As children are returning to school, East Texas safety officials are doing their part to keep kids safe. Cameron Williams, traffic engineer for the City of Tyler, shares strategies behind improving safety through traffic engineering. He explains the crucial role of reducing speed limits in school zones. Plus, discover how Tyler’s innovative implementation of technology, like remotely communicating with school beacons and a fresh signage system, has led to a 30% drop in traffic congestion on South Broadway. So, buckle up and enjoy this engaging journey through the lanes of traffic safety and improvements in Tyler.
MIKE LANDESS: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. It’s the kind of story that just makes your heart hurt. A middle school student at Frisco, heading off to the first day of school on his bike, is hit and killed by a motorist. The City of Tyler has been working hard on identifying issues in school zones. It’s made a number of changes to help protect kids as the new school year begins, and with us is City of Tyler Traffic Engineer Cameron Williams. Welcome.
CAMERON WILLIAMS: Hello, good to be with you today.
MIKE LANDESS: There were more than 740 traffic accidents across the state in school zones resulting in 23 serious injuries last year. Is that a figure that surprises you?
CAMERON WILLIAMS: Not necessarily. You do have, you know, there are a lot of schools in Texas and a lot of traffic out there and things are going to happen. But what can we do to make reduce those possibilities?
MIKE LANDESS: And that’s my question for you. What are we doing in Tyler?
CAMERON WILLIAMS: One of the most recent things that we have done is look at the speeds in our school zones. So, we did a review of those and made some reductions. A couple reasons for that is we went down to 20 miles per hour in the majority of our school zones on city streets, and that provides one safety enhancement. You know, when you have an accident with a vehicle and a pedestrian, when you’re at a 20-mile-per-hour speed, the chance of severity or any type of serious injury is greatly reduced, as opposed to you go 30, 35, the chance for a fatality increases. And so that was one of the main drivers behind us looking to make sure that we could go down to 20 miles per hour in a majority of our school zones within the city of Tyler.
LANDESS: I found that I picked up something in school zones that I also picked up in small towns and traveling across Texas, and that was the cruise control on my car. I just I just hit it automatically and I find that it keeps everybody safe. It keeps me safe and keeps everybody else on the outside safe too.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I think that’s a great point. It’s easy to, when you’re not paying attention, to go faster than you should, and with a lot of newer cars, that cruise control is super easy to use. You can set it and adjust it up and down really easy, and so that is a great practice in order to keep people safe.
LANDESS: Now, the most common causes of accidents in Texas last year were — and probably across the country and around the world — inattention, speeding and failure to yield the right of way. How can traffic engineering address issues like that?
WILLIAMS: So, I think one, is that we do have signage to help at least bring attention to people on what’s going on the roadway, and then just awareness of what’s going on. And then, in a lot of our school zones, we do have school beacons. So those are the flashing beacons that bring more awareness of when there is a change in speed, so that we can make sure drivers see that and obey it.
LANDESS: That particular thing-have you added a number of those in Tyler? Or have you enhanced the ones that were already there? How have you done it?
WILLIAMS: So, we have not necessarily added additional school beacons, but within the past couple years, we have improved the technology of how do we communicate with those school beacons. Previously, we had clocks in those beacons that we had to go out there and program every single year to match up with the school calendar, and some of the challenges with that are we don’t know if they’re working, if they go, if something breaks, or let’s just say you, you know, we had some winter storms where school was canceled. Well then, those beacons would still be flashing. And I think from a traffic engineering perspective, we want things to only flash when they’re needed. And the system that we have put in place allows us to remotely talk to those. We can schedule those. If we have a delayed start at a school, we can now delay the start of those beacons, so that they’re actually active when people are coming to school, as opposed to 7 in the morning when they’re not starting till 10.
LANDESS: Well, you’re talking about being able to address issues with the traffic systems remotely. That’s something relatively new in the city of Tyler. Don Warren’s been talking for a couple of years with us about the improvements that have come along. He was bragging just recently about the fact there was a 30% drop, or improvement, I should say on the traffic on South Broadway. I can’t even imagine what it would be like being a traffic engineer. I mean, you can’t even stand in the line at Brookshire’s without somebody saying, “Hey, let me tell you something about the traffic,” as though you don’t know.
WILLIAMS: Right, no, it just comes with the territory. You know, part of signing up for the job, for what we do, you know. But as we were kind of joking earlier, I typically don’t tell people what I do unless they dig a little further with questions.
LANDESS: Yeah, but let’s talk about that whole idea, though. Now Don pointed out that if you change everything in the system right away, if you got a big windfall and said, “I can change the entire system in one year,” you’d have technology that was tied to that year, and then you couldn’t improve upon it as you went along, or might not be able to improve upon it as went along. Explain that to us.
WILLIAMS: Sure. So, you think of anything with your house or with your car. There’s life cycles to that, and so at a certain point in time you need to replace that. Now, if you did your every one of your cars that your household owned at the same time, well, that’s a big expense to do in 5 or 6 years. So how do we spread those expenses out so that we do not have it occurring at the same time from a budgeting standpoint and also from a technology standpoint? Because again, if you do everything at the same time, well then, it’s probably going to break or go bad at the same time. So, let’s spread that piece out.
LANDESS: Tell me about the improvement in terms of the general improvement for traffic in Tyler. I heard a number the other day that was just jaw dropping 300,000 vehicles on the roads, and is it that high, low, or right about the right number?
WILLIAMS: I should have a good answer for that, but I don’t. But I think the thing that you see in Tyler, so we have a population of about 110,000. But you’ve heard things like it almost doubles or triples potentially during the day as you have so many outlying communities that people come into Tyler as a hub for working and for retail and different things, and so it is quite impressive the amount of traffic that we have on the roadway for the community the size that we are.
LANDESS: Do you look at other communities of similar size and how they’re doing what they’re doing with their traffic systems? How do you come up with a model for what we should be doing, what we are doing and what we should be doing?
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. So, a lot of this goes back to a couple years ago. We did a master plan, and part of that master plan was looking at where we are at today. Where do we need to be in the future? How does that compare to what other cities are doing and how they’re handling their systems? And so, that really gave us a roadmap for the things that we need to focus on to provide a better level of service, a better quality, a transportation system for the citizens of Tyler and the people that come here for work and for play.
LANDESS: So, do you have any final thoughts? Parting thoughts for Tyler drivers, as school is about to start?
WILLIAMS: Sure, so, at the end of the day, we want everybody to get home safely. We want people to get to work, get to school and then get back home safely. Nobody wants that phone call or that circumstance to happen, and so safety is the number one key, and so pay attention. If you’re a driver, pay attention to what you’re doing on the roadway. If you’re a pedestrian, pay attention to crossing that road. If you’re a cyclist, pay attention. Don’t think just because you’re in a car or whatnot, that you have the right of way becasue we all need to be out there looking out for one another, so we get home safely.
LANDESS: Our guest has been City of Tyler Traffic Engineer Cameron Williams. To hear this conversation again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. There you’ll also find a link to tips from the Texas Department of Public Safety on School Zone and School Bus Safety Practices for Drivers. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
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