It’s early morning in Vicksburg and the only light cutting the dark surrounding the City of Vicksburg’s gas maintenance department complex comes from a street light and the lights on two buildings.

Outside one of the buildings, a bucket truck sits in the parking lot idling as it waits for two of the city’s three traffic department employees to head out to make a repair.
Early in the morning, while most of Vicksburg’s residents still lay snug in their beds, one group of city employees is already on the job.
The city’s traffic department, which is responsible for putting out barricades, maintaining the city’s traffic lights, street signs, street striping and the lights on Interstate 20, are out looking for problems and making repairs. The department’s small office is easy to spot at the city’s gas department’s maintenance complex — a the bright red traffic light is mounted outside the door.

“This is the best time for us,” department supervisor Robert McAdam said as he sat in his makeshift office surrounded by traffic signs and other equipment. “It’s easier to spot problems and correct them without tying up traffic.”
As he discussed the advantages of his crew getting an early start, the diesel-powered truck revved its motor and pulled out of the parking lot.
“That’s our bucket truck,” he said. “They’re going to replace a bulb that’s out in a traffic light.”
McAdam has been with the traffic department for 251/2 years, 12 of those as its supervisor.
“I had an electrical business and I was approached by the previous supervisor of the traffic department to work on traffic lights,” he said.
His day begins with paperwork— checking and entering work orders and requests from other city departments for barricades or setting detours — and riding city streets and I-20 looking for problems. “We’re responsible for checking the lights on the interstate,” he said.
“When it’s dark, its easier to find problems with street signs and the lights,” he said, adding, “we get reports about problems every day. People will call them in to the Action Line and the police call in problems they find when they’re on patrol.”
One of the city’s bigger problems involves traffic signs, which are either stolen, damaged or covered with graffiti.
“There’s a few areas in town where we’re always replacing signs,” he said. “Sometimes a truck will get too close to a sign on the truck route, or someone will paint graffiti on one and you can’t see what’s on the sign. We’re always ordering signs.”
Signal lights don’t present too much of a problem, McAdam said, except for replacing bulbs or adjusting the timing, and technology has made bulb replacement easier with the development of LED lights, which last longer.

One of the more serious problems the department had with a signal was during the summer, when a truck hauling scrap metal on U.S. 61 South took down the traffic signals at the intersection of 61 South and Iowa Boulevard.
“The scrap in the trailer was too high, and it caught the line tethering the lights,” he said. “It took four trucks to get it back up.”
Then there are the barricades.
Whenever there is a parade downtown or another event blocking a street, the street department is responsible for placing the city’s steel barricades along the route. The employees also put out the barricades for the annual Run Thru History and the Chill in the Hills races, and the Bricks and Spokes bicycle ride. They also place barricades and warning signs marking detours when city street and utility workers do repairs that will alter traffic.
“We try to put the barricades out the day before (an event),” McAdam said. “Sometimes we’ll do it early in the morning before the event. When the city’s doing street work and they have to close a street and reroute traffic, they call us.”
“We’re always staying busy,” he said.