OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. – In this week’s Traffic Inbox, we speak with a viewer who is frustrated by an apparent malfunctioning traffic signal near his Osceola County home.
- Viewer believes Kissimmee Park Road signal is malfunctioning
- The light will turn red and then suddenly back to green
- Osceola County officials say the light is working like it should
According to Ryan Dutton, the "malfunctioning" (as he describes it) traffic signal is on the southbound exit of Florida's Turnpike at Kissimmee Park Road. It does a peculiar thing that we witnessed ourselves.
Dutton says the issue is making the area unsafe.
"It causes a ripple effect and that ripple effect actually [goes] all the way to the Turnpike itself where there's a potential of somebody going 70 miles an hour hitting somebody that's stuck on this right hand lane," Dutton said.
Dutton has lived in Osceola County for a long time, nearly 40 years. So he knows when something doesn't seem quite right. He's so sure something's up, he took his own camera and shot what appears to be an unusual traffic signal pattern.
"It will change red and then suddenly right back to green,” Dutton said. “It's obviously a malfunction and I'm just worried it's going to cause an accident or some other safety issue."
When we visited the area during the late afternoon last week, we noticed the signal did in fact do this, but not all the time. The behavior occurred maybe every third or fourth signal. Osceola County says there may be a reason for this.
According to transportation officials, the ramp from the Turnpike southbound to Kissimmee Park Road has something called an 'advanced loop' at the end of the ramp beginning at around 5 p.m. each day.
That sends an emergency signal to flush the cars off the ramp when they reach the back loop and stay on it longer than eight seconds.
Experts we reached out to say this loop was installed years ago to keep cars off the ramp to improve safety.
This could be why the light appears to be malfunctioning.
As for Dutton, even after hearing this from Osceola County, he's not convinced this is the proper way to move traffic through at all.
"I respectfully disagree," he said. "I understand advancing the signal time. I don't understand why you would make the stop light turn red and then suddenly turn green again. I don't understand why it has to do that."
Bottom Line here: The County sees how the light could APPEAR to be malfunctioning but they say it is actually working like it’s supposed to. No plans are in the works to change it from acting that way for now.
If you at home have a traffic issue or problem you want looked into or solved, head to www.mynews13.com/inbox and fill out the simple form.