Federal Highway Administration
U.S. Department of Transportation
400 Seventh St. SW
Washington, DC 20590

June 28, 2003

Refer to: HOTO-1

Mr. Mark Lewis
City Engineer/Traffic Engineer
City of Fountain Valley
10200 Slater Avenue
Fountain Valley, CA 92708

Dear Mr. Lewis:

Thank you for your May 14 letter requesting the re-opening of your completed experimentation (#4-196) with pedestrian signal countdown displays and expansion of the experimentation to include additional intersections city-wide in Fountain Valley.

As you may be aware, the Federal Highway Administration has published in the Federal Register a Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) for Revision No. 2 of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). That NPA includes the proposed addition of pedestrian countdown displays for optional use, with uniform design and operation when used. Comments to the docket on this and other proposed changes must be submitted by August 19, 2002, and a Final Rule for Revision No. 2 is anticipated sometime in the early part of 2003. Until such time as a Final Rule is issued, countdown pedestrian displays are still considered experimental. We approve your request to expand the city of Fountain Valley’s experimental use of pedestrian countdown displays to additional intersections city-wide, under the same terms of approval as your original experimentation #4-196. Any additional data collection that you are able to do to further corroborates the benefits and/or potential drawbacks of pedestrian countdown displays would be very useful.

Again, we do appreciate your interest in improving conditions for pedestrians and if we can be of further assistance, please contact Mr. Scott Wainwright at 202-366-0857.

Sincerely yours,

Shelley J. Row, P.E.
Director, Office of Transportation Operations