Traffic, Damn Traffic, and More Traffic...
By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon
If you live in Brownsville you've no doubt experienced something like this. You've just gotten out of work. You work on the west side of Brownsville. You drive on to Boca Chica and start heading east. You wait at the three-way traffic light at the intersection of Old Military Highway and Boca Chica. You keep going until you hit the light at Central. You keep going until you hit the intersection of Boca Chica and Palm Boulevard. You wait for the light to turn green. You stop. You wait for the light to turn green again. You stop. You wait for the light to turn green again. You finally make your way through that intersection. You stop at the intersection of Boca Chica and Paredes. You wait...and wait...and wait...
Mid-afternoon traffic on Boca Chica slows to a crawl. This same thing is repeated on many of Brownsville's major thoroughfares. Similar stories repeat themselves on International (SPI Highway), Ruben Torres, Alton Gloor, Paredes, and lots of other streets around town. You pound the steering wheel in frustration as you ask yourself why you have to wait at so many red lights at the same intersection.
The answer is simple. Brownsville's traffic signals are not properly synchronized. Brownsville's signal light management system is grossly outdated and obsolete for a city its size. Population aside, Brownsville has to deal with the traffic from both Brownsville and Matamoros. At any time during the day, streets are buzzing with hundreds of cars trying to get to their respective destinations.
One of Brownsville's priorities must be to invest in significant infrastructure improvements, including the building and implementation of a cutting-edge Traffic Management Center.
What is a Traffic Management Center, you might ask? A TMC is a facility where all of the city's traffic can be monitored and managed. Their ultimate goal is to promote efficient traffic mobility and traffic safety. These systems began being implemented in the late 1980's. Since then, almost 300 of these centers have been built in major urban centers or places where traffic congestion has been a problem.
One border city that has a TMC is El Paso. I understand El Paso is larger than Brownsville, coming in at a population of approximately 782,000 people, but their proximity to the US/Mexico border makes them an excellent case study in how these traffic systems work.
Brownsville should send a team from the engineering and traffic departments to El Paso to visit their TMC and see how things are run. Instead of wasting money on things that should be way lower on the priority list, this is something we should definitely look at.
I understand this would be a massive undertaking, but this is definitely something worth doing. There are all kinds of technologies that would need to be implemented all over the city. However, considering we are right in the middle of the Technological Revolution, newer and better systems are being introduced that could help make Brownsville the leader in cutting-edge traffic management solutions for South Texas.
The TMC could work in conjunction with an app for everyone's phone that would update people with local traffic alerts and areas to avoid. The system could also work with the GPS systems in people's vehicles.
If the Brownsville Police Department had a dedicated traffic department, they could definitely help with the implementation and use of the TMC. If we had Brownsville Police traffic officers constantly patrolling the city, they could also help with safety and managing the flow of traffic. Brownsville should look into the possibility of giving Chief Sauceda a deputy chief who would be in charge of the traffic division. Brownsville definitely needs more police officers, and more higher ranking officers to run more divisions.
I'm sure Carlos Lastra, his engineers, and his traffic department will ask where the money would come from to pay for all of this. I understand this wouldn't be a cheap endeavor and I know there this is something that can't happen overnight. However, Brownsville could talk to several government agencies that could help with the financing. Brownsville could partner with the Texas Department of Transportation, the US Department of Transportation, and any other agency that might be able to help. I'm sure there are plenty of infrastructure grants that could be had that would help with securing financing for this project.
The fact that Brownsville needs so many infrastructure improvements is a plus. We have nowhere to go but onward and upward. Brownsville can be a safer place to drive, and it all starts with a new, state-of-the-art Transportation and Traffic Management Center.
If you live in Brownsville you've no doubt experienced something like this. You've just gotten out of work. You work on the west side of Brownsville. You drive on to Boca Chica and start heading east. You wait at the three-way traffic light at the intersection of Old Military Highway and Boca Chica. You keep going until you hit the light at Central. You keep going until you hit the intersection of Boca Chica and Palm Boulevard. You wait for the light to turn green. You stop. You wait for the light to turn green again. You stop. You wait for the light to turn green again. You finally make your way through that intersection. You stop at the intersection of Boca Chica and Paredes. You wait...and wait...and wait...
Mid-afternoon traffic on Boca Chica slows to a crawl. This same thing is repeated on many of Brownsville's major thoroughfares. Similar stories repeat themselves on International (SPI Highway), Ruben Torres, Alton Gloor, Paredes, and lots of other streets around town. You pound the steering wheel in frustration as you ask yourself why you have to wait at so many red lights at the same intersection.
The answer is simple. Brownsville's traffic signals are not properly synchronized. Brownsville's signal light management system is grossly outdated and obsolete for a city its size. Population aside, Brownsville has to deal with the traffic from both Brownsville and Matamoros. At any time during the day, streets are buzzing with hundreds of cars trying to get to their respective destinations.
One of Brownsville's priorities must be to invest in significant infrastructure improvements, including the building and implementation of a cutting-edge Traffic Management Center.
What is a Traffic Management Center, you might ask? A TMC is a facility where all of the city's traffic can be monitored and managed. Their ultimate goal is to promote efficient traffic mobility and traffic safety. These systems began being implemented in the late 1980's. Since then, almost 300 of these centers have been built in major urban centers or places where traffic congestion has been a problem.
One border city that has a TMC is El Paso. I understand El Paso is larger than Brownsville, coming in at a population of approximately 782,000 people, but their proximity to the US/Mexico border makes them an excellent case study in how these traffic systems work.
Brownsville should send a team from the engineering and traffic departments to El Paso to visit their TMC and see how things are run. Instead of wasting money on things that should be way lower on the priority list, this is something we should definitely look at.
I understand this would be a massive undertaking, but this is definitely something worth doing. There are all kinds of technologies that would need to be implemented all over the city. However, considering we are right in the middle of the Technological Revolution, newer and better systems are being introduced that could help make Brownsville the leader in cutting-edge traffic management solutions for South Texas.
The TMC could work in conjunction with an app for everyone's phone that would update people with local traffic alerts and areas to avoid. The system could also work with the GPS systems in people's vehicles.
If the Brownsville Police Department had a dedicated traffic department, they could definitely help with the implementation and use of the TMC. If we had Brownsville Police traffic officers constantly patrolling the city, they could also help with safety and managing the flow of traffic. Brownsville should look into the possibility of giving Chief Sauceda a deputy chief who would be in charge of the traffic division. Brownsville definitely needs more police officers, and more higher ranking officers to run more divisions.
I'm sure Carlos Lastra, his engineers, and his traffic department will ask where the money would come from to pay for all of this. I understand this wouldn't be a cheap endeavor and I know there this is something that can't happen overnight. However, Brownsville could talk to several government agencies that could help with the financing. Brownsville could partner with the Texas Department of Transportation, the US Department of Transportation, and any other agency that might be able to help. I'm sure there are plenty of infrastructure grants that could be had that would help with securing financing for this project.
The fact that Brownsville needs so many infrastructure improvements is a plus. We have nowhere to go but onward and upward. Brownsville can be a safer place to drive, and it all starts with a new, state-of-the-art Transportation and Traffic Management Center.
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