AUSTIN, Texas — Do you know those mornings where you hit every single red light on the way to work? Well, traffic engineers have a lot to do with this.
Robin Osborne is a traffic signal engineer for the City of Austin, and he tells us people like him have a lot to do with "the timing, the way the heads are oriented, the lane configuration, the width of the road, all of those things go into traffic signalized intersections."
Hitting or not hitting a red light is a result of traffic signal timing, and traffic engineers are deeply involved with almost every single aspect of a traffic light.
"I'm in charge that the timing for those intersections is working correctly, I'm also in charge of future construction at those intersections and how we want to make it more efficient and safer," said Osborne. "Do we want to add pedestrian heads where there's currently none? Do we want to add bike facilities where there are currently none?"
The intersection at Fourth and Guadalupe Street is a perfect example of the work traffic signal engineers do because of the construction of a new hotel. The traffic signals there can't just be set and forgotten; they need a good amount of attention to keep them operating smoothly because of the newly added traffic that the hotel will be bringing to those roads.
Also, if you've ever wondered what those silver boxes were near the traffic lights, well, that's basically the brain of the traffic signal.
"So this is the main screen that shows us what's happening at all times," said Osborne. "So you can see these phases, so we number the movements at each intersection. So, in this case, NB is six, SB four and EB is eight."
If there's a power outage, a technician can come out check the box and make sure the traffic signal is fixed and working properly.
Osborne has almost 300 traffic signals in his area, where he's checking their patterns.
He tells KVUE the reason he is drawn to this particular line of work is that "there's a really interesting component of science and art to it, I love the combination of those two things. So every day I get to work on fun challenging problems like that."
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