It’s going to take more than timing to make the lights through downtown Lewiston-Auburn work correctly all the time.

Transportation officials say they are looking for a short of some kind between the traffic lights along Court Street in Auburn and Main Street in Lewiston that keeps knocking them out of synchronization.

“It all works fine for a while, and then something knocks it out of sync,” said Don Craig, director of the Androscoggin Transportation Resource Center. “We also know that all of those lights have pedestrian buttons, and every time they get pressed, it takes that signal out of sync with the rest for a few cycles. So, we need to do some major troubleshooting.”

The center began updating the traffic light timings last spring at the 13 intersections through downtown Lewiston-Auburn’s main strip. The goal was to make it easier for drivers to make it through the downtown, stopping at only one traffic light. The new traffic pattern is in place from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

All of the other lights in that corridor, from Sabattus Street in Lewiston to Minot Avenue/Union Street in Auburn, take their cues from the Lisbon Street signal. Each is timed to change a certain number of seconds after the Lisbon Street signal, which is connected to the ATRC offices in Auburn over a phone line. That lets traffic engineers adjust its timing remotely.

“It’s up and running and it works fine, when it’s working,” Craig said. “But something keeps taking it out and it’s going to take some doing to find the little glitches there.”

Traffic engineers are beginning work on timing the lights along Auburn’s Center Street corridor next, he said. Officials from the center’s technical committee Thursday approved installing a DSL modem at one of those signals, letting engineers control them.

“Those signals are connected to each other now,” Craig said. “All that it will take is connecting to the master controller out there and we’ll be able to change the timings.”

Craig said he expects Center Street to be timed by June.