Drivers who speed in school zones are about to see the light.
County officials are installing 60 speed limit signs equipped with flashing lights at 25 Hillsborough schools, including 11 in and around Brandon.
The lights are connected to solar panels and a timer system and designed to flash when school zone hours go into effect, making it clearer that drivers should slow down. Cost: $5,000 apiece.
Some lights in Mango, Turkey Creek and Riverview are already operational; others are scheduled to begin flashing by the end of March.
"They're still working on programming the clocks," said Gary Tait, senior engineer with the school safety program in the county's traffic services division. "I'm told that within a month, we should be finished with it."
A handful of schools will get a pair of flashers, including Lithia Springs Elementary in Valrico; Folksom Elementary in Thonotosassa; and Grace Christian, Yates and Brooker elementary schools in Brandon.
Farther east, Dover Elementary School, Turkey Creek Middle School and Robinson and Walden Lake elementary schools are also getting two lights apiece.
A few elementary schools, including Mango and Riverview, received four new signs, including two new ones on side streets.
The flashers come in response to county law enforcement officials' complaints that current signs, many of which only list the hours school zone speed limits are in effect, take drivers' attention away from the road.
The new signs are funded by a $400,000 county grant for school safety improvements. Tait said the county has identified another 50 or so schools that still need flashing lights, but they won't go up until additional county funding comes through. He said engineers may have a cost estimate by October, but installation won't begin until at least 2005.
He said the county is also exploring the possibility of outfitting the signs with small strobe lights to make them even more visible to school zone drivers.
Many of the new signs will also feature a new speed limit, part of a countywide initiative to set all school zone speed limits at 15 or 20 miles per hour.
Turkey Creek principal Mark West said the lights could slow traffic on nearby Turkey Creek Road, along which Robinson and Walden Lake also lie.
"We're definitely in favor of it," West said. "Anything to make the public more aware that we're a school zone is positive."
