Who's responsible for programming traffic signals on a US Highway in Tennessee?

Question

Who's responsible for programming traffic signals on a US Highway in the state of Tennessee?

Is it the Tennessee Department of Transportation or the local city, or county government.

This one particular traffic signal works just fine coming onto the highway but getting off at this left turn signal can be a long wait. Conditions being just right (or all wrong) may have you sitting in the turn lane for a long time with the only hope you have is some cross-traffic which would then cause the light to change to red on the north and south bound lanes of the highway, then before they turn to green again and only then, the left turn signal will give you the go ahead.

Are these people just stupid who program these lights? Or what is their reason to have such an ignorant light system. I'll bet the city police who want to turn off here at 3 or 4 in the morning either would run 'em or travel another 100 yards up the highway, cross over and then come back down...as I would do if in a big rush

Answer 1

This could caused by a couple of things:

1. Bad signal timing - green lights in one direction for a long time with you in the turn lane does not seem right, but your local traffic engineer might disagree.

2. Bad sensor on adaptive signal control - signals that sense the presence of a vehicle and then change the light to green for that direction are called "adaptive." The signal system might not "detect" your vehicle there if the sensor in the ground or on a pole is not working, thus the signal system does not "see" your vehicle and keeps the extended green for the other direction.

I think you are running into situation # 2.

It looks like TDOT is organized into 4 regions with many districts in each region (if you click on the four regions in the organization chart on the bottom left at the link below, you can see the districts that cover each county).  I would start by calling the district for your county and asking the traffic or operations engineer about the signal and who owns it – they should know.