DelDOT’s got the innovation bug

Delaware’s Department of Transportation is getting hip and with it lately: The agency wants to install 16 new red light cameras to reduce serious crashes and are building the First State’s first Diverging Diamond Interchange.
First, the cameras: Delaware Public Media reports that dangerous T-bone crashes have been reduced by 47 percent since installing 30 red light cameras (think of all those flashes you see at the Pennsylvania/Delaware Avenue fork). Still, crashes overall at those lights have increased, which Adam Weiser, DelDOT’s safety program manager, attributed to simply seeing higher volumes of traffic.
Red light citations at camera stops have dropped by almost 10,000 from 2012 to 2015, garnering about $1 million, which is a drop from 2010’s $2.3 million.
Because the rate of deadliest crashes has been almost chopped in half, DelDOT is proposing the installation of 16 more cameras. Fifteen would be in New Castle County while the sixteenth would be at the intersection of Route 1 and Savannah Road in Lewes. No word on how much those cameras would cost, but we’ll stay tuned to see if the cameras are a go.
Next is the Diverging Diamond Interchange, named by Popular Science as a top traffic engineering innovation. Construction for the state’s first such interchange is now underway at State Route 1 and Route 72.
Forty-eight of all 50 states have at least one, and just 64 interchanges exist or are in the works in the United States, according to a release from DelDOT.
Here’s the gist of how it works: Cars will be able to exit and enter SR 1 without having to cross lanes of traffic, because the interchange diverts lanes to the left side of the road, on an overpass, before going back to the right side, which is where the driver is aiming to go when entering or exiting the roadway. It’s a little tricky to visualize with words, so here’s a video:

The project costs $7 million, according to DelDOT, and the department has received a $1 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration for innovative highway projects.