The in basket: Dennis Copp writes, “I typically do my shopping early (0600 hrs.) on the weekends, and have had problems with the traffic signal at Bucklin Hill Road and Silverdale Way.
“When I come down Bucklin Hill, eastbound in the left-hand lane, I have to stop at the light in the intersection. At this early time in the morning there is little to no traffic (major reason that I shop at that time).
“Even though my car is the only car on the road, the signal does not change to give me a green light. I have sat at the light for over five minutes, with NO north-south traffic on Silverdale Way and the light did not change. Only after another vehicle came by in the right-hand lane did the light cycle.
“At other times there have been cars in both the right and left lanes and we both sat at the light for an abnormally long time, with no north-south traffic. It has gotten to the point that I drive several miles out of my way to avoid this intersection.
“The problem at this intersection is probably a faulty traffic detection loop or the detection module for the left-hand lane of eastbound Bucklin Hill.
“It would be nice to fix this, as I am sure that others have been trapped at this signal and I hate to waste gas avoiding the intersection,” Dennis said.
The out basket: Daren Miller, signal supervisor for Kitsap County, replies, “Our signal shop supervisor followed up on your reader’s concern. He went to the intersection and checked all the signal systems and they were working correctly at the time.
“He did some adjustments to the vehicle detection zone which may help.
“We use video detection (not in-pavement loops) at this intersection to detect when a motorist is at a signal. Video detection can have problems with shadows, fog and other moving objects that aren’t necessarily a vehicle.
“Even if the equipment is working fine now, we do like to check the system out at the time the problem occurred. Sometime in the near future a county employee will drive through this lane to see what sort of problem he or she encounters. If the system is working correctly and there are no other vehicles or pedestrians around, the longest wait time should be well less than a minute. I would like to thank the reader for bringing this to our attention.”
