Traffic Signals

Rockledge Council members are trying to bring recycling to the borough. Council members reviewed a videotape on recycling after Monday night's business meeting. The seven-minute film, "Recycling is in Your Hands," was lent to the council by Lower Southampton Township officials. The film explains the forms of recyling and demonstrates procedures for recycling. "We're interested in convincing people that this is the right thing," said Councilwoman Patricia Goldberg, the public safety coordinator.

Two people, 3,350 traffic signals. That ratio of Streets Department supervisors to Philadelphia traffic signals during the municipal workers' strike helps explain the battered taxi at 23d and Lombard Streets that nestles in the curved neck of a downed signal pole. The Streets Department normally has 17 people out repairing traffic signals, working 24 hours every day of the week, said John Heany, deputy streets commissioner. Each of those workers usually logs repairs to between 10 and 15 signals every day, doing everything from replacing bulbs to erecting new poles.

West Goshen has joined forces with East Goshen Township and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to tackle traffic problems stemming from commercial and residential developments in the area. The West Goshen supervisors on Tuesday signed a formal agreement with East Goshen township that initiates $1.72 million in road improvements at four intersections: Boot Road and Route 202. This intersection will have traffic signals on the ramps and left-turn lanes, and Boot Road will be widened to three lanes to Greenhill Road.

It was against their will, but Lansdale Borough Council members said they had no choice. At Wednesday's council meeting, the council set the wheels in motion to increase the cost of electricity in the borough. Members voted unanimously to advertise for a rate increase of 9.9 percent. "We will drop it later on when we can," said Council President James E. Hunt. Lansdale is one of 16 municipalities that purchase wholesale electricity from the Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. When PP&L filed for a 9.9 percent rate increase earlier this year, the municipalities, along with two private users, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to review the increase.

HAS IT occurred to anyone that the reason so many school children are being hit by cars is that they walk out in front of cars and don't obey traffic signals? In Kensington, the children jaywalk constantly with a crossing guard right at the corner - but they don't pay her any mind. The guards don't even scold the children when they jaywalk. If anyone does say something, they get cursed out by 5th- and 6th-graders. So we allow children to walk and cross when they want and where they want.

Mount Laurel will soon have three new traffic lights, according to Mayor Ralph Ciniglia. The Burlington County Freeholders last month asked the state Department of Transportation to authorize signals at three intersections: Fellowship Road and East Gate Drive, Church Street and Pleasant Valley Avenue and Moorestown- Mount Laurel Road and Hainesport-Mount Laurel Road. Ciniglia said that all three intersections had been the subjects of various complaints over the years and that recent studies had recommended traffic signals at all three intersections.

Feltonville residents are staging an around-the-clock blockade of intersections in their neighborhood to protest the city's replacement of traffic signals with stop signs. "We're not going to budge. We can't live like this. This is an accident waiting to happen," said Sherry Apelt, the block captain for C Street and the head of a group called PASS, Parents Against the Stop Signs. Apelt and about 20 other residents are camping out in the intersections and have prompted the city to place barricades around them.

AS PART of the "One Great Idea" series carried by both the Daily News and the Morning Yawn , Zahav chef/owner Michael Solomonov last week suggested that the city's traffic lights be synchronized. Not quite equal to Copernicus' revolutionary idea that the earth orbits the sun, but solid. Synchronized lights speed traffic, reduce fuel and pollution. So why are we out of synch? Follow the bouncing ball as Steve Buckley, deputy commissioner for transportation in the Streets Department, synchronizes his answers to the questions of Your Favorite Columnist.

A traffic engineer has recommended that Warwick Township adopt a $9.4 million improvement plan to prevent a "significant deterioration" of area roads by 1998. The plan calls for the widening of roads, the addition of turning lanes at many intersections, the installation of traffic signals and the repair of bridges in the township. It would be carried out in two parts, the first to be completed by 1993 at a cost of $4,941,000, and the second by 1998 at a cost of $4,532,000, said Ronald North, an engineer with William Smith Associates of New Jersey.

The Streets Department has started to take down traffic lights at nearly 800 Philadelphia intersections and replace them with stop signs. In doing so, it is erasing victories won by street blockaders in the Sixties, debunking a long-held myth about public safety and saving the cash- poor city a blinking $500,000 a year. City traffic engineers have for years gathered statistics indicating that signs are safer than signals on all but heavily traveled roads. Traffic slows. The temptation to run yellows and jump greens disappears.