Pedestrians Set to be Given Priority Over Vehicles at Crossings

[ktmbiker58]

They have at least admitted that the scheme could cause 'localised traffic congestion at times' - perhaps they should look down the page there's an article entitled 'Bristol is UK's second worst city for congestion'

 

[Andy in Germany]

I thought that meant they would default to green for pedestrians and red for cars, and drivers would have to push a button to change to green.

Ah, well...

 

[Andy in Germany]

They have at least admitted that the scheme could cause 'localised traffic congestion at times' - perhaps they should look down the page there's an article entitled 'Bristol is UK's second worst city for congestion'

You'd think that if we still have "congestion" after at least half a century of prioritising cars and giving them more and more space, governments would admit that this isn't working...

 

[Drago]

Governments can only see as far as the next election and anything that upsets a voting bloc as large as "motorists" is too hot a potato.

Doing the right thing for society takes a poor second to keeping themselves in a job.

 

[ktmbiker58]

Congestion has been affecting road networks since Roman days - for context almost a billion miles are covered by vehicles in the UK every day

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Congestion has been affecting road networks since Roman days

Evidence for this?

 

[roubaixtuesday]

I was astonished in NL last year to find ped and cyclist buttons worked immediately. Brilliant system.

 

[Baldy]

Here in the village we had one crossing right outside the co op. You pressed the button and the lights changed within seconds, great.

The council did away with that crossing, now we have two one at either end of the main street. From pressing the button to lights changing takes about ten minutes. Everyone has started to ignore the lights and just risks it.

 

[Drago]

Evidence for this?

There's plenty just a keystroke or two away...

https://jamescoverley.substack.com/p/did-the-romans-have-traffic-jams

 

[Andy in Germany]

Congestion has been affecting road networks since Roman days - for context almost a billion miles are covered by vehicles in the UK every day

That makes it worse.

We've known about Induced Demand (the phenomenon where adding roads creates more car journeys, and removing them reduces car journeys) for decades, so there's no excuse. In practice, we need to urgently reduce the number of car journeys, so a change of approach is long overdue.

Or as one planner said: You can build cities to favour cars, or you can build cities that are usable for people; you can't do both.

 

[mjr]

I was astonished in NL last year to find ped and cyclist buttons worked immediately. Brilliant system.

And where the lights don't change immediately, the button often starts a visible countdown timer that is accelerated in bad weather or if more people arrive.

In the UK, countdown timers are only used to hurry up people crossing, not to inform and shorten waits, as far as I've seen.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

And where the lights don't change immediately, the button often starts a visible countdown timer that is accelerated in bad weather or if more people arrive.

In the UK, countdown timers are only used to hurry up people crossing, not to inform and shorten waits, as far as I've seen.

Useful info!

 

[mjr]

Useful info!

I'm sure I've linked the video below before. The simplistic "Canadian" state machine is about what we usually get in Norfolk, where the beg-buttons are placebos that only light a "WAIT" sign. At some sites, if we're really lucky, then the engineers may set the beg-button-push-to-change wait to zero, but that still means the first rider in a group ALWAYS gets a red light and has to stop for six seconds after pushing the beg button while the carriageway gets shown an amber then a red and then there's a two-second wait that encourages the red gamblers before it finally shows the footway/cycleway a green!

So I have little sympathy when snowflake motorists whine about the synchronisation of the four sets of traffic lights on the A149 nearest me failing to give them a green wave when it's busy: the cycleway has ten lights in the same stretch, which are almost always red and you have to slalom or U-turn through most of them. If drivers were treated as badly in Norfolk as cyclists, they'd 😭 and flood the town!

Not Just Bikes: Why the Dutch Wait Less at Traffic Lights

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

You do have to wonder about the logic of some traffic light sequences
I pick the grand kids up from school about once or twice a week
there is a junction that is crowded at that time and I have to wait at the lights for about 3-4 changes to get through

part of the delay is because the lights all go red and stay there for a few minutes every cycle
whether or not anyone has pressed any buttons
which is rather crazy

 

[Ming the Merciless]

part of the delay is because

Shed loads of kids get driven to / from school these days