The National Transportation Operations Coalition released the 2012 report card this week. As a country, the U.S. came in at a D- in 2005, D in 2007, and D+ in 2012. We're improving even in a down economy with budgets being cut!
This is a big deal for the nation. Approximately 295,000,000 hours of delay are attributed to traffic signals annually according to FHWA's Congestion Reduction Toolbox. Improving signal timing has about the best benefit to cost ratio of all of the things traffic engineers can work on.
Traffic monitoring and data collection is the poorest rated line item in the report card. Definitely an item near and dear to me…..
