The Westminster lights v no lights trial is causing concern, e.g. Labour Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg: “The ‘experts’ say that removing traffic lights will speed up traffic. Well, that might be so, but how are pedestrians going to cross the road if the traffic is flowing without a break? These latest moves by Westminster Conservatives and Mayor Johnson are bad news for older people, young children, the disabled and parents with prams ... If the Council wants to experiment by scrapping traffic…
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Added by Martin Cassini on September 5, 2009 at 9:00 —
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In Thought for the Day, referring to City pay, Rev Dr Giles Fraser (former philosophy tutor at Wadham College, Oxford) said there is a tendency for freedom of the individual to be a cuckoo's licence to kick out other moral values; a moral dimension is needed to frame or refine it (words to that effect). So he sees a conflict between freedom and the common good. Applied to traffic, I see them as perfectly bedfellows. Freedom stimulates mutual tolerance. Self-interest…
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Added by Martin Cassini on September 5, 2009 at 9:00 —
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Looking something up, I re-read this letter by Keith Ray in response to my 2006 Telegraph piece,
Rip Them Out - In the 1960s I studied engineering at Cambridge. A third-year project sought to improve traffic flow at the notorious Fen Causeway, Lensfield Road, Trumpington Street, Trumpington Road junction, a staggered crossroads producing severe congestion. The brightest young brains of the time never found a solution. A year after I graduated, there was a system failure and for several…
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Added by Martin Cassini on September 1, 2009 at 14:30 —
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The Sunday Times were going to do a piece on our JET (Junction Efficiency Trial), but they pulled it because the story was leaked to The Telegraph. The Telegraph piece says nothing about the origins of the trial, which followed intense lobbying by me. Westminster commissioned us (my traffic engineer partner and me) on 8 April. I was asked not to talk to the press, and things have been subject to numerous delays since. Strangely, TfL, who have continually blocked my proposals for a trial…
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Added by Martin Cassini on September 1, 2009 at 11:30 —
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The proposal to build artificial trees to soak up and store CO2 from the atmosphere seems a good idea, but of course if all those anti-social, carbon-hungry traffic controls were removed, there would be less CO2 to soak up in the first place. Story
here. [Back tab to return to site.]
Added by Martin Cassini on August 27, 2009 at 11:00 —
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After reading Matthew May’s book,
In Pursuit of Elegance, another element fitted into place. If you magnify a fractal, or a slice of nature - e.g. a section of coastline or segment of a tree - the underlying pattern in the close-up will replicate the pattern in the wide shot. Just as there is deep symmetry in apparent chaos, we can expect the elements that pertain on a micro scale to pertain on a macro. Thus the efficient filtering which breaks out whenever traffic lights break down at a…
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Added by Martin Cassini on August 26, 2009 at 21:30 —
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This graph sent to me by Chad Dornsife of the Best Highway Safety Practices Institute shows US accident rates falling between 1961 and 2008 as speed limits are relaxed or removed. Accident rates continue to drop steadily as cellphone use rises steeply. In the teeth of this evidence which shows that most people behave sensibly, the bandwagon of enforcement is gathering pace and finding new ways to…
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Added by Martin Cassini on August 20, 2009 at 22:00 —
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Guided group cycling commutes - "pelotons"- are being organised in London. Fearful cyclists learn to negotiate the dangerous roads and are guided down quiet side streets. Often the group gets separated by traffic lights that don't give them enough green. Note the unquestioning acceptance of a system which makes roads dangerous in the first place. Under the system of priority, the hierarchical pyramid is inverted. Vehicles are allowed to own the carriageway to the detriment of vulnerable…
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Added by Martin Cassini on August 15, 2009 at 11:30 —
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More evidence of asinine red-light law and disorder
here (back tab to return). In an early cut of
In Your Car No-one Can Hear You Scream! a driver spoke about penalty points and a fine he received for entering a bus lane on the Euston Road to let a fire engine pass. They even refused his appeal. We live in a new world of knaves (technocrats).
Added by Martin Cassini on August 6, 2009 at 15:27 —
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Local councillor Rodney Cann is calling for improvements to a dangerous junction on the A361 at Westleigh. Stuart Hughes (Highways and Transportation) said, "Measures were taken last year with warning speed signs installed. It's too early to tell if it has been entirely effective and we will continue to monitor the junction." My advice? Remove priority, and re-design the junction to express equality. This will stimulate slow approach speeds. A sign is an admission of a failure. Failure to…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 29, 2009 at 23:30 —
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Ceefax, 27.7.09, letter signed "MP, London". There is a traffic light controlled one-way system in Crayford, which is notorious for queues and delays every hour of the day. During the recent power cut affecting Dartford and Crayford the traffic lights went out and the traffic flow became as smooth as silk with no hold-ups at all. Now the lights are back on, the delays are back to normal. Traffic planners please note.
Added by Martin Cassini on July 27, 2009 at 22:36 —
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Not quite ready to go to press on this yet, but Portishead, a council near Bristol, has agreed to a Junction Efficiency Trial starting on 17 August. We'll be monitoring before and after signals switch-off at a busy junction called Cabstand for an initial period of five weeks. They are not commissioning a public awareness campaign or promo, but that might follow later if the results are promising, in which case the lights are likely to remain permanently switched off. Also I'll be pushing for…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 27, 2009 at 0:00 —
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The power failure was caused by a fault on the overhead electricity network. "Despite the traffic lights being knocked out of action, vehicles were still moving around the town and there were no serious congestion problems caused by the power cut." What a surprise! Full story
here. Back…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 24, 2009 at 22:00 —
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(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…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 24, 2009 at 19:00 —
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Below is a link to a presentation by Chad Dornsife about speed limits and the law. In his view, no speed limit is legally set. Improper practices and funds diverted from safety are costing lives. Millions are suffering financially from the abuse of police powers founded on improperly established limits. If the limits were
prima facie and set properly, most speed traps wouldn't have any customers. In the start-up phase of its new freeway camera enforcement program, the state of Arizona…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 19, 2009 at 13:30 —
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Regarding our JETs (Junction Efficiency Trials - awaiting the kiss of finance for lift-off), do we give the public advance notice of a traffic lights switch-off or not? The advantage of no advance warning is the possibility of a "purer" result, with behaviour uninfluenced, and a clear reading of how people interact without formal controls. Mind you, good results have been witnessed countless times when lights are out of action, indeed it's what started me off on this quest to change the system.…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 16, 2009 at 15:46 —
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Next week I'm planning a bit of filming and updating of the video, The Case against Traffic Lights, for a council meeting in 10 days' time. One of the things I might try is crossing the road with a radio mic on so I can do a walking commentary. I'm sure that if drivers only had to worry about watching the road and other road-users, things would be fine. When they saw someone trying to cross, they would slow down or wave them on. But they are torn, between a system of control…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 16, 2009 at 12:30 —
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There is some good material in the DfT's grossly overdue Greener Future charter, but reform in one vital segment is missing. The segment accounts for a king-sized slice of the carbon cake. It is responsible for waste on a prodigious scale, and is run by unelected, unaccountable technocrats. It criminalises the citizenry, and turns our public realm into a stage set for conflict. The segment that needs reform? The traffic control system itself. It is built on a fatal flaw - directional priority -…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 16, 2009 at 8:30 —
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In
Emotional Design, Donald Norman writes: “The principles for designing pleasurable, effective interaction between people and products are the same ones that support pleasurable and effective interaction between individuals.” - Our road network expresses the precise opposite of emotion. The public realm is where human beings live and interact. It is the mark of a country's civilised values. Yet we have abandoned it to technocrats who, Dementor-like, destroy its soul. They turn it into a…
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Added by Martin Cassini on July 13, 2009 at 9:30 —
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My heated debates with traffic engineers often concern their practice of giving everything, including road safety, an economic value. They allow £2m for a life. Today, in the 4th Reith lecture about the new citizenship by Michael Sandel, I heard my objections expressed along these lines: cost-benefit analysis is spurious because there are certain things which can’t be measured or given an economic value, most notably, human life. In renouncing moral judgement, the technocrat becomes…
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Added by Martin Cassini on June 30, 2009 at 12:30 —
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