"More or Less" - BBC Radio 4 - 10th December

Just listened to the section on traffic lights, a nice, brief set of numbers and opinions gave a lot of insight to this area.
A bus driver reported that a route that takes 45-65 minutes can involve 10-15 minutes of waiting at red lights, sometimes with no conflicting traffic to warrant the red light.
Another statistic was the lights, now permanently disabled, in Portishead which cost £600-£700,000 pounds to install for one (large) set of lights! The fact that these still get installed makes you realised why councils spend so much money.
A researcher informed the listener that many of the junction types in London would fare no worse if their lights were switched off for all or part of the day.
The clincher was the statement that there was no evidence that pedestrians would suffer if lights were removed even though they might currently rely on visual, audible or tactile feedback for crossings.
Amazing. Let's hope the "groundswell" of opinion leads to something larger and longer term.