After working since Thursday to fix problems that caused seven in eight traffic signals to dump schedules designed to speed the flow of traffic in favor of a default timing, the city of Minneapolis has declared victory.
"The City of Minneapolis would like to thank drivers for their patience and encourage people to continue to call 311 to report any signal issues they may run into," wrote city spokesperson Matt Laible in a press release announcing the win.
However, the reason behind miles of traffic jams last Thursday and Friday might make an IT professional die a little bit on the inside: a power surge on Oct. 9 damaged the city's traffic computer, knocking 700 of the 800 lights across the city into backup mode until software engineers could fix the problem.
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As one poster on the Minneapolis E-Democracy forum commenting on the incident wrote: "Heck, I have surge protectors and a UPS (backup power) for my home PC, and the info on it affects far fewer people."
Safe driving, Minneapolis.
Find out what's happening in Southwest Minneapoliswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
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