Maryland Community Newspapers Online
About an hour into Thursday evening's rush hour, the county's aged and ailing traffic signal computer began coordinating the flow of traffic again, bringing an end, officials hope, to the aggravating traffic flow failure of the past two days.
Signals were operating correctly by roughly 4:30 p.m. Thursday, just over two hours after Leggett and county transportation director Art Holmes warned the problem could last into next week.
The remedy "sort of came gradually — maybe some places got relief earlier than others," said Patrick K. Lacefield, a spokesman for County Executive Isiah Leggett (D).
Detection and correction of the problem took about 39 hours.
Traffic engineers and technicians had labored around the clock since it was discovered, about 3 a.m. Wednesday, to find and fix the glitch that caused about 700 traffic signals in the county to operate as intended for off-peak rather than rush-hour traffic.
Details on the problem and how it was fixed were not available Thursday evening, and a few signals were not yet responding consistently.
"We will continue to monitor it throughout the evening and overnight, but we anticipate that tomorrow morning's rush hour will be much smoother," Leggett said in a statement released shortly before 6 p.m.
To help commuters, Ride On buses will be free again on Friday, he said.
And Leggett said his staff is looking for ways to speed a planned $35 million traffic computer upgrade.