WMD & D (2)

[Martin Cassini]

(Similar version published today by Newspress.) There are some fair comments in yesterday's report from the Transport Committee, and balanced comment in some of the reactions, but no-one else seems to be pointing out that many of our congestion (and road safety) problems are caused by the traffic control system itself. Until we've seen comprehensive reform, any talk of congestion charging is premature. It's obvious to everyone except the "experts" that most traffic lights are not only badly timed but unnecessary per se. Sustainable solutions are at hand which involve reduced control and nothing like the cost of the current system; just a change in culture from priority to equality, and an approach based on a trust in human nature rather than an obsession with controlling it. Who is the better judge of when, or indeed how fast, it's safe to go - you and me at the time and the place, or lights and limits fixed by absent regulators? There are huge social, economic and environmental gains to be made from removing traffic controls, and letting road-users use commonsense to filter in turn (FiT). First we need to cut out the cancer at the heart of the system - priority - which subverts the natural order and makes roads dangerous in the first place. Then there could be cuts in the carbon-hungry and energy-inefficient traffic control industry, with large-scale scrapping of high-cost control systems, and a cull of unnaccountable, unproductive managers, policymakers and engineers. Many of them mean well, and it's good to see that some, at last, are beginning to see the light about traffic lights, those weapons of mass distraction and delay. But the old road is rapidly changing. Let them get out of the new one if they can't lend a hand.