There are a lot of great reasons if you're living in a big city to take public transportation. It is better for the environment than if all of those people were to drive their own cars and it can be far more convenient than negotiating through traffic to get from a job testing time and frequency standards back home again or trying to find a parking spot downtown on a Saturday afternoon. But now in Chandler it can also be more time efficient to take the bus with the new queue jumper technology. Here is some more about how it works and why it's the right choice if you're going to buy a new central heating boiler for your home or picking up the kids at soccer practice.
The city started their fight against rising transportation concerns by adding more through and turning lanes and creating bus and bike only lines on many of the major streets but the city's transportation engineer, Mike Mah found that that was still not enough. Now there are special traffic signals for the buses traveling in their designated lanes, which allow them to enter the intersection four seconds before regular traffic. The light is only activated when it detects a 40-foot bus in the right lane and won't be tripped up by regular industrial vehicles of similar size.
The special signal is a glowing vertical bar and should definitely only be used by trained city bus drivers. If you are a cyclist you are permitted to use the same lane as buses but are not allowed to advance with this signal. If you are running late to get to your job making Y strainers or are running several errands throughout the day you might find that this four second head start at intersections can really save you a lot of time over your entire commute.
This new queue jumper system was developed right here in Chandler by Mike Mah and his team. There are three systems current in operation on Arizona Avenue and the city plans to add several more to high traffic density corridors throughout the next couple of years. Research has found that each bus is saving an average of about a minute and a half using only the three systems that are already in place. Imagine the time you could save once Chandler is fully equipped with these devices. Maybe the next time you need to take your car into the local auto dealer supply for repair you will instead trade it in for a city bus pass.
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