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Traffic engineers rely on ‘people skills’ plus design talent
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
When Hernan Peña Jr., director of the city of Charleston’s transportation department, became a transportation engineer 20 years ago, little did he know his job would involve a lot more than designing roads, controlling traffic patterns and plotting stoplights.
Educating the public about new road projects and traffic-flow improvements, uniting as much as possible opposing groups divided over a street-construction project, working with different people from different state and local agencies in addition to community residents—such was the non-engineering terrain Peña found himself traversing.
“I never thought I’d get involved in that,” he said, adding that putting in 12-hour days is common during a project.
Yet getting involved in all that makes the job even more rewarding, Peña said.
“It’s exciting. Transportation touches so many issues and has huge implications,” said Peña, who worked on the James Island Connector and is involved in road-improvement projects funded by Charleston County’s half-cent sales tax initiative.
Mount Pleasant transportation engineer Brad Morrison agrees. When engineers design roadways or bridges, intersections or roundabouts, they have to see as clearly as possible the big picture and “mitigate and lessen community impacts,” he said.
To do that, engineers must get out from behind the drawing board and rely largely on their people skills to get feedback from community residents as well as listen to and negotiate with an assortment of different entities, ranging from county council to traffic consultants to the state Department of Transportation, Morrison said.
Peña considers the $540 million Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge the biggest project he has been associated with. Although Peña did not participate in the designing of the bridge, he helped educate residents along Meeting Street, where the bridge has entrance and exit ramps, about the bridge’s potential traffic impact.
Peña also encouraged residents to attend meetings to voice their concerns to the city and to DOT about the impact bridge construction would have on their property and to discuss compensation for construction-damaged property.
During the early design stages of the bridge, widening Meeting Street from four to five lanes, including a center lane for turns, was considered. However, because widening the street would take land from Crisis Ministries, the city of Charleston’s Housing Authority and other properties along the street, the idea was dropped, Peña said.
These are the kinds of construction impacts transportation engineers must weigh, he added.
“We were part of a strong community-relations component,” Peña said of his department.
Morrison said the $80 million to $100 million redesign of Johnnie Dodds Boulevard is probably the biggest transportation project facing the town of Mount Pleasant. Charleston County will coordinate the actual design and construction, including a flyover for the major thoroughfare, which daily accommodates 40,000 cars and in 15 years is expected to accommodate between 60,000 and 70,000 cars as the city’s population increases.
Morrison helped conduct the boulevard’s initial traffic study, which included input from citizens insisting that the new and improved boulevard feature good traffic flow and a pleasing aesthetic design.
“Function vs. form, that’s the big challenge,” Morrison said of road-design projects in general. “You can’t ignore one or sacrifice the other.”
Being able to communicate traffic-design concepts to the public is a crucial part of the job that is made easier by computer-animated videos, which enable people to experience virtually a drive along a yet-to-be built road, Morrison said.
In Summerville, the biggest issue is increased traffic volume.
“The largest transportation project I am working on now is a comprehensive traffic study of Summerville and the surrounding area,” said Russell Cornette Jr., Summerville’s town engineer, a position that encompasses transportation engineer. “A traffic engineering consultant is actually performing the study. I am coordinating with the consultant on which areas to look at closely.”
Summerville’s high rate of development makes the study necessary, Cornette added.
Because much of Cornette’s time is spent dealing with developers and their engineers, the ability to communicate and negotiate is vital to his job, he said.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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