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Oct 17, 2024

New Orleans can't maintain its traffic lights, report says | Local Politics | nola.com

New Orleans' struggling Department of Public Works has failed to adequately maintain traffic signals throughout the city, leading to hazardous conditions on roadways, according to the New Orleans

New Orleans' struggling Department of Public Works has failed to adequately maintain traffic signals throughout the city, leading to hazardous conditions on roadways, according to the New Orleans Office of Inspector General.

In a 20-page report released Wednesday , the OIG said the city's traffic signal office is severely understaffed, which leads to extensive delays in repairs and prevents the office from conducting maintenance. It also found that the department has failed to update data on maintenance and performance, making it impossible to know the true extent of those problems.

“Operational traffic signals are essential to maintaining public safety, as malfunctioning signals can lead to dangerous and congested traffic conditions while also impeding commerce," wrote Inspector General Ed Michel in a statement. "We encourage the city and DPW to take the recommended steps to secure the staff needed and ensure the DPW can properly maintain New Orleans’ traffic signals.”

In response, public works staffers listed several planned action items: working with the city's Civil Service Department to increase pay for staff, purchasing upgraded equipment, and updating a recently purchased asset management software. In a budget hearing on Tuesday, Public Works Department Director Clinton “Rick” Hathaway Hathaway told City Council members that his department desperately needs more funding to hire staff to fix traffic lights and other issues — requesting an additional $3 million next year.

The report comes as the Public Works Department has come under scrutiny in recent months. In June, The Times-Picayune reported that the city's traffic lights can remain broken for months because of understaffing or issues hiring contractors, creating safety hazards on bustling thoroughfares such as Claiborne Avenue. An investigation of department leaders was launched last week by the Chief Administrative Officer's office, after public works employees told the council that they have been routinely subjected to insults, harassment, and retaliation by supervisors.

In a litany of issues identified by the inspector general during its inspection into the traffic signal division, which it began conducting in April, staffing challenges appeared to be among the most acute.

Prior to May 2024, the department employed only two people to maintain the city's 462 traffic signals, and one of those employees was restricted from certain duties due to an injury. By July, DPW had hired an additional traffic signals technician and three workers. But those new hires still left the city far understaffed compared to other cities: A 2019 survey of jurisdictions across the country found that agencies with fewer than 450 traffic signals employed about 21 people to do traffic signal work, while those with between 450 and 1,000 signals had about 44 people doing that work.

In the absence of in-house staff, the department has relied on emergency contracts to complete repairs in recent years, but has had challenges finding contractors. In June, the Times-Picayune reported that, during the first half of 2024, the city sought bids from contractors for signal repair work on three different occasions. All three times, no contractors responded, and the lights didn't get fixed.

In an interview, Council member Joe Giarrusso, who serves as chair of the budget committee, said increasing staffing for traffic signal maintenance is just one of many pressing needs at the department.

"There aren’t enough people to work on traffic signals, there aren't enough people to fill potholes, there aren't enough people to clean catch basins — it's all the things that need to get done," said Giarrusso. He said the council is considering allocating additional funds to the department, but that simply increasing funding — without also increasing pay and addressing other hiring issues— won't solve the staffing dilemma.

For years, department staff have documented their daily work in handwritten logs, and logged traffic signal outages on an office whiteboard.

But that manual process robs the department of the ability to track issues and progress effectively overtime, the OIG found.

The City Council last year required the department to create a dashboard that includes maintenance details. But the OIG said the information on the dashboard is likely inaccurate.

Inspectors also found that the department's traffic signal shop had no formal inventory for spare parts and that few spare parts existed. Department officials estimated that it took months to receive the parts necessary to repair a street light.

What's more, the traffic signal shop is run out of post-Katrina FEMA trailers, and has holes its floor, leaks and unreliable air conditioning. With little space for storing equipment, replacement parts were kept in a poorly secured lot nearby, with only tarps to protect parts from rain.

At the hearing on Tuesday, Hathaway said that the department plans to transition the current site into a different use. He said the department is working to combine the traffic sign and signal shops and "move them into a safe and productive location."

Hathaway was not made available to answer questions about the issues at the department on Wednesday.

Staff writer Joseph Cranney contributed to this report.

Email Sophie Kasakove at [email protected].