Mercer Street Gets Better and Better: 3rd eastbound lane and Adaptive Signal Control

The opening of the third lane on eastbound Mercer Street Monday morning marks a significant milestone in the continuing Mercer corridor project, which is slated for completion in summer 2015. Already this afternoon’s commute is shaping up to be much better along Mercer than what was seen in the past several weeks.

At the same time, big news for the neighborhood is the securing of Adaptive Signal Control (ASC) funding in the City Council’s 2015 budget package.

What is Adaptive Signal Control?

It’s a traffic management strategy in which traffic signal timing changes, or adapts, based on actual traffic demand. Although the East and West Mercer projects included the in-pavement hardware for future implementation of such a system, the above ground management equipment and software was left for a future install, once traffic patterns become known in the corridor alignment.

That time is fast approaching and so a concerted effort took off in the last few weeks on the part of multiple neighborhood organizations and business groups.  Community requests resulted in meetings with City Council, Mayor’s Office and SDOT staff to push for the funding to implement this system. This past Friday, November 14^th, saw success as Council added $200K in 2015 and $800k in 2016 to the city budget for ASC implementation.  Final vote on the entire budget is scheduled for Monday, November 24^th, and should be an up or down vote with no more amendments.  A hearty ‘Thank You’ to all members of the SLU Chamber and other neighbor organizations who took the time to lobby for this much needed infrastructure improvement. When fully implemented, ASC will help to smooth traffic flow on both Mercer and Denny, as well as side streets that connect with these two major east-west arterials.