- NEW Safety Matters: A Tips from Tony Compilation
- Signal Spotlight: Day Hill Road Adaptive Traffic Control Signal Systems—Windsor, CT
- Warren's Words of Wisdom: Why Didn't I Say Something?
- Road Facts—Pedestrians and Drivers: Whose Turn Is It?
- Helping Municipalities Meet New Pollution Regulations
- Innovation Station: Drones Take Center Stage in North Carolina, Kansas
- Free EBook: Asset Management Basics—Cartegraph
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NEW Safety Matters: A Tips from Tony Compilation
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Welcome to the first installment of Safety Matters! It is my hope to highlight and share with you examples of why and how Safety Matters throughout Connecticut and beyond. I welcome you to send me any issues that you would like to see mentioned as well. To start, the T2 Center has compiled “Tony’s Tips” into a reference
catalog
for easy access to some often-asked
questions, importan
t guidelines and standards, and helpful tools. I look forward to sharing more Safety Matters with you in the future!
If you have any questions about local road safety concerns, you can contact:
Melissa Evans, Safety Circuit Rider
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Signal Spotlight: Day Hill Road Adaptive Traffic Control Signal Systems—Windsor, CT
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This month’s Signal Spotlight features a CMAQ-funded adaptive signal control project courtesy of Bob Dinallo from the Town of Windsor and Kwesi Brown, PE, PTOE from Milone & MacBroom. The project team followed the systems engineering process to ensure the project will effectively meet the Town’s needs for congestion mitigation and reduce overall vehicle emissions.
The Town of Windsor was awarded $1.32 million in federal funding, through the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvements Program, for the implementation of Adaptive Signal Control Technology (ASCT) at 11 traffic signals on a 3.5-mile section (State Route 75 to State Route 187) of Day Hill Road to address corridor congestion. The town selected Milone & MacBroom, Inc. as the lead design consultant for the project.
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Day Hill Road is an arterial roadway that carries about 20,000 vehicles daily, serving about 11 million square feet of commercial and industrial development including an Amazon distribution facility.
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f you have traffic signal systems questions, please contact:
Theresa Schwartz, P.E., P.T.O.E. - Traffic Signal Circuit Rider
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Warren's Words of Wisdom: Why Didn't I Say Something?
by Warren Rogers, C.S.P.
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The other day on my way home on Route 9 South just before I-91, I came up behind a tractor trailer with a flat bed in the right lane. As I moved to the left lane to pass, something about the flat bed made me look again. On the flat bed there were four 12”x12”x72” timbers that were probably the dunnage under the load that had been taken off. The part that didn’t immediately click was that none of the four timbers were strapped down to the trailer. They appeared to be loose (they could have been nailed down, but I really doubt it). DOT rules for load securement require there to be no loose materials, especially something like those heavy beams. If one or more of those beams were to have fallen off the trailer, I can’t imagine the havoc and damage they could have caused if they fell into the road.
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Within a few minutes the tractor trailer went down the off ramp from Route 9 to I-91 North as I continued on Route 9 South. What should I do, should I call 911 and report the truck with the load securement problem, or do nothing?
I’m embarrassed to tell you I did not call 911 to ask police to pull the trucker over to fix the loose timbers. Why I didn’t, I cannot explain. Watching the news later that night was nerve-wracking because I didn’t want to hear of an accident and injuries caused by one of the timbers coming off the trailer, which I could have prevented if I’d acted. Gratefully, I haven’t heard of any accidents related to the trailer, but there could have been. What if something had happened to my family or yours?
I promise you that in the future, I will not hesitate to report a load securement issue to the police and let them deal with it. One simple phone call could save lives.
When you see something that isn’t safe, do you hesitate or debate what to do? If it helps make the decision easier to make, put your family or co-workers in the situation. If it means stopping the job just to talk about what you see or think needs to be fixed, I’d be the first one to say, “Thanks for doing that.”
The “High-Archy” of Wires
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Road Facts
—Pedestrians and Drivers: Whose Turn Is It?
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Confusion among drivers and pedestrians regarding who has the right-of-way, which simply means who has the legal right to go first, is one reason pedestrian and driver crashes happen. Just as drivers do not always have the right-of-way, neither do pedestrians. Knowing the following
traffic rules
is essential!
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Helping Municipalities Meet New Pollution Regulations
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A UConn Extension program, in partnership with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), is helping Connecticut towns comply with new state and federal requirements for reducing water pollution – and saving them money.
The number one source of water pollution in the United States is stormwater runoff. In the Northeast in particular, flooding caused by runoff is a growing problem, as climate change produces more intense storm events than in the past. Pollution and flooding are exacerbated by paved surfaces in the expanding urban landscape that prevent percolation of rainfall into the soil, and channel pollutants directly into local rivers, lakes, and Long Island Sound.
Connecticut’s municipalities are on the front lines of the battle against stormwater runoff, and the rules of engagement are laid out in the MS4 General Permit, a set of requirements written and administered by DEEP to comply with the national
Clean Water Act
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In 2017, the MS4 requirements were significantly expanded, requiring towns to do more work to keep their stormwater clean.
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Drones Take Center Stage in North Carolina, Kansas
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Unmanned Aircraft Systems – known as UAS or drones – took center stage in North Carolina and Kansas last month as the former hosted its second annual global drone summit, while the latter received permission on August 14 to conduct the first ever Beyond Visual Line of Sight or BVLOS drone operation without a requirement for visual observers or ground-based radar support.
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The North Carolina Department of Transportation’s division of aviation helped put together the three-day
N.C. Drone Summit and Flight Expo
in Greensboro this week, hosting more than 500 people from around the world – up from 300 attendees last year – and featuring a full schedule of flight demonstrations, informative talks, panel discussions, and exhibitions.
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Free EBook: Asset Management Basics
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Cartegraph
Originally published by the APWA's Featured Products and Services Digest
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Running your municipality is no small task: taking care of infrastructure, tracking budget, providing reports to supervisors, presenting to council, the list never ends. You know these are ways you can make things easier. New tools help you demonstrate compliance and monitor performance. Ways to update your processes and be more efficient. But, change is tough
—so where do you begin?
Check out this free guide. From crafting your asset management strategy and finding the right solution to performing your initial inventory and maintaining your system, this ebook—complete with practice worksheets—will walk you through the process step-by-step. For more information, please visit
here
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Use these links to get more information about the Connecticut Training and Technical Assistance (T2) Center:
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If you have any ideas or suggestions for future
Connecticut Crossroads
topics, please feel free to email the designer Regina Hackett at
[email protected]
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