Red Light, Green Light: Traffic Division Keeps Dalton's Roads Working
Wednesday, June 14th, 2023
Keeping the roads in working order and keeping traffic moving safely in Dalton is a 24 hour a day, 365 day a year job. It's a job that falls to the Public Works Department, and specifically the six members of the department's Traffic Safety and Signal Division.
"We maintain 91 traffic signals, 26 of which are on state routes," said Alex Rice, the division's supervisor. "We are in charge of nearly all the striping of the roads in the city. We do all of the signage in the right of way."
The division does more than just maintenance of equipment and signage, though. They are also in charge of making sure the traffic control features are designed well, and make improvements whenever necessary or possible.
Caption: Members of the Public Works Traffic Safety and Signal Division, Bradley Davenport, Alex Rice, Jason Davis, Lionel Moreno, and Derek Bagley (not pictured: Donald Burke)
"We evaluate the sight distance issues and if we’ve got an intersection where there’s limited sight distance for a driver to pull onto a street, whether it be an earthen restriction, fence, overgrown vegetation, we look to see what all safety improvements we can make for an area as a whole," said Bradley Davenport. "For example, we made some safety improvements to the crosswalks on Burleyson Drive, where the Hamilton Medical employees cross. We made those more visible after daylight hours."
"The East Morris project, with the flashing beacons with the two crosswalks, we did all of that over there," Rice added.
Projects for the Traffic Division can be triggered by complaints or reports from residents who contact Public Works with a concern over a traffic issue. The Dalton Police Department's Traffic Enforcement Unit also works closely with the Public Works Department when they identify potential safety hazards that motorists or pedestrians are having somewhere in the city.
"We get a lot of citizen requests that may start a project or it could be guys within this division, I mean it could be our brush truck drivers or garbage truck drivers out in the community who say, 'hey, I think we need to take a look at this,'" Public Works Director Chad Townsend said. "It kind of comes from all different directions."
One of the most visible parts of the job for members of the community and also one of the most important parts of the Traffic Safety and Signal Division's work comes about when there's an emergency. At all hours of the night and in all weather conditions, the division is called in to work on virtually every kind of emergency roadway issue imaginable.
"It could be a traffic signal that's out, a stop sign that's knocked down," Rice sad.
"Nails in the road," added Jason Davis.
"Trees down, vehicle accidents, oil spills, guard rails, sink holes.. you name it," Davenport continues.
Caption: A member of the Traffic Safety and Signal Maintenance Division works on a traffic signal at the busy intersection of M.L. King, Jr. Blvd. and Waugh Street in September 2021
"Snow and ice, too," said Lionel Moreno, who is the unsung hero of after hours calls according to his coworkers. When there are calls in the middle of the night, Moreno usually makes it to the scene in 15 minutes according to his fellow employees.
"It's true, he handles every emergency call in this division," said Davenport. "There have been times where he’s needed additional help on a signal and we work four, five, six hours through the night into the next morning, in the pouring rain."
"It's always storming when that happens," Moreno said with a smile. "But we've got a good team."
When there's a potential design problem with a traffic control system, the work to address it can be very complex. The Public Works Department has to work within the guidelines of a number of different rules, laws, and design standards.
"I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s not just something as easy as coming out and installing a sign, or we’ll just go out and paint a crosswalk... there’s a whole lot more of a thought process that goes in behind it," Townsend said. "There are so many different standards that we have to meet and keep and uphold that your average citizen wouldn’t know."
"Another thing they do is keeping traffic counts and traffic data," Townsend added. "There’s a lot of that that goes through these guys as well that ultimately dictates the engineering decisions that we make as to whether crosswalks are warranted or speed bumps, speed limits, that’s dictated by this division as well."
Ultimately, the job comes down to keeping motorists and pedestrians safe in Dalton. There's a life-saving component to the job, and it's one that the members of the division take seriously. That includes going above and beyond what's required to make sure that anyone on the road in Dalton is safe.
"For instance, when they were upgrading the Rocky Face interchange I got a call on New Year's Eve that the signal box had been run over for the northbound exit ramps onto 41," Davenport said. "[The project] It was under contract, and whenever it’s under contract we don’t touch it because that’s GDOT’s responsibility and ultimately it’s the subcontractor’s. I called our local contact with GDOT... but they weren't able to make it in. There were three lanes going in each direction – I didn’t have to do it, but I came back here [to Public Works] and spent an hour loading up barrels and choking those three lanes down to one lane and made it an all-way stop just because I didn’t feel safe leaving it."
"It wasn’t our responsibility, but I’m not going to leave it where you’ve got a signalized intersection without at least some sort of traffic control device," Davenport added. "They came on scene the next day and put a new cabinet up, but that’s just one extra thing that we do that we don’t have to."
For the Traffic Safety and Signal Division there aren't many routine days, but that's something the employees call a plus.
"It's doing something different all of the time," said Jason Davis. "It's always something new."
"You never know what you're going to be doing day-to-day," added Derek Bagley.
