Under Transportation
To prevent gridlock caused by vehicles trapping intersections, local authorities should install automated traffic camera enforcement at key Mercer intersections, issuing immediate fines for drivers who enter intersections without clear exit space.
Transit agencies should restructure maintenance contracts for deep underground station escalators, tying vendor payment directly to operational uptime metrics. Keeping dedicated technicians on-call and staging high-wear replacement parts on-site slashes repair turnaround times from months to hours.
While there is rarely a case where a right turn on red sign should be in place, except where there is limited visibility - in the city of Seattle they are starting to show up at every intersection, supposedly in the name of pedestrian safety. But since pedestrians have a red when cars have a red, these don't make sense. Instead, there are light flashing crosswalk indicators in use when crossing an arterial in the city. Rather than spending money on a sign it would make sense to spend money on ways for pedestrians to annouce their intention to walk such as using flashing lights when someone has actively indicated they are going to cross.
To solve aggressive merging and bottlenecking on I-5, transportation departments should install dual-signal metering lights at merge points that strictly alternate left-and-right car flow. Combined with overhead lane-assignment displays and clear 'Zipper Merge Point' road painted markers, traffic merge velocity increases by up to 20%.