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City updates on Dauphin, Dolphin and Airport signal projects; residents urged to report malfunctioning signals via 311
Summary
City staff outlined plans to replace cabinets, add detection equipment and move from cellular modems to fiber on key corridors; officials described why signals flash and how residents should report problems.
City traffic staff told Mobile City Council on March 25 that several corridor-signal upgrades are moving toward construction and purchase, and they urged residents to report malfunctioning or flashing traffic signals through the city’s 311 system.
Jennifer White, the city’s traffic project lead in the pre-meeting, said the Dauphin Street reconstruction and synchronization project will go to bid when remaining right-of-way issues are resolved; staff anticipate an ALDOT letting this summer and described the work as mainly “topside” (equipment and cabinets rather than the deep utility work used on larger projects).
White said the Dolphin Street corridor has new timing and controllers but still needs detection repairs and cabinet replacement; the city is buying equipment (cabinets, controllers, detectors and other detection system hardware) and expects purchase orders for several hundred thousand dollars in equipment to appear on upcoming council agendas. She said the city is currently using cellular modems for communications but will convert to fiber when the construction project installs permanent fiber.
Council members raised recurring complaints that signals intermittently flash red or yellow; staff explained that intermittent power surges and aging cabinets can trigger a default “flash” mode or cause MMU (monitoring/microcontroller unit) faults that force a signal to flash until repaired. White said the city’s SIMTrak system will notify staff of some faults, but not all, and residents should call 311 for nonemergency outages and the city’s nonemergency number when immediate response is required on weekends.
White and staff also said the city has contracts with corridor consultants (AECOM and Kimley-Horn) under the MPO that allow consultants to perform remote and field adjustments during the year. Residents should submit 311 complaints, which are routed to the appropriate consultant and worked as work orders; for ALDOT-owned corridors (for example some segments of Moffett controlled by ALDOT), staff can forward issues but recommended calling ALDOT’s dispatch if the problem appears to be on a state-controlled facility.
The council was also briefed on an ALDOT intergovernmental agreement to upgrade detection systems at traffic signals; that CIP resolution was listed on the agenda for future action.
