Turning lights off will help for one day. Then everyone will get used to it and the jam will return. Then there will be a spate of accidents and something will have to be done.
Saying that, I do think a lot of lights should be part time. Many times I have found myself stopped at a red light in the dead of night with nothing coming through on the green. A lot of re-education would be needed first though.
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The article ignores the growht in the car population which is the root cause of congestion. Four and a half million more cars on our roads that there were at the turn of the century.
Most of these vehicles will be in urban areas. Many of them will be parked in the road causing more congestion thtn any traffic lights.
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>> Most of these vehicles will be in urban areas. Many of them will be parked
>> in the road causing more congestion thtn any traffic lights.
>>
Very true. Some of my work involves driving round the Welsh Valleys; the topography and the layout of long rows of Victorian terraces combine to make it difficult to park a car anywhere else but on the road, and that combined with the inhabitants' tendency to drive even the shortest distance then abandon the car without regard to the needs of other road users, makes deliveries in anything bigger than a small van a nightmare.
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>> Turning lights off will help for one day. Then everyone will get used to it
>> and the jam will return. Then there will be a spate of accidents and something
>> will have to be done.
Absolutely.
We had a spate of power outtages here a year or so back. All the traffic-light junctions became 4-way stops. For the first few days, all was good - in fact the traffic flowed much better. But after that, back to the same old anarchy.
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>> Many times I have found myself stopped at a red light in the dead of night with nothing coming through on the green.
I think lights do generally cycle far too fast here. I noticed in the US that if you see a green light ahead then most time you get through. Did a semi-rural trip on Saturday and my wife pointed out (although of course I'd noticed) that we got stopped at every set of lights we crossed.
Apart from anything else, you'd think these days "they" would consider the pollution impact of all the traffic having to get going again.
Last edited by: Bill Payer on Sun 1 May 16 at 23:11
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On the traffic lighted crossroads on the Australian highways (fast urban dual carriageways) there are a set of warning lights a few hundred metres before the junction, they light up before the red at the junction, I find it works well.
Roe Hwy
goo.gl/maps/pbjjF2KhXUn
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 2 May 16 at 08:04
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Here in Austria, there are several sets of lights locally that change their normal red-amber-green sequencing at certain times. One set, where a minor-ish road meets a main-ish road, it's about 9pm. In town, there are another set that are turned off on Sundays and in the evening. In both cases, they show a flashing amber off-peak to warn traffic, and the normal 'give way' rules apply as if there were no lights. Seems to work well enough, although the ones in town are a bit of a pain sometimes as they are at a major pedestrian crossing point, and cars are supposed to give way to them.
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>>In your dreams!
Oh, I don't know ON, I have some really strange dreams!
:-)
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It could work on good crossroads with excellent line of sight but on offset crossroads in built up areas it would be disaster. Imagine the scenario of the late for work person just running through every junction as if they had an automatic right of way* and plowing in to someone already on the junction.
*There are people like that even with traffic lights - as witnessed yesterday when an Audi A5 obviously thought my side of the road was his and was going far to fast to stop safely behind the parked car that he was heading for.
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Imagine every town and city in England being like this!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cLB0VIrS6Q
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In your dreams! - Alastairw
