Contact: Colleen Roche (212) 788-2958 or Brice Peyre (212) 442-7033
GIULIANI ADMINISTRATION CLEARS TRAFFIC SIGNAL BACKLOG;
SIGNAL STUDIES REDUCED FROM 34 MONTHS TO 12 WEEKS
"It's a signal achievement: the era of the decades-long request for a traffic light is over," declared Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani today at the unveiling of a newly installed traffic signal at 17th Avenue and 62nd Street in Brooklyn. At today's ceremony, Mayor Giuliani also announced that the Department of Transportation had succeeded in eliminating the backlog of traffic signal studies, which previously had caused requests for traffic signals to undergo as much as a three year waiting period before necessary studies were completed."Some communities have waited literally years to have an intersection studied before a signal could be installed. That is why one of the first priorities Mayor Giuliani assigned to me when I assumed this position was to reduce the seemingly eternal waiting time a community had to endure before learning if a request for a traffic signal was to be approved, let alone installed," said Commissioner Christopher Lynn, who was appointed head of the City's Department of Transportation (DOT) by Mayor Giuliani last July.
"Traffic signal studies, which had previously taken an average of 34 months before any determination was made on approving a traffic light installation, are now completed within 12 weeks," explained Commissioner Lynn. "When I assumed the helm of DOT, the backlog numbered 600 signal studies; at the start of the new year, there is no backlog of studies whatsoever," said Lynn.Nine hundred studies were performed in 1996 alone, a remarkable achievement considering that each study is required by National Transportation Safety Board standards to pass a checklist of nine Federal warrants. In 1996, 169 traffic signals were installed, compared to 56 during 1995.
Commissioner Lynn noted, in addition, that the amount of time for a signal installation would be less than six months until June 1 of 1997 and that, thereafter, installation would be reduced to a twelve week period.
"By next summer," said Commissioner Lynn, "the total amount of time from the moment a traffic signal request is made until it is approved and installed will be twenty-four weeks."
There are currently 10,687 traffic signals located at some of the City's 43,000 intersections. Each installation costs about $32,000. Two hundred and twenty-two traffic signals will be installed in the City during the first five months of 1997.