$4.5 million to study what could be done by following extant data & some experimentation, seems a bit of a cash out for some insider company. Where can I sign up for that job?

I would start by prioritizing streets by their size and importance in moving traffic. Additionally I would reverse the long standing practice of befitting incoming county traffic, by non city drivers to be non preferential to all drivers.

Possibly disbanding the current staff who seem not to have been successful for these past 40yrs would be a good idea.

I bet many citizens have ideas on the roads that they regularly travel, which would iron out problems. Take Cathedral St at Mulberry & Franklin. As one travels south they have to stop at Franklin st, only to watch Mulberry stay green for most of its cycle. Then when the Franklin st light turns green, the Mulberry light is red. Who does this all benefit? Those traveling to Hopkins medical campus that are coming in from the west side of the city. Though it is hard to see why south bound Cathedral street must stop at each light (one block apart) when the Mulberry & Franklin lights are about the same length. Traveling north bound on Calvert or Charles or Park are similarly hampered.

Many light timing on the lower blocks of Howard indicate they are still on the timing schedule which was active before the light rail was built, and left/right turn lane lights were common.

This is a tough problem, but not insurmountable. In the years before PC's All K-12 school administrators had a similar job in scheduling students. Some students took band, others a foreign language, etc. All these little differences had to be worked out to result in decent class sizes, given the number of faculty and classes which could fit in a day/week.

I fear that a lot of money and time will be spent by office jockeys who will sit at their computer developing a paper driven document, which will take years, and little or no time will be spent, in a car actually driving the streets to learn where the problems exist.