Can you believe we have been at this pandemic for six months now?! There were some really positive changes to our roads at the very beginning of this – traffic volumes plummeted as a result of adults working from home, kids distance learning, and all our extracurricular activities cancelled. It’s been six months and people have figured out to socialize at a distance, make-do with ordering take out, and everyone has seemed to take up the same weekend activity: camping! With all that being said, people are finding excuses to get in their cars and traffic volumes are creeping back to pre-Covid levels. For example, total vehicles through the intersection of Second Street/Hetherton Street were cut almost in half during the first month of Shelter in Place. It’s been a steady climb back to “normal conditions”.
Typically, as volumes (ie congestion) go down, travel time goes down. Here’s a snippet of February 2020 vs. late March 2020 and then late March 2020 vs. September 2020 on Second Street. This is just a small example of the kind of information we are getting with the investment into our traffic signal infrastructure downtown through the IDEA grant.
