In October 2009, the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funding titled Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG). To receive a portion of the funding the Division of Traffic Engineering was required to provide a complete scope of work including cost estimate, project time line, measures and anticipated benefits for an advanced traffic management software to control the traffic signal timing and operation of Lexington's 370 plus signalized intersections, to upgrade traffic signal controllers and to install the Flashing Yellow Arrow (FYA) at various locations in the city. The project goals are to lessen the number of vehicle stops and delay, fuel consumption, and travel times thereby conserving energy, and reducing harmful air pollutants and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

A requirement of the funding was to show reductions in travel times and fuel consumption savings to motorists. In order to determine direct benefits to the traveling public it was important to establish a "baseline" from which to measure. The "before" information was needed to determine that baseline for the measurable impact of improvements. The three-week period between April 11, 2011 and the end of April provided the best opportunity to collect travel time data as it was between spring break for the public school system, beyond winter weather, before the city's universities spring semester ended and prior to the construction work for the Diverging Crossover Diamond Interchange at Harrodsburg Road and New Circle Road.

The Division of Traffic Engineering decided to use the GeoStats GeoLogger technology to collect travel times along Lexington's arterial roadways because the LFUCG owned sixteen (16) of the units. The GeoLogger™ is a versatile GPS data logging device designed for collecting detailed vehicle travel data. This passive GPS data logger can record second-by-second position and speed data.  The GPS data loggers have been deployed in numerous travel behavior and travel time, speed, and delay studies within the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

Division staff took the lead in using the logging devices in personal vehicles for daily commutes along Lexington's arterial roadways and signalized circumferential routes (Man o' War Boulevard and New Circle Road) during the A.M. (7-9), noon (11-1) and P.M. (4-6) time periods.  The staff began using the GeoLoggers upon leaving home, taking a traffic signalized route, and turning them off once arriving at their work location for the A.M. commute.  The staff drove the same routes in the reverse direction during the P.M. commute. Other staff drove in the opposite direction in the A.M. and P.M. to get the most complete data and during lunch periods along routes.  Some data was also collected during evening hours and weekends.

At the end of April the raw data was downloaded by division staff to an Excel format. Scott Thomson, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, provided invaluable assistance in preliminary mapping of the travel time data.  He took the collected data, converted it and using TransCAD software mapped it graphically to depict the multiple runs along the various routes all on the same layer. This information presents a quick look at travel times along the routes. Scott's assistance was most appreciated.

The next steps are to further analyze these results, and document the impact of the controller upgrades, FYA installations, and timing plan changes at various congested locations in the city. In addition, the collected data is to be compared with state-owned travel data for the same time period in Fayette County. The final step will be to compare the before data with that collected after improvements and changes have been made within the Lexington traffic management system. This comparison will be made, probably using state data, in the next six to twelve months and reported to the U.S. Department of Energy. Similar efforts across the U.S. and Canada have shown the optimization of traffic signal timing and upgrade of traffic signal equipment reduces travel time and delay as much as 20% and fuel consumption savings as much as 15%.