Turning our old state highways into Smart Corridors requires making simple, specific improvements that will reduce traffic congestion, help transit, and provide increased safety for bicyclists and pedestrians.

The first change is that we would install smart traffic lights that can be timed remotely at any time to adjust for weather, accidents, big events letting out, and traffic congestion. Right now, the way we time the lights is to send out a technician every four years to do it by hand.

Access management (dedicated turning lanes, driveway consolidation, turning bays, and raised medians) would also increase traffic flow. Installing bus pullouts and queue jumps would mean both that you wouldn’t get stuck behind stopped buses and that riding the bus would be more attractive. And by building safe sidewalks and protected bike paths, active transportation would be a safer choice.

It’s important to know that the way we measure the effectiveness of roadways such as these old state highways is to measure delays at intersections. When we talk about traffic congestion on these roads, we talk about delays at intersections. If the intersections work better (as each of the changes described above would do), that means your wait at those intersections is shorter.