Light problem addressed

UCF students have been waiting too long for traffic lights to change, and the UCF Police Department plans to do something about it soon, police said.

Sgt. Troy Williamson of the UCF Police Department said the police have known about the long wait at traffic lights for quite some time, but it was a matter of getting the necessary people together in a meeting to discuss it.

"We all sat down: the Police Department, the Physical Plant, the Siemens people, Orange County Traffic Engineering," Williamson said. "We sat down at a meeting and told them, ‘This is where our problems are and this is what's going on.' "

Williamson said he and Sgt. John Moore went through a laundry list of problems during the meeting and walked out of it feeling 100 percent.

The representatives from Orange County and Siemens acknowledged every issue presented to them.

"I feel like with certain lights, that every time I'm there, I know I'm going to have to sit for 10 minutes before it turns," said Claire Bader, a junior advertising/public relations major. "I don't know if there's a reason why there is such a long wait for the lights, but I would like to wait less."

Senior finance major Peter Camarata said the peak hours when classes get out are the worst.

"In off hours and late at night there are only like three cars leaving," he said. "But during around 4 or 5 — the big class ending times — that's usually when it's really annoying."

In the next few weeks, however, students should start to notice a change.

Many of the traffic troubles students are encountering root from an adaptive traffic control system installed and run by Siemens Traffic Solutions called SCOOT, which stands for Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique.

"Basically [SCOOT] looks at how many cars are coming through an intersection each day at a certain time of day, and then it goes, ‘Well, yesterday I had this many cars, today I've got this many cars, so I need to change my times to allow that many cars to get through,' " Moore said.

The problem, he said, is that there are three different SCOOT systems — one for UCF, one for Alafaya and one for University — and none of them are communicating with one another.

"The lights, according to SCOOT, are supposed to talk," Williamson said. "The ones on campus, originally what I was told, were supposed to talk to the ones on Alafaya. Well, they don't."

One of the biggest problem areas is at the intersection of Gemini and University, where students are trying to leave campus.

Both Bader and Camarata park in Garage A on a regular basis and said they have to account for the extra time they have to wait in line for the light at Gemini to change.

"I know how bad it is," Williamson said. "We know how bad it is — 10 seconds and only six or seven cars through. We're definitely looking at that intersection as a priority."

Another problem area that was addressed in the meeting was the recently added left-turn lane going from University onto Alafaya.

Many times people in the right left-turn lane are unaware that they can't go straight into the university, and they end up cutting other people off in order to do so, Moore said.

The plan, he said, is to fix this by moving the "skate" lines over, which are the short lines that indicate where a car must go as it turns.

"All of it is being worked on," Williamson said. "We should see positive results probably within the next two weeks. And if we don't, we'll go after them again and say, ‘It ain't fixed.'"