City relies on drivers to report outages

[Note: this story has been modified since its original posting.]

The failure of the red left-turn signal at Chapel Hill Road and Forum Boulevard that contributed to a fatal car crash in May was “just bad luck,” Columbia Streets Superintendent Jim McKinnon said, and won’t prompt changes in how the city tracks problems with lights.

An investigation completed by Columbia police on Monday found that a city-maintained, broken left-turn signal was the most likely cause of the accident, which killed Lois Papen, 41, of Jefferson City.

McKinnon said that as far as he knew, the Public Works Department wasn’t investigating any further the effectiveness of traffic signal maintenance in Columbia. The department also has no plans for changing its system of notification for malfunctioning lights, which depends on citizens letting public works know when a light isn’t working.

And there are no plans to speed up the installation of longer-lasting Light Emitting Diode signals; that would depend on the availability of funding, he said.

The 82 traffic signals in Columbia that are maintained by the Missouri Department of Transportation have been replaced with LEDs, which are less likely to go out all out once, said Kevin Eggemeyer, a traffic supervisor for the Transportation Department.

“It’s not impossible (for a light to go out), but it happens less frequently,” he said.

With traditional incandescent lights, the department lost 10 to 15 percent of lights before the bulbs’ supposed lifespan was over, but with LED lights, the failure rate is closer to 2 percent. Also, LED lights last five years, rather than the one to two years typical for incandescent lights, Eggemeyer said.

However, the remaining 38 lights in Columbia, which are maintained by the city, will not be replaced with LED lights for at least another two years, McKinnon said.

“We have had real good luck changing (the lights) every year,” he said. “We very seldom lose a light.”

Neither Columbia nor the Department of Transportation has an automated notification system for broken or burned out lights, but instead rely on complaints from residents or the police department.

Relying on complaints, however, may run counter to the instinctive behavior of many drivers, said Wayne Brekhus , an associate professor of sociology at MU.

“In social psychology, it’s called the bystander apathy problem,” Brekhus said. “When there’s something that’s visible to a large number of people, everybody assumes that somebody else will do something about it.”

McKinnon, however, thinks that the city’s current system is adequate.

“We review our maintenance practices every year, but to date we have had very few problems,” he said.

Columbia performs yearly maintenance on traffic signals, which includes changing of traffic bulbs. Other cities comparable to Columbia in population size have less regimented maintenance schedules but have switched to the more reliable LED lights. The bulbs in traffic signals in Lawrence, Kan., are changed just once every two years, but the city’s Public Works Department has replaced every red light in its traffic signals to LED lights. Iowa City, Iowa, no longer performs scheduled maintenance because nearly all the city’s traffic signal lights are LED.

McKinnon said that Columbia loses about 2 percent to 5 percent of its lights per year.

“(The crash at Chapel Hill and Forum) was pretty much a freak accident,” McKinnon said. “There is a really high probability that the light shouldn’t have gone out.” Before the accident, the light had last been serviced in March, he said. At the intersection where Papen was hit, the rest of the westbound traffic was stopped at a red light which was functioning normally, he said.

Sgt. Tim Moriarity, the Columbia Police Department’s Traffic Unit supervisor, said he couldn’t recall any other fatal accidents caused by traffic lights. McKinnon couldn’t recall any either.

Though broken traffic lights don’t typically cause deaths, relying on complaints means that lights may not get reported quickly, Brekhus said.

“The more people are around, the more diffusion of responsibility you have,” he said. “It’s more of a collective thing going on, so they don’t feel the need to act.”

As in Columbia, Lawrence and Iowa City rely on complaints to learn about malfunctioning lights.

David Woosley, traffic engineer for Lawrence, said the city decided to replace all of the red lights in its traffic signals to LED lights because they are made up of many smaller individual lights that don’t all go out at once, as incandescent lights can. Lawrence will complete the switch to all LED as funding is available, he said.

Iowa City switched to LED lights for a slightly different reason but has discovered unexpected benefits, said Anissa Williams, Iowa City’s traffic engineering planner. Iowa City’s energy company offered to help finance the installation of LED lights because of their energy-saving ability, she said.

Williams also said the city has experienced unexpected savings on the maintenance of traffic signals because the new lights rarely need to be replaced.

“LED lights last forever,” she said.

McKinnon said Columbia will continue to rely on reports from the community to learn about problems with lights, leaving the responsibility up to drivers who may not think to report lights.

To report a broken traffic signal, call Columbia Public Works at 874-6292, the Department of Transportation at 888-ASK-MODOT, or contact Joint Communications at 442-6131 during after-hours.