The city also is in the process of designing ways to move traffic more efficiently.

East Liberty already has some smart traffic signals, which change according to motor vehicle and pedestrian traffic at intersections. The Surtrac system that controls the lights was developed at Carnegie Mellon University. The city expects to install similar controls at about 150 intersections beginning next year.

In addition, a $10.9 million federal grant is helping the city develop a series of “smart spines” to move traffic in six busy corridors that empty Downtown.

The spines would be on Penn, Liberty, Fifth, Forbes and Second avenues and Bigelow Boulevard. They would feed traffic, vehicular and social media information into the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center led by Pittsburgh and Allegheny County and operated by the University of Pittsburgh.

Ms. Ricks stressed that the spines — which are in design and should begin to roll out next year — aren’t aimed only at motor vehicles.
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