Traffic Lights = Pain

[Luke Briner]

Since moving to Cheltenham and enduring the Ring Road, I have been thinking that traffic control is about control for its own sake. The lights don't work effectively either in busy conditions OR in the dead of night. I wonder why we are less open to making things better, than, for example, the Japanese. Why do we accept sitting at a red light at an empty junction, and why do councils justify the situation rather than do something about it? Lights-off trials could give quick and easy results. I do feel however that pedestrian traffic islands should be used more, so that people can cross half a road at a time. Even old people can handle that!

[Martin Cassini]

Your frustration with inefficient, vexatious traffic control is doubtless shared by many in this group. And yes, the ability of well-paid public "servants" to ignore the obvious and find excuses for inaction is appalling. Re pedestrian islands, I tend to think that if roads were designed and run according to common law principles of equal rights and responsibilities, instead of anti-social rules based on directional priority, we wouldn't need them. As you might have seen in an earlier post, engineers refer to pedestrian islands as "pens". Yes, to traffic engineers we are sheep. Our roads are (mis)managed by absent, unelected regulators who think of us as sheep.