Woodstock staff preview 2025 comprehensive transportation plan; signals and data are priority

City consultants and staff presented a revised comprehensive transportation plan that maps corridors, resurfacing, pedestrian and parking projects and recommends data-driven signal timing and smart-city tools to reduce congestion while protecting the downtown pedestrian environment.

Rob Hogan of Main Street Analytics, the consultant on the plan, told the mayor and council the plan is a planning-and-coordination tool that lists major projects, functional strategies and a design table of conceptual projects. "The goal of the city is to continually improve the vehicular and pedestrian traffic flow as well as public parking in a manner that facilitates convenience and access for the citizens and businesses of Woodstock," Hogan said. He emphasized the need to balance throughput on major corridors with the pedestrian-friendly downtown character.

Hogan said downtown signal coordination is a near-term priority. The city currently has about 20 local traffic signals; downtown signals are equipped with GRIDSMART hardware that records lane movements and counts. Hogan described a year of 15-minute GRIDSMART data (about 35,130 rows for 2024) and said the city missed only six 15-minute segments in that year. He argued that analyzing the full-year data by time-of-week, school session and special events is essential to better timing plans rather than relying on short field visits.

Planned short-term actions include signal-timing adjustments likely in August, protecting the City Center Main intersection from backups, maximizing turn-lane use with lagging greens and refining detection and database management. Hogan said adaptive signal-control systems deployed nationally (ACS/US DOT programs) are not immediately well-suited to downtown Woodstock's pedestrian environment but could be trialed on corridors with fewer pedestrian conflicts, such as RidgeWalk Parkway, before any downtown deployment.

Council members asked about coordination with Georgia Department of Transportation and the county for signals on state and county corridors; Hogan said some signals (three on Highway 92) are controlled by GDOT and others are part of county timing plans. He also described existing emergency-vehicle preemption in the downtown core and said staff is pursuing expanded coordination with county partners to ensure preemption is effective across shared corridors.

The presentation included descriptions of recently completed grid-street connectors and the Haney Road extension; the plan's project list includes 41 major projects and 74 conceptual projects that have not yet been designed. Staff said the plan will serve as the basis for grant applications and annual updates.