No matter what you think of the traffic light timing in downtown for moving traffic, this clearly isn’t right.

This walk signal at the corner of Congress and Fannin isn’t the only one that seems to be out of sync. It was a problem for a time along the downtown light rail line, but seems to be fixed now.

In a month or so, accuracy might improve. City officials put off some re-timing of the traffic lights downtown until construction of the Metro rail projects ended. Though the lines don’t go into service until April, the bulk of permanent street-level work is finished.

With the rail lines going in, it made sense to factor the new signals into the mix, said Jeff Weatherford, the city’s traffic operations director.

The city usually updates timing every three years, rotating around the city.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, city staff will fiddle with the lights to reflect the new timing. While people sometimes get hung up on what it’s called — signal synchronization vs signal sequencing — to traffic engineers the concept is the same. The lights are timed so someone should expect to travel smoothly and not get stopped at every light.

Weatherford said crews usually change the timing during a less hectic week, like Thanksgiving, so they can assess it with slightly less traffic.

“That way, we’re not screwing up as many people’s commutes,” he joked.

There are a couple tricks to this. For one, a lot of people don’t drive correctly for the sequencing to work. If you race to the next light, it’s not going to change before you get to it.

Oddly, going the speed limit doesn’t seem to work, either. You’re likely to just wait behind a slow-poke. It’s led Weatherford to conclude something you rarely hear traffic planners say.

“People are driving slower than we’d like them to,” he said.

Seriously, he said that. I typed it in my notes. Twice.

There’s a slight friction to driving in heavy traffic. Not everyone goes from zero to 30 mph at the same rate, and folks can wait a bit for pedestrians to clear a lane. A lot of things can throw timing off.

The change in how traffic moves downtown will lead to a 28-second timing adjustment. Lights are timed to cycle in 72 seconds now. That’ll increase to 90 seconds, Weatherford said.

If it works, it’ll smooth out moving through the downtown grid, even if starts with a somewhat longer wait for that first green.