Traffic lights on Boulevard smarten up Ever feel silly waiting at a red light at 3 a.m., when the only car you've seen on the road in the last 15 minutes is your own? Hudson County has come up with a solution to that problem for those driving on Kennedy Boulevard.
The county is currently installing new traffic lights at select locations on the Boulevard in Bayonne that are equipped with high-tech sensors and small computers.
This hardware allows them to remain green during the wee-hours of the night, unless a car pulls up on a side street.
The new lights are already operational at certain places from Fourth to 28th streets, and tomorrow the new lights at the corners of 29th and 30th streets will be turned on, county officials said.
Eventually, the lights will be installed in 33 additional places from Fourth to 58th street, according to Jose Sieira, director of traffic and transportation for the county's engineering department.
The county - which is responsible for the lights on Kennedy Boulevard - is also working to install the new lights in 23 places from Lexington to Stevens avenue, and five places from Stevens to Lamezk avenue in Jersey City, Sieira said.
"All of the projects should be done in a couple months," he added.
The lights will work conventionally from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. throughout the week, but from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. will remain green unless a car pulls to an intersection with a sidestreet.
When that occurs, sensors that have been placed under the pavement at the intersection detect the car's presence and send a signal to a computer in the light that tells it to change from green to red.
The process also works for pedestrians, said Julie St. Jean, spokeswoman for Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski.
"There are buttons at each of the corners with the new lights that pedestrians must push in order to have the light changed," she said. "This only works from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m."
Sieira said two larger computers will later be installed at 35th and 58th streets in Bayonne that will allow members of the engineering department to monitor what is going on at each of the intersections.
There is also an energy-saving component to the new light system, as the lights don't use as much energy as the older ones they are replacing.
"We had to make this change because the old lights weren't up to standards of the state Department of Transportation," Sieira said.
He added that the new lights will be visible at greater distances for motorists. The same type of energy-saving, more visible lights were recently installed on Avenue C in Bayonne.
None of the new lights are being paid for with additional taxpayer money, St. Jean said, noting that the project is being funded with $2.27 million in federal grant money.