A Roundabout Way Of Doing Things
When I'm Prime Minister the vast majority of traffic lights in this country will be replaced by roundabouts.
There is a huge congestion problem in this country because there are more cars than there is road. It does not take a genius to see that if you're stopping half of the cars half of the time then half of the cars are going to be stopped half of the time. Of course, in many situations, this is desirable: but not at rush hour.
It is further demonstrated that removing traffic lights alleviates the problem by the intermittent failure during rush hour of certain sets of signals. When a set fails and the traffic flows more smoothly, the set is, in fact, counterproductive. Conversely, if it fails and traffic is at more of a standstill than it usually is, the set is controlling traffic.
The most efficient conjunction of two like roads is with a roundabout. This basically merges both roads into one, round road, off of which you can come at any time onto any of the roads. Better still, it is extensible to multiple roads: five roads can all meet at one point and nothing changes.
What really makes it grind is when it's not quite a roundabout. There's a basic rotund conglomeration of soil, trees and signposts in the middle, around which cars orbit like moths around a light, and then there are strange parasitic constructions like lanes that never quite reach the roundabout and instead take you off to the left, or lanes which purport to be the correct lane for going straight ahead until you cross into the roundabout, whereupon the lane becomes a turning left lane. And, the lowest of the low, the one for which all traffic management officers are going to hell, is the unforgivable traffic lights on roundabouts.
Picture, if you will, a circle. This will serve as our roundabout, viewed from above. From it radiate a number of roads. Be aware this is the UK, where we drive on the left and roundabouts are followed clockwise from above.
A car arrives at the roundabout; it slows lest traffic be coming from its right (as one must give way to the right on roundabouts) and then moves off. It goes as far as it needs, and leaves the roundabout. For argument's sake, each road has but one lane in each direction; the roundabout has one lane.
Another car on another road must judge whether this car is going to pass in front of it; if so, the other car must wait until it has passed. Since people drive slowly on roundabouts due to their roundness, there is often time to move out before the first car arrives. Then it continues as the first car did. This pattern may be repeated for any number of cars in any number of roads, but it does require that the roundabout gain more lanes as the volume of traffic increases.
And lo we find that even the most major of roads must at some point give way to someone. Anyone coming in from the right has priority over the major road, and the users of that road must stop. This means that the major road can continue to filter traffic into the roundabout until such time as someone arrives on the minor road; there is a pause for the little guy, and everything goes off again. And even the most chock-a-block road will eventually ease off and filter out, meaning that no one should wait a long time at a roundabout.
Now divide this roundabout into sections. Each section comprises an incoming road and the section of circle clockwise of this road up to where it meets the next road. Dividing each of these sections is a set of traffic lights. There is also a set of traffic lights at each incoming road, where the road meets the roundabout. Now set up the timing of the lights so that full roundabout functionality is retained.
No, you can't. The lights on the roundabout itself create little sections of road which, every time the light goes red, fills up with cars. The cars will come either from the section previous to it, or will come in from the joining road associated with it. A filled up section of road is useless, because when lights change, there's nowhere for the cars to go. When one set of lights goes green, the people move a few inches and catch up with the back of the queue at the next set. Maybe a car will turn off, but what you end up with is a snake biting its own tail, and the roundabout is at a standstill.
In the eighties there was technology that could determine whether or not a car was waiting at lights. It is no longer in use today, since this technology is much inferior to the new technology of having a set light cycle for all times of the day. Knowing when a car is waiting at a minor road and changing the lights only at that time is far inferior to stopping the entire major road at set intervals in order that no cars can go.
This is because it's impossible to turn right at traffic lights; you have to cross oncoming traffic. It is required to stop the entire road periodically just to allow the people who want to turn right to do so. What a lot of people do not know is that the rules of the road say that if you have crossed the white line while the lights are on green you must complete your manoeuvre, even if the lights turn red. Of course, with so many people having passed their driving test before they learned to drive, what you get is people sitting in the middle of junctions, feeling a bit silly because they're poking out, and completely blocking traffic on the other road when the lights change. With a roundabout, there is no opportunity to stop like this, unless some idiot goes and puts traffic lights on it.
In fact, the only thing you can get from traffic lights is a pedestrian crossing. Quite frankly I'm prepared to replace all of those with zebra crossings and make anyone who does not stop for someone waiting at (not already on: waiting at) a zebra crossing liable for a lot of fines. There is no reason to be wasting this much precious energy on these useless automatic traffic controlling units that do not actually in any way help with controlling traffic.
There is a huge congestion problem in this country because there are more cars than there is road. It does not take a genius to see that if you're stopping half of the cars half of the time then half of the cars are going to be stopped half of the time. Of course, in many situations, this is desirable: but not at rush hour.
It is further demonstrated that removing traffic lights alleviates the problem by the intermittent failure during rush hour of certain sets of signals. When a set fails and the traffic flows more smoothly, the set is, in fact, counterproductive. Conversely, if it fails and traffic is at more of a standstill than it usually is, the set is controlling traffic.
The most efficient conjunction of two like roads is with a roundabout. This basically merges both roads into one, round road, off of which you can come at any time onto any of the roads. Better still, it is extensible to multiple roads: five roads can all meet at one point and nothing changes.
What really makes it grind is when it's not quite a roundabout. There's a basic rotund conglomeration of soil, trees and signposts in the middle, around which cars orbit like moths around a light, and then there are strange parasitic constructions like lanes that never quite reach the roundabout and instead take you off to the left, or lanes which purport to be the correct lane for going straight ahead until you cross into the roundabout, whereupon the lane becomes a turning left lane. And, the lowest of the low, the one for which all traffic management officers are going to hell, is the unforgivable traffic lights on roundabouts.
Picture, if you will, a circle. This will serve as our roundabout, viewed from above. From it radiate a number of roads. Be aware this is the UK, where we drive on the left and roundabouts are followed clockwise from above.
A car arrives at the roundabout; it slows lest traffic be coming from its right (as one must give way to the right on roundabouts) and then moves off. It goes as far as it needs, and leaves the roundabout. For argument's sake, each road has but one lane in each direction; the roundabout has one lane.
Another car on another road must judge whether this car is going to pass in front of it; if so, the other car must wait until it has passed. Since people drive slowly on roundabouts due to their roundness, there is often time to move out before the first car arrives. Then it continues as the first car did. This pattern may be repeated for any number of cars in any number of roads, but it does require that the roundabout gain more lanes as the volume of traffic increases.
And lo we find that even the most major of roads must at some point give way to someone. Anyone coming in from the right has priority over the major road, and the users of that road must stop. This means that the major road can continue to filter traffic into the roundabout until such time as someone arrives on the minor road; there is a pause for the little guy, and everything goes off again. And even the most chock-a-block road will eventually ease off and filter out, meaning that no one should wait a long time at a roundabout.
Now divide this roundabout into sections. Each section comprises an incoming road and the section of circle clockwise of this road up to where it meets the next road. Dividing each of these sections is a set of traffic lights. There is also a set of traffic lights at each incoming road, where the road meets the roundabout. Now set up the timing of the lights so that full roundabout functionality is retained.
No, you can't. The lights on the roundabout itself create little sections of road which, every time the light goes red, fills up with cars. The cars will come either from the section previous to it, or will come in from the joining road associated with it. A filled up section of road is useless, because when lights change, there's nowhere for the cars to go. When one set of lights goes green, the people move a few inches and catch up with the back of the queue at the next set. Maybe a car will turn off, but what you end up with is a snake biting its own tail, and the roundabout is at a standstill.
In the eighties there was technology that could determine whether or not a car was waiting at lights. It is no longer in use today, since this technology is much inferior to the new technology of having a set light cycle for all times of the day. Knowing when a car is waiting at a minor road and changing the lights only at that time is far inferior to stopping the entire major road at set intervals in order that no cars can go.
This is because it's impossible to turn right at traffic lights; you have to cross oncoming traffic. It is required to stop the entire road periodically just to allow the people who want to turn right to do so. What a lot of people do not know is that the rules of the road say that if you have crossed the white line while the lights are on green you must complete your manoeuvre, even if the lights turn red. Of course, with so many people having passed their driving test before they learned to drive, what you get is people sitting in the middle of junctions, feeling a bit silly because they're poking out, and completely blocking traffic on the other road when the lights change. With a roundabout, there is no opportunity to stop like this, unless some idiot goes and puts traffic lights on it.
In fact, the only thing you can get from traffic lights is a pedestrian crossing. Quite frankly I'm prepared to replace all of those with zebra crossings and make anyone who does not stop for someone waiting at (not already on: waiting at) a zebra crossing liable for a lot of fines. There is no reason to be wasting this much precious energy on these useless automatic traffic controlling units that do not actually in any way help with controlling traffic.
posted by Al at 10:56 AM
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