Back in 1999, a diverse group of transportation practitioners from Michigan met to discuss traffic signal issues. These people came from the State, County, Cities, Consultants and Academia. The meeting was called the Oakland County Traffic Signal Summit. One of the subcommittees titled "traffic signal timing" focused on the retiming of all non-SCATS (real-time adaptive) signals in the County. Signal timing was a hot topic as the roadway system in Oakland County was being stressed by enormous growth and population shifts due to residential and commercial developments. In many cases signal timings had not been changed for over 10 years. This meant that most signal timings had room for improvement. There are about 960 non-SCATS traffic signals under all levels of government in Oakland County. This retiming was intended to be done in 3 phases with about 320 signals being retimed in each phase. The CMAQ funding to be used to implement this retiming was made available at the same time for phases 1 and 2. It was then decided to go out for one RFP that would select 2 consultants, one for each phase. These consultants would work concurrently. This is one of the largest, if not the largest traffic signal retiming effort in the United States. This paper will give an overview of the complexities and lessons learned from managing and implementing a project of this size and scope. Discussion will include how the program was started, issues encountered, and the current status.
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