Do you ever feel, as you drive South Florida's streets, that you're catching every single red light? Stop. Move up a bit. Stop. Do it again. Once in a while, you might make three green lights in a row.

It could be because the traffic lights haven't been re-timed in years and that plans to install state-of-the-art systems are far behind schedule.

Signals on Oakland Park Boulevard haven't been re-set in four years even though the street is among Broward County's busiest, while those on Sheridan Street west of Interstate 95 were last set a decade ago. A third of Palm Beach County's traffic lights aren't even synchronized.

Joe Johnson, who commutes daily from Plantation to Miami, is among the drivers left frustrated by the lack of improvement. Johnson said he gets stopped for a red light on U.S. 441 just south of the Broward County line at 4:30 a.m. nearly every morning when there is little or no traffic.

"Every morning I have to stop at that light while it cycles through every combination of turn lane while there is no one there except me and a few other southbound drivers," he said. "The intersection is in front of a car dealer and a small strip mall with a Blockbuster, so every merchant is closed."

Broward was supposed to upgrade traffic signals at 1,370 intersections by the end of last year. The project is more than four years behind schedule and not fully operational anywhere in the county.

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In Miami-Dade, two-thirds of the county's 2,350 signalized intersections are synchronized to a high-tech system even though the entire network was to be completed by 1998. The county fired its original contractor five years ago and hopes to have all of its signals synchronized to the new system by the end of 2010.

Both counties are switching to systems that use closed-circuit cameras, fiber optic cables and digital message signs to allow traffic engineers to adjust signal times to bad weather, traffic accidents, major events or unexpected traffic jams. That's a step beyond the normal synchronization of lights in which they are timed based on traffic patterns to allow most drivers to go down a street at the speed limit without hitting red lights.

Broward's latest plans call for a much slower timetable for installing the high-tech system.

The county hopes to have enough of the automated system installed on Oakland Park Boulevard by fall 2010 so traffic signals can be adjusted to assist buses that are running behind schedule. By 2012, the traffic signals on key parts of Oakland Park, Sunrise and Broward boulevards as well as parts of State Road 7 and Federal Highway are supposed to be upgraded.

At that pace, northwestern Broward and everywhere south of Interstate 595 would not be on the new system until after 2014.

Public works administrators are defending themselves by saying the lights are already synchronized, although some streets haven't been re-set in a decade. They re-time segments of about 12 major roads a year.

That explanation doesn't satisfy drivers like Mike Auerbach, who lives and works near Oakland Park Boulevard. He drives the street frequently and just as frequently runs into red light after red light.

"You can tell them the survey says it could use some work," Auerbach said. "They don't go bang, bang, bang like they do in New York. That's how things should be."

County commissioners are balking at whether Broward lights are properly timed and want proof of how the new system works before financing the entire $85.6 million upgrade. And, the auditors who exposed the delays in the project are undertaking a second review looking at how Broward stacks up to national standards on light synchronization.

"It's insulting to our intelligence to say the lights are synchronized, and I think anyone driving on our roads in Broward County would agree," said Commissioner Lois Wexler, a chief critic of the current operations.

Lights can go years without being re-timed in Palm Beach as well. The county re-sets the timing on major corridors as frequently as once a year, but others go three to four years between updates.

Take Powerline Road from Southwest 18th Street to Glades Road. Lights on the street were synchronized this year for the first time in four years.

Palm Beach doesn't consider it cost effective to have the type of countywide automated systems that Broward and Miami-Dade want. It also does not synchronize about a third of the existing 937 signals because they are too far from other lights to make it worthwhile.

Arnold Ingerman of Boynton Beach said he frequently experiences maddening backups and delays on Congress Avenue at Boynton Beach Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue.

"Sometimes the light goes through two cycles before the turn arrow comes on and other times after the green light comes on it lasts as little as five seconds before turning red again," he said. "This leads to many cars going through red lights."

Staff writer Angel Streeter contributed to this report.
