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The College Station City Council agreed Thursday to support a multi-agency partnership aimed at better managing area traffic signals.
The project, coordinated by the Texas Transportation Institute, has been in the works for several years, said Terry Childers, the College Station-based agency's assistant director.
"We are now at the point where we're ready to launch the project," Childers said.
The project would coordinate traffic signals at intersections throughout Bryan and College Station, give residents access to traffic information, allow officials to change the light cycles for accidents and special events and record traffic information in a database for future research.
The initiative would be funded by a $1 million federal earmark sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards and annual contributions from partner agencies.
The combined cost to the participating entities -- Bryan, College Station, Texas A&M University, Brazos County, the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Transportation Institute -- could be $200,000 to $500,000 a year, depending on the scope of the final initiative, Childers said.
Each agency's portion of the cost will be based on an as-yet-undecided formula, but College Station's share could be as much as $20,000 a year, he said.
"The formula is basically built around the idea of what do you have in place in terms of traffic operations, traffic lights and signals and what you get out of this project," he said. "The whole idea is that we're trying to tie benefit from the project to funding for operating cost."
The idea behind the initiative is to increase traffic flow and improve safety, Childers said.
"Larger communities -- like San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas -- have a similar program already in place," he said. "Medium-size to smaller communities simply have not done this for many reasons."
Once the program has been implemented, Childers said, the TTI can use Bryan-College Station as a model to promote it to other Texas communities.
The City Council agreed in principle to participate in the project but said that the city's annual budget needs and the initiative's final funding formula would be factors in an ongoing partnership.
Childers said the funding plan should be ready for review by January.
"We're excited that our home community is saying 'Yes, we want to do this,'" he said.
In other business Thursday, the council:
* Approved a budget of $1,160,000 for the Brazos Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau for tourism-related services.
* Approved a funding agreement between the city and the Research Valley Partnership for fiscal year 2009 in the amount of $343,287 for economic development services.
* Approved an Arts Council of Brazos Valley budget of $440,000 -- the same amount as last year's.
* Awarded a bid to Brazos Valley Services for $1 million to connect a well to the city's water system. The company was the lowest bidder on the project, officials said.
