Comments on: Bad News for Traffic Signal Manufacturers

By: townmouse

townmouse — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:04:25 +0000

@Grant - councillors are the elected officials in UK local authorities, so clearly there is some communication going on there as they approved the plan

By: aaron

aaron — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:16:56 +0000

The “no signals” strategy probably works very well in very pedestrian dense areas where the vehicle traffic is generally well above capacity and intersections are very close. But generally, for the other anecdotes, the reason there is better flow is because there are less people on the road, the economy is basically on stand-still.

I think good solution for other situations is to get rid of “stop lights” and make them all yields, with stiff penalties for failure to yield accidents. One direction gets the priority signal, while the rest yield.

How under-built roads are, average distance of travel, and distance between signals will be key in whether no signals works.

By: Grant Johnson, PE, PTOE

Grant Johnson, PE, PTOE — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:11:39 +0000

This article was so amazing to me. It shows a lack of knowledge, and apparently, whoever is running the signal system over there is not communicating to the elected officials. Maybe there are two agendas at play there? Possibly an overly zealous traffic calming influence being applied by transportation departments to the signal systems to really slow things down (or negligence/incompetence?), combined with the impatience of those that want no part of that.

If I had my input there, I would first see that the signals are equipped with detector loops so that they could sense the presence of approaching vehicles, let alone those that are already waiting at a stop bar. I would have the signals timed with programming so that they would favor the heavy movements of traffic so that the majority of drivers would experience the least amount of delay.

I did a comparative analysis of three scenarios at an intersection. All the same volume of traffic, but with different traffic control. The first was a signal installation with a 75 second typical cycle. See my blog for results. It doesn’t favor chaos.

By: Lee Hanna

Lee Hanna — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:55:49 +0000

I’d have to go back and look it up, but I think traffic wasn’t awful when we lost 4 days of power in Columbus after Hurricane Ike’s remnants blew through here. Of course, I couldn’t see TV or radio news, and I didn’t go out much, so I could be wrong.

By: townmouse

townmouse — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:05:13 +0000

I agree with Matt about the effect on pedestrians - maybe that’s why the traffic flows more smoothly as one whole stream of ‘traffic’ is removed from the equation. Perhaps combining no lights with zebra crossings for those on foot would be a fairer way to go about it?

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:58:53 +0000

Some lights near me in Putney failed recently, and the traffic did seem to flow better. But, it was at the expense of pedestrians crossing the road — drivers ignored them, instead creeping forward into the junction, and the pedestrians were left to run across when they could.

By: Vincent Clement

Vincent Clement — Sun, 03 May 2009 12:53:34 +0000

I don’t recall there being any major issues when the power went out during the Northeast blackout of 2003. Traffic moved smoothly for the most part.

It took me an extra 10 minutes to get home. I partly assign that to the fact that the blackout happened at 4:15 pm and that most workplaces let their employees go home shortly after that. There were way more vehicles on the road than normal.

By: Vagabondblogger

Vagabondblogger — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:02:57 +0000

There are no lights here in Cairo, and my son seems to think traffic works better. He says it’s usually never at a total standstill, which is better than many of our encounters in the USA, where bumper to bumper idling seems to be the norm.