Anyone who has driven along Baldwin County’s busiest corridors toward the beach knows the rhythm: stop at a red light, creep forward a quarter mile, and stop again. County Commissioner Tucker Dorsey says he hits it nearly every time he drives east. “They are not synchronized at all,” he said of the county’s traffic signals.
Relief may be on the way. The Eastern Shore Metropolitan Planning Organization, a regional transportation planning body formed in 2012, is preparing to release a study early in the new year examining how to synchronize traffic signals based on real-time traffic volumes at some of the Eastern Shore’s most congested intersections. The roughly $33,000 study marks the fledgling MPO’s first project funded with planning dollars from the federal government, supplemented by contributions from Baldwin County and the cities of Daphne, Fairhope and Spanish Fort.
The corridors under review include Alabama 181, U.S. 90, Baldwin County Road 64, U.S. 98 through Daphne and Fairhope, U.S. 31 in Spanish Fort, and Alabama 59 in Loxley. Notably, the project does not extend into South Baldwin County, where Gulf Shores has already pursued a similar signal-timing upgrade along Alabama 59, while Orange Beach and Foley considered comparable projects but shelved them over cost concerns.
MPO coordinator Matthew Brown said the analysis, being conducted by engineering firm Sain Associates, is a required step before the region can pursue an estimated $2.5 million investment in adaptive traffic signal technology tied into a fiber optic network. The completed report will identify the best locations for the system and where existing fiber infrastructure could support it. “It will analyze the Eastern Shore and tell us where the roads are at to put this in,” Brown said, adding that planners already have a good idea which corridors will make the list.
County Commissioner Chris Elliott said the goal is to keep traffic moving efficiently not just on the main roads but for drivers waiting to pull out from side streets, and he believes better-timed signals could improve traffic flow through the county by as much as 30 percent, a change he called significant for commuters navigating congestion before ever reaching Interstate 10.
Brown noted that the timing lines up with a period of rapid growth across Baldwin County, which has strained local governments’ ability to fund infrastructure improvements. Getting the network operating at maximum efficiency, he said, could offer a lot of value without the far higher cost of adding new travel lanes.
Any rollout will require buy-in from the municipalities within the MPO’s boundaries, which include Baldwin County, Daphne, Fairhope, Spanish Fort and Loxley, but do not extend south into Robertsdale or Foley. If the full $2.5 million project moves forward, a 20 percent local match could mean each participating government contributing around $60,000, though how that cost would be divided remains undetermined. Spanish Fort Mayor Mike McMillan said his city, which sits north of Interstate 10 and plays a smaller role in the corridor study, will have to weigh the price tag before committing to participate.