Hans Monderman - Forgive Us

Hans Monderman (1945-2008) was a Dutch traffic engineer and innovator, it was his ideas that led to something called "Shared Space" where people and road traffic share the same space and therefore both have to be careful, it has worked in some places, will no doubt have problems in other places but hats off to the man who said that he did not have a problem with traffic control or rules but only if they were actually useful!
As humans, we have a habit of starting to do something in a certain way and then just continuing that forever with little thought about alternatives or whether time has shown that it is not such a great idea. This is definitely true of computers and their overuse in many aspects of work but also true in the way that traffic lights and other systems of control are never really questioned. Problems with traffic flow automatically invoke the idea that we need more control, more lights, more speed humps etc rather than radical redesign. Who's job is it to say, "this isn't working, let's go back to the drawing board"? Who's job is it to say, "actually traffic lights are good for moderate amounts of traffic but are too obstructive when there is little traffic or absolutely loads of it"? Who's job is it to say, "let us put all traffic lights on amber at night so nobody ever has to wait at a light for no reason"?
Forgive us Hans because most of us don't have your courage, tenacity or creative thinking and sadly many of us make decisions that affect thousands of others. Forgive us that we don't rethink problems, we simply justify them and our approach to them.

Temporary Traffic Lights - Cheltenham Ring Road

I felt tears of joy the other day when I was driving home around the Cheltenham Ring Road and some road works had caused the power to be switched off on the traffic lights at the junctions with North Place and Portland Street. Of course this made the junctions slightly more chaotic but interestingly there was much less congestion. Of course, this is a well known phenomenom but councils are too scared or too unimformed to do this. They need to justify the employees budgets to maintain these things and give in too easily to pedestrian pressure to install pelican crossings which of course require either a zebra (don't like these) or traffic lights.
Anyway back to the story, the next time I went past these junctions, temporary lights had been installed ARGGGGGHHH. Of course these are much less clever (if that is the word) than the normal lights so congestion is even worse. They have been in place for a few days so driving past at 11pm means I now wait at a temporary red light instead of a permanent one. Of course, if they had not installed temporary lights no doubt some idiot would have crashed and sued the council or roadworks company but surely someone, somewhere has the power to actually make these things happen - ban traffic lights except where absolutely necessary. Of course, there is noone with that power. Government, civil service, councils, highways agency, HSE, consumer groups all bay for power so no-one can tell everyone to shut up and go away while cutting the poles down. Maybe one day, we can dream.

Junction of Elm Street and Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham

I have to point out AGAIN that these lights are proposterous and are certainly not fit-for-purpose as the council keep saying they are. There are a couple of problems with them, firstly, they do NOT talk to the previous (west) set of lights. What should happen is when the previous set of lights go to green and traffic starts pulling away, you should not then approach these lights turning red. This is something obviously missed by the people who setup the system. They have obviously not heard of a green wave which means on the main route, people should be able to travel along most or all of its length unencumbered.
Anyway, secondly, what makes this worse, last night (when I hit 6 out of 10 red lights) was that after coming from the previous red light and coming over the railway bridge, I was greeted not only by lights turning red but then the realisation that the lights coming the other way on the main road were still green for a good 10-20 seconds (presumably to allow people to turn right although no-one did) and then of course still red while Elm Street gets a green and then red again while the access road to the right gets a green. All-in-all very sloppy, very obstructive and very amateur on a main dual carriageway into town. I need to rig my camera up to my car and start posting videos of the whole mess and then ask again for council comment (although I think know what they will say).

Solving the problem

OK. I think there should be a statute that defines what is an acceptable and what is not an acceptable traffic light placement. It should define things that can be referred to the Courts for idiots who don't know who to control traffic (or perhaps they do, which is the problem). It should contain some fairly easy guidelines like:

1. Any traffic light that is within 1/4 mile of another set must be interconnected with a recognised traffic management system.
2. Any lights that give a green light to side roads when there is no traffic or other obstruction falsely triggering them shall be considered defective and shall be repaired or replaced.
3. The system shall ensure that if someone has been held at a red light on a major stretch of road, they should not reach a red light at another set within 1/4 mile. Lights placed this close must be interlinked so that traffic being held by one red light causes the next set to see no traffic and change phase.
4. On a major A road, no red light aspect shall be displayed to the main route for longer than 30 seconds (i.e. not the 2 minutes by Sainsburys on Tewkesbury Road!!)
5. Every set of lights must allow free turns where possible, a red aspect only protecting crossings when required.
6. No set of lights will provide 4 way pedestrian crossings unless it does not add any additional time to red light phases.

You get the idea. Sadly, I feel that our government despite an awful lot of employees cannot seem to handle the basics - and to be fair, no previous governments have done that much. I wonder what these people do all day if the road system is largely the same as 20 years ago in terms of technology.

The anti-cycling MPs

A topic almost related to this blog caught my attention this week as an MP called for more Police enforcement against people cycling on the pavement, just because they had a run-in with someone cycling too fast on the pavement. I was upset by this because it shows a distinct lack of understanding about cycling and about what this country needs to do if it is to take people out of cars and onto bikes and other mass-transport.
For some reason, they felt like making judgmental comments about cyclists, "thinking they are morally superior to other road users" which of course can be said about a minority of just about anyone and a majority of MPs. The thing is, before you start making massive sweeping comments about cyclists, you have to look at countries with a lot of cycles and ask how it works there.
In Japan, the cyclist is king and this means pretty much everyone cycles around (including all manner of professionals and businessmen). You cycle mostly on pavements on the larger roads, all of which are cycle friendly and the larger ones with separately marked cycle lanes and on the roads in the small residential areas that don't really have separate pavements. You can also cycle through various shopping arcades, around tourist attractions like castles and parks and pretty much wherever there isn't something blocking your way. The cyclist is treated like a pedestrian and it encourages people to cycle. Compare with the UK where cyclists are treated like motorists by the way they are expected to obey all road laws like cars even though they have almost no presence on the road and are easily hit and injured in accidents. People harp on about accidents on the pavements but to be honest, these are rare and not usually as serious as a cyclist getting knocked over by a car. Perhaps if people were encouraged to cycle on pavements and the pavements kept clear (rather than near me where hedgerows run amok) then more people would feel safe cycling. They would also have to ditch most roundabouts which are terrible for cyclists and generally make it quick and easy to navigate the roads. They can do it in Japan where they have much less space than us so we can do it here too!

Cheltenham Ring Road Again

Every time I travel along this embarrassment, I get more angry. Take tonight, 10pm travelling from Kingsditch to Portland Street. Hardly any cars on the road, I turn onto Tewkesbury Road and the first thing I come to is a red light by KFC even though there is no-one coming in from the side street - for goodness sake, this is a major road and there are phantom light changes. Pull away, over the railway and oh great, the next set of lights (which apparently don't talk to the other lights despite what I have been repeatedly told by the council) decide to change to red because a car is coming from the side road, great accelerate...and brake. These change and I pull away again catching the next set just as they change to green and then by the time I get to Matalan, another red light, pull away and although the next set is green, the set by the car park is red which causes traffic to back up (it's only about 4 cars the junctions are so stupidly close) so I can't cross the junction and then the lights change to red. Eventually I get through and then reach North Place and surprise, surprise, another red.
It is truly idiotic, despite whatever official line exists, it is quite clear that Gloucestershire County Council Traffic Light department are incompetent. I suggest a petition calling for people's jobs because no-one ever seems to be accountable for these things. Whoever designed the system to have that many sets of lights should be sacked, whoever has designed the so-called phasing and linking of lights should be sacked and anyone who has ever defended the system despite the fact it is not even close to working properly should also be sacked. I have lived in London and traffic lights can work properly so there is no excuse. You can sit at some lights on the MAIN ROAD for 2 minutes on a red, that is simply unacceptable and perhaps someone in the council would like to win some popularity with the voters by ordering some sort of change!

I went to London

I haven't been to London for a while. I used to live there and learned to drive there and haven't driven there for a few years I think. I was going to East London from Oxford way so decided to go M40, A40, North Circular (A406), A1 into Highbury corner and then into the city via Old Street. I had forgotten how good the lights are in London. I went down Holloway road which is a major road with major traffic, most of the lanes either for buses only or parked in (it was Sunday) but still, I think out of about 13 sets of lights and with all the traffic, I stopped about 3 of them only and these for only what seemed to be maybe 10 or 15 seconds. If they can do it in London, they can definitely do it in Cheltenham. How about sacking all of Gloucester CC traffic control dept and replace them with a few people from London?