An insistence on the highest standards for our physical infrastructure; streets and roads, signals, pedestrian, bicycle trails, and other facilities guide San Ramon's Traffic Engineering philosophy. This concern for high quality in our facilities is driven by the crucial importance of safety for the people who rely on, and use, the City’s transportation system every day. Regular monitoring of the system’s performance through traffic counts, speed surveys, and accident records provides the feedback needed to identify problems and develop effective traffic engineering solutions.

Traffic engineers provide ongoing traffic monitoring effort, which includes several related components. Changes in traffic patterns and volumes are tracked in our annual Traffic Monitoring Program, which counts traffic volumes at most major intersections in San Ramon, and compares results to previous years. To ensure consistency, the counts are conducted at the same times and locations every year, which allows meaningful comparisons to previous years.

Staff also conducts an annual "Safe Routes to School" study to reflect changes in school area boundaries, new schools, and/or changed traffic patterns. Necessary improvements such as new crosswalks are identified in the Safe Routes to School report, and the study’s recommendations are carried forward to construction, as appropriate.

Traffic Engineers work closely with the Police Department to identify problem locations, which might benefit from increased enforcement activity. Traffic engineers conduct vehicle speed surveys on major streets as required by state law to enable our Police to use radar enforcement of speed limits.

Traffic engineering and street designs are another important departmental functions. We review work to be done by others, such as subdivision street designs, as well as City improvement projects such as street widening. Transportation staff also develops the timing plans for the City’s traffic signals.

For more information on the City’s Traffic Engineering and Traffic Safety Solutions, please contact: