I love when broadband is the answer. WCCO recently ran a story on Governor Dayton’s hope to improve traffic by synchronizing traffic lights.

Here’s the problem – Minnesotans apparently spend 63 hours a year in traffic. That a huge waste of time and resources. One way to fix that is to synchronizing traffic lights. That could be done if they were all online. (Big version of the Internet of Things.) I’ve been learning about traffic management from David Asp, who has been working on that in Dakota County.

The cost will apparently be big. The report says there are 800 traffic signals in Minneapolis and it will cost $3500 to inspect and synch each one. But in the end it could save Minnesota taxpayers $1 million in fuel costs. (Never mind time!)

Traffic may not be the priority issue in Lake of the Woods as it is in the Cities. But it does feel like yet another way to measure the return on investment in broadband.