LEWISTON – Sunday’s daylight-saving switch could leave some Main Street traffic lights blinking for Monday’s early morning commuters.

Several Main Street traffic lights switch over from normal operation to blinking yellow lights about 1 a.m. daily. They’re timed to switch back to normal operation about 6 a.m. – just in time for Main Street’s morning traffic rush.

But Sunday’s daylight-saving switch – clocks will be turned ahead one hour – could leave them blinking until 7 a.m.

“We don’t anticipate it will be a big problem, but it will be different, and that means it will be noticed,” said Public Works Director Paul Boudreau.

He intends to monitor those lights and any traffic problems they cause and fix the systems – if necessary. The lights should catch up to daylight-saving time on April 1, the first Sunday of April.

“So the problem will fix itself, eventually,” Boudreau said. “We’ll keep an eye on the situation to see if there are problems, and then follow the best course of action.”

Lawmakers passed an energy bill in 2005 that expands daylight-saving time, beginning Sunday. It comes three weeks earlier in the spring, moving from the first Sunday in April to March 11, and is extended one week in the fall.

Those changes effectively break many of the systems designed to make the switch automatically. That includes many automatically-updating clocks, desktop computers and traffic signal controllers. Each traffic signal is designed to automatically move its internal clocks forward one hour in the spring and an hour back in the fall.

Lewiston hires a private electrical firm to maintain its traffic signals, and Boudreau said he doesn’t want to send them out unless it’s necessary.

“That comes with a price tag,” he said. “They’d have to go out and check on each individual location and that adds up pretty quickly.”

Some signals along Center Street in Auburn might be affected, too. But Brian Pelletier, an electrician with the city, said they’ll adjust those signals themselves if it’s necessary.

“We don’t have many signals that do that in Auburn,” he said.


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