Who wants to be annoyed?

[benb]

I quite like the Register for IT stuff, but Lewis Page is an idiot.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/28/traffic_light_report/

Some good comments though.

 

[gemsno4]

When will drivers understand that they are being discouraged as much as possible from driving in cities, particularly London where as far as I can tell (as someone who works there but doesn't live there) public transport is perfectly adequate. *

So moaning about things like this just proves to whoever is trying to make things slower for drivers that it is actually working.


* i appreaciate there are some groups that this is not the case for

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

Was on the radio this morning driving in (new car, tax runs out today, so parking up at work till cover note comes) about how somewhere a roundabout has been replaced with "SEVENTY!!! Traffic Lights OMG THAT'S JUST MENTAL, CRAZY CRAZY WHAT ARE THEY THINKING!"

Intelligence isn't a prerequisite for a breakfast radio presenter as none of the oh-so-jovial-and-oh-so-thick presenters gasping in amazement at the madness of it all considered that this did not mean seventy individual traffic-light-controlled-junctions, and that if a multi-lane road enters there could quite easily be 10 sets of traffic lights, on posts and gantries (a bog-standard 4-on 4-off motorway flyover RAB with no other than 2 lanes on each entry can easily have 25 individual lights)

Moronic AND lazy

 

[mcshroom]

Other than his comment about RLJers (which even they were very mild compared to many) and the thing about roads being paid for by the motorist I thought it was a good article.

I don't agree with his recommendation of reducing the green man time to 6 seconds, and I'm not sure about bikes turning left on red as I think that's a recipe for confusion but the other stuff was pretty sensible. The flashing ambers in the evening seem to work ok in mainland Europe when I've seen them and as long as there deployment was carefully planned I think they would be advantageous.

 

[crumpetman]

This might justifiably annoy motorists, as it is they who pay for the streets and roads. So far from helping pay for the infrastructure they use (and destroy, and block up), buses are heavily subsidised: cyclists and pedestrians use the facilities for free. But the roads budget (no more than £15bn annually) is dwarfed by the revenues received by the government from road tax and fuel duty (£46bn as of last year).

Isn't that nonsense?

 

[al78]

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Isn't that nonsense?

Yes, as is assuming that the only costs of motoring is the roads budget and ignoring all the costs imposed on society (which dwarfs the motoring-related taxes).

 

[benb]

Other than his comment about RLJers (which even they were very mild compared to many) and the thing about roads being paid for by the motorist I thought it was a good article.

I don't agree with his recommendation of reducing the green man time to 6 seconds, and I'm not sure about bikes turning left on red as I think that's a recipe for confusion but the other stuff was pretty sensible. The flashing ambers in the evening seem to work ok in mainland Europe when I've seen them and as long as there deployment was carefully planned I think they would be advantageous.

You think it's a good idea to leave it up to driver's judgement whether to proceed through a junction? You clearly have more faith in the ability of the average motorist than I do.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

I heard on the radio the other day that the estimated cost of repairing all the roads in the country properly would be about £9 billion. What's the point in building more if we can't keep the ones we have in a fit state?

 

[Lizban]

The phasing issue is an issue in my mind. Surely it is better to have traffic (by which I mean all road users) moving at steady consitant pace rather than the current race to the next set of lights.

I like the phasing of lights that means the driver on or around teh right speed gets greens and the speeder gets reds.

 

[al78]

You think it's a good idea to leave it up to driver's judgement whether to proceed through a junction? You clearly have more faith in the ability of the average motorist than I do.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ImBMi7cMz4A

 

[mcshroom]

You think it's a good idea to leave it up to driver's judgement whether to proceed through a junction? You clearly have more faith in the ability of the average motorist than I do.

Maybe I have. The planning of where these are introduced would be the important bit. I appreciate London can be a bit of a special case, but many junctions only need light controls for a few hours of the day. In the evening they are quiet enough to default back to being a normal junction (like is already done with part time signals on some motorway junctions). I don't see the point in running traffic lights at this time of day. Obviously there are also a lot of junctions that require 24hr traffic controls, but many don't.