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Des Moines now in phase three of five-phase traffic light retiming project

The city of Des Moines is now in phase three of five in its retiming project.

DES MOINES, Iowa — The City of Des Moines is continuing a project to retime over 400 of the city's traffic lights.  

The project is supposed to increase the efficiency of the traffic signals and reduce travel times. It started in 2019.

One part of the five-phase project is complete. Phase two was supposed to be completed in 2020, but was delayed due to the pandemic and finished in 2021.

City engineers are currently working in phase three, which is looking at retiming of the city's northeastern portions and part of the East Village.

Des Moines Traffi Engineer John Davis said the project aims to reduce travel times, traffic congestion and vehicle emission by making sure vehicles don't idle too long at the traffic light. 

The project will also help the city with signal timing and phasing for pedestrians and bicycle traffic. This will help support the city's efforts to provide a more walkable and bikeable transportation network.

Davis says the changes his crew are making are not drastic. 

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"There have been some intersections we've had to adjust just very minorly, others just a little bit more nothing terribly out of whack that we've seen but it's more reacting to the new travel patterns," he said.

According to Davis, the last time the city updated traffic signals to reflect traffic patterns was 20 years ago. 

Davis said his crew should start adjusting traffic signals in phase three starting in early April. 

Phase four of the project should start towards the end of this year and phase five should start next year. 

Davis said everything should be completed by the end of 2023 or early 2024.

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