, though.
“ What happened ? Is it going to be corrected ?”
A: A bracket holding the detection camera was loose, and the camera wasn’t pointing at the cars arriving in the left-turn lane, said Perry Franklin, the city’s transportation superintendent. A bolt to secure the bracket that holds the camera was replaced.
Q: “Gas at the Murphy USA location on Sixth Street in Fayetteville is usually two cents more than it is at the Joyce Boulevard location,” writes Al Miller of West Fork. “Is there a good explanation for this ?”
A: There’s no good explanation when The Guru plays phone tag with a Murphy USA spokesman and never gets to talk to him.
But, The Guru has a couple of thoughts from Jason Toews, co-founder of GasBuddy, a gas price reporting Web site (www. gasbuddy. com ).
Toews’ suggestions are: Buy away from major highways. Stations near highways are often more expensive. Avoid affluent neighborhoods. Rich folks are less price sensitive, meaning stations can charge more. Robert J. Smith, aka The Guru, writes on traffic issues in Northwest Arkansas. He can be reached at gridlockguru@arkansasonline. com or www. nwanews. com / gridlockguru.