Traffic lights that Suck

Are the lights broken or not?

2011-11-11T20:58:00.001Z

One of my (many) frustrations is waiting at lights when there is no traffic going the other way. Well, maybe I should call the council and tell them the lights are busted? But are they? We hear that lights often get controlled by super-computers (which apparently don't work very well!) so we could assume that if we wait at lights for no reason then there must be a fault. We also know however that some are just bog-standard lights which aren't optimised in any way and therefore like most people, I simply assume that the lights are probably working 'normally' but are simply crap. Also, of course in the UK, our councils are famous for indifference, lack of motivation, lack of funding, basically it is everyone else's fault except theirs so most people would rather cut off their own arm than attempt to get anything like service from the council. For this reason, we simply suffer, grind our teeth, swear, get violent and wonder why it can't all be better.In Japan, they have a different outlook on things. Whatever you do, you do it to the best of your ability (I think they used to do that here once). That means if a traffic light is not working pretty much as close to its optimum then it is fixed, no questions need to be asked. Turning traffic lights off at night? no problem, re-phasing them at certain times? easy, removing sets that have outlived their use? Certainly.Not sure what it will take for us to get back that way, perhaps a large town or county being so well run that it inspires its residents to all give to society and see the positive outcome. I, for one, will not be holding my breath :)

Weymouth, what have you done?

2011-08-22T12:57:00.000+01:00

I used to live in Weymouth and it suffers greatly from traffic congestion, primarily because of a lack of roads crossing the river Wey and the harbour and the small size of roads, with one-ways, in the town centre. It didn't used to be too bad but then they decided to remove a pelican crossing on King Street - used by many people coming from Car Parks to the sea-front and replaced it with a standard set of lights further up the road which have made things worse since the phasing is much more traffic unfriendly. Now, they have completely ruined the town centre by replacing roundabouts with massive sets of traffic lights and at the clock-tower have replaced a mini-roundabout with traffic lights including a new restriction on right turns from Kings Street onto the Prom (you now have to make a much longer journey round by the hospital to come back again). The traffic is now MUCH worse than it has ever been and as always, the planners who do these things just carry on making these ridiculous decisions. They have made similar changes up Rodwell road including more restrictions and traffic lights.
It is hard to communicate how strongly I feel about this idiotic and seemingly unaccountable decision to spend a massive amount of money on technology which doesn't really make anything better, including the long-term maintenance cost and of course the lack of any reasonable chance to revert the changes because of all the money they have spent. It now has to work (even though it doesn't)!
Oh, and the justification for these changes which were always going to be popular? The 2012 Olympics and specifically the sailing part of them! An event which will take place for a single month somehow justifies an obscene amount of expenditure into a system that doesn't work. I don't know how many visitors are expected but since Weymouth already has an influx of 1000s of people each summer, I don't see that it will be massively different than normal. Also, more importantly, they have already proved that their changes have made the CURRENT situation worse before any extra traffic they expect. If they hadn't taken so long to install the lights, they could have perhaps trialled temporary lights before committing to the full-blown systems. The only thing I can imagine is that the people are either incompetent and simply believe that traffic lights are the ultimate management system or otherwise they are creating work to keep themselves in a job (although I expect they also employed consultants who will never say, "you don't need to change anything").
What we need is a public enquiry into this continued fiasco!

Another nail in the coffin for traffic lights

2011-07-01T15:26:00.000+01:00

BBC News today with an article about how the US are taking to roundabouts to REPLACE traffic lights (not the UK where we have both at the same place!). There are some nice logical reasons for this in the article including a 40% in accidents, a 90% drop in fatal accidents and £150,000 savings per year because of maintenance savings as well as drivers saving fuel. Of course Britain are so arrogant about such things we are no longer pragmatic about these decisions, it is corruption, inept councillors and mad health and safety laws that make our once great country simply Mediocre Britain.

More insanity

2011-06-17T21:54:00.002+01:00

Instead of you having to read it, it basically bemoans a local council's idea to ask the County Council to switch off some traffic lights on a roundabout in PEAK times, because it makes the traffic back-up. Really? So we want lights that are on 24 hours per day, except peak times when they would be most needed!? As the article says, what's the point then?

I still can't see why part-time lights are not the norm and they only stay on 24 hours for special reasons. Oh wait, I do know. Because Britain has become a nation of bureaucrats and incompetents who spend 99% of their time justifying why they are so rubbish at their jobs with, "it is everyone else's fault except mine". This country doesn't have too many pioneers any more which is a shame.

Junction of Rodwell Road and Westwey Road, Weymouth

2011-04-25T11:54:00.002+01:00

Oh my goodness me, how to turn a working roundabout into a mess of traffic lights for no good reason at goodness knows how much installation and maintenance costs!

Weymouth have been busy recently, much of which is justified by the 2 weeks of the water sports part of the Olympics in 2012 (this much investment for 2 weeks?) but I think it is actually a case of Weymouth getting money from central government and deciding to spend it on what they have wanted for ages. Control!

Lights are about control, not about efficient traffic management. You only have to look at the layouts that have taken months to complete and there are lanes all over the place, the usual traffic light chaos and the expense.

What I find really difficult is the realisation that most County Halls live in traffic light land as the ultimate in traffic management when in reality, it hides the real issues.

The reason why the Kings roundabout didn't work was because there is no capacity up Kings Street onto the Esplanade, ironically partly because of the new traffic lights they installed on Kings Street and Queen Street. Replacing the roundabout with traffic lights will make precisely zero difference (except it will cost loads of money) and if anything will make it worse.

IDIOTS

Flashing amber - has been mentioned before!

2011-03-29T19:06:00.003+01:00

New article on the BBC web site about possible use of flashing amber during quiet times. This would be a start but I think traffic lights on roundabouts should be switched off outside peak hours - even during the peak they seem to cause more trouble than they're worth.
I'm very disappointed with Andrew Howard's response as the head of safety at the AA. Maybe the clue is in his job title but safety at all costs is nonsense. Life is not safe and traffic lights do not noticeably improve safety for all the hassle they cause. Of course we could simply ban all cars but then people would probably trip over and hit their head on the floor instead!

part time lights

2011-02-01T13:13:00.002Z

I'm sure I've blogged about this before but why o why are traffic lights not part-time by default and only extended to 24 hours as required?
All you need is a reflective badge on the traffic signal so you can see that you are approaching a junction but switch the lights off to reduce power and the annoyance of waiting at so many red lights for no reason. It is a no-brainer to me. If someone jumps them and crashes, its no different than if you pulled out of a side-road with no traffic lights and crashed.
If you really needed to, you set them all to orange so it is clearer but I like the idea of switching them off altogether.
Part time signals do exist, although mostly on roundabouts and slip-roads, so it is obviously permissible and possible.
Come on someone, do it. Lead the way. Be leaders not followers. Show some unction. Think outside the box. Save tons of money and tons of hassle.

No Traffic Lights = Fast Travel

2011-01-14T11:22:00.003Z

I've changed jobs recently and now my journey to work takes me past the grand total of 3 sets of traffic lights (two of which are not great). What is amazing is that now I travel twice as far as I did before and it takes me 35 minutes instead of 25. Another 10 miles for only 10 minutes extra journey time.

Bearing in mind I travel about the same distance on the motorway as before, my average speed is much higher on normal roads.

I still think most people naturally assume that more traffic lights is better for traffic management and really don't see the massive impact they have on journey times.

The Rubbish Ring Road Again, Cheltenham

2010-12-30T09:00:00.004Z

I have said before on this blog that a measure of a traffic system's efficiency cannot always be determined when it is busy since the system by nature will be compromising to try and achieve the best flow (supposedly) and this is hard to judge when there is a lot of traffic around. However, when it is quiet, this is when you can tell how well the system works. While there is little traffic, you would expect lots of green lights and quick progress. Not so in Cheltenham. I decided to go on the ring road today since it is supposed to be the main east-west road in Cheltenham and I shouldn't have to travel down narrow side streets to shorten my journey time.
Anyway, I joined at Blockbusters and drove west to M5 junction 10. This was my experience: Red, red, green, green (just), red, green, green(pelican), red, red, green, red, red, green, red, red, green (only because I went faster than the limit before the lights changed). So an empty road (no traffic) and I get more reds than greens on the MAIN road. What is worse, you can see that getting stopped at a red light often creates a gap in traffic which causes the next set to change to red as you approach.
This system is DEFINITELY worse than anything else you could design (except perhaps all lights permanently on red - even then people would end up driving through). There are too many sets, too close together that can't even manage an empty road - sounds a bit like Gloucestershire council. This would be a great example in a text book of how not to design a system.
Now I don't like traffic lights but I did grow up in London and I am used to them and in London, apart from an odd set, I NEVER noticed this sort of obstruction to driving and that included journeys across most of North London.
My journey today? 3 miles in 11 minutes which equates to an average speed on an empty road (approx 50% 30mph and 50% 40mph) of 16 miles per hour. The traffic lights more than halved my average speed on a mostly empty road.
Gloucestershire, someone has to go. Whoever is responsible should do the decent thing and resign, accepting they have no idea what they are doing. NO IDEA!

Traffic is Better with no lights!

2010-12-21T14:28:00.003Z

Last night it was snowing on my journey home, it wasn't like Scotland but enough to make most of my company leave early. I left at 5pm as normal and even though I couldn't go more than 40 on the motorway and 30 or less elsewhere, I still got home in the normal time. If I go at 70 on the motorway and 50/40/30 on the other roads when they are clear, it doesn't save me anything!
Why not? Because reducing the speeds and not having to stop at so many traffic lights (because no-one was around) resulted in better economy from lower speeds, less frantic merging of traffic on slip roads and a generally better experience, even on 4 inches of snow. It reminds us how much of our normal time on the road is spent waiting!
Amazing.
One of the questions is of course how we reduce the number of people on the roads to make this work more easily and things like governments insisting that people get full choice of schools etc only adds to the problem. This week the schools are out and some people have stayed at home and the roads are empty despite many people still travelling to work.
With some joined up thinking and a return to the idea that you go to the local school or you pay (which could raise money for schools!) perhaps more people would walk to school again?

Do not allow traffic lights to be blamed for planning failures

2010-12-14T11:04:00.002Z

As much as I detest traffic lights in most cases, there are times where traffic lights simply cover up a major planning issue and where our energy needs to go into the underlying planning problems that require traffic lights rather than hoping a simple removal of lights will make all things wonderful.
An example? Priors Road in Cheltenham, one of those large Wimpey Homes developments on the site of the old GCHQ (apparently this was going to be even bigger originally) and somehow the planners have allowed a single access road to access these hundreds of houses and flats plus a supermarket. A single road for how many thousand people?!
Now unsurprisingly, there are a set of traffic lights at this junction since that many people can simply not get into and out of the estate easily without congesting the main road but the problem is not the lights, it is the original plan and worryingly, a council that approved a plan which lets a single road feed hundreds of houses.
Surely a planning law must require a limit on how many people can be served by a single road, especially now that most people have a car. If the development cannot connect in 1 or 2 other places to another road, the planning application is denied. Simple as that!
This country has become a magnet for cul-de-sacs because people have this utopian view that cul-de-sacs are havens of peace lacking all the terrible through traffic but in reality, lots of terraced streets and parallel roads make life much more pleasant since there becomes many routes to the same place and not the need to funnel all the traffic onto one road complete with traffic lights, calming schemes and complaints from local people that it's hard to cross the road.
Hmm!

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

2010-12-10T15:32:00.003Z

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.

Traffic Light Philosophy

2010-12-10T11:37:00.004Z

I was reading about the introduction of traffic signals. The first set were basically manually operated semaphore arms outside of the Houses of Parliament. The interesting point here is that they were manually operated! Somebody with a brain could decide to let more important traffic through or to leave one direction 'green' for a bit longer just to let that last car through. The one thing that made this invention useful was the first to be removed. As soon as you take away the intelligence, the lights become an obstruction. Up until they were made automatic, they were merely the extension of someones arms, now they are robotic tentacles.
One of the knock-on effects is the much less than perfect 'intelligence' that these systems have or can have. Even in the newest systems, the connections to road sensors and adjacent sets of lights are minimal and the decisions they make are by definition a compromise. What is worse, it is almost impossible to determine if a set of lights is working as designed since the designs range from the annoying to the downright confusing.
There is also a pair of graph curves, I'm sure, that would dictate why traffic lights are no longer fit for purpose, certainly in the way we use them in the UK. One curve shows that one set of lights can help a single junction because it causes little interference for the control that it brings. It can appear to be a workable solution and we might have to concede that it is better than nothing in any given area (most of our roads are pre-traffic lights and less than ideally laid out). What happens however is that as the number of sets of lights increases, the number of interference patterns increases and this is where at some point, extra lights produces more congestion rather than less. I fear in many towns, this point has already been reached and most of us have seen better traffic flow at broken traffic lights - and amazingly not hundreds of people waiting to cross the road fearing they would be killed by traffic.
Who gets to make the decision though? Who sits in their office and decides that another set of lights is the way to go? A local community group? A Health & Safety Working Group (you can't argue that lights make it safer to cross a road - but at what cost and how much safer?) a council department? Or most likely the whole lot of non-experts who are not clever enough to realise the knock-on effect of their decision. Worse still, a government agency making decisions about areas they don't even live or work in i.e. zero punishment for any bad decisions. There must be something majorly wrong when you see some of our prize examples of traffic light extravaganzas (e.g. Cheltenham Ring Road).
The work for shared space has already been researched and trialled in Holland and shown to cut accidents (and costs!), are we brave enough to follow suit and cut up our out-dated industrialised and very expensive traffic systems for something entirely more civilized? I don't like waiting at a red light for 1 minute 20 seconds on a dual carriageway after being stopped by the previous set of red lights and therefore making this set think there was no traffic!

Elf & Safety Mate

2010-12-07T16:05:00.005Z

I saw this picture on the Rail magazine blog:

Says it all really doesn't it! The only thing is, I think they forgot some more warnings: "Warning: do not bang your head on the floor"; "Warning: Do not fall off of the platform"; "Warning, the light fitting might fall on you if the bolts have got too rusty"; "Warning: Not all of the steps are painted yellow"; "Warning: You are only protected from rain along the top of the footbridge".
The sad thing is we have become a country not only averse to risk (or rather averse to having to pay compensation) but we have no idea where to draw the line. This sign for instance does not absolve Network Rail of any legal obligations to maintain the stairs, it just adds another obstruction and cost to something which is already expensive.
A bit like traffic lights really. Traffic lights say that "you are not qualified or able to decide when to cross a junction", "you should not have to wait longer than 10 seconds to pull into traffic so we'll put in lights that'll make you wait a minute instead" and "traffic lights are an inexact science so you'll just have to put up with it". If we were allowed to drive through on red when the road was clear, it wouldn't be so bad but the traffic police will have you if you do anything as outrageous as going through red 0.5 seconds after it turns red from amber.
Great times!

Junction of Burford Road and Stow Road, Cirencester

2010-11-25T11:35:00.002Z

I had the chance to come here on Tuesday, nice drive down the 417, apart from the Air Balloon of course. Anyway, this is one of those funny junctions where there are various priorities going on and where a small roundabout would probably have been fine but they've put 4 way lights in instead. I was there at 10am with little traffic so in rush hour it must be a right pain.

Junction 9 - Update 4

2010-10-29T10:44:00.003+01:00

They have recently added some more end-of-slip-road traffic lights here on the northbound carriageway to mirror the lights that already exit on the southbound. Now bearing in mind that some mornings, there is a LOT of traffic leaving at this junction and it often tails back onto the motorway, this will cause much worse congestion and to be honest, I don't think it is required. There are no major problems there at the moment (many of which are caused by the traffic lights next to Elmbury lodge where hundreds of cars turn right and back up to the motorway junction).
Anyway, Tewkesbury Town Council sent a letter to the Highways Agency asking them to delay switching these on while the bridge works they are carrying out are still in progress and have caused a lot of traffic problems.
It is another irony that the people who decide to install these lights and authorise their use live over a hundred miles away and the people who use these roads have no authority over them. As a general rule, it would make much more sense for local councils (or County Councils) to have responsibility for safety at these junctions and not the Highways Agency. If there was a problem, the council would ask the HA to install measures and if they refused, at least then the council have a record that they requested the measures to be installed.
There are so many things which are like this. Sure it is good to have national oversight of some things and sure it is good to have local oversight over others but why can't people sit down and really think about the best way to make these things work and apportion responsibility correctly?

Junction 11 M5

2010-10-04T13:49:00.002+01:00

I was leaving this junction at 19:30 Sunday evening going northbound on the M5 and heading into Cheltenham. Oh joy, a set of traffic lights to protect my good self from other cars! The lights were green as I headed up the sliproad but then, Oh no, another car was approaching around the roundabout and the lights decided to change, just as I approached them. Of course, I then have to wait for them to change which although 'immediate' all seems very over-the-top. Two cars on a massive roundabout and we have to throw lights into the mix.
Anyway, i understand here that there have been collisions because the visibility is poor, some people are stupid and some can't drive but why can't these be part-time signals? Why can't we look at the underlying problems of speed and visibility and rubbish driving and address those rather than another set of lights which will probably never be removed and which must costs 1000s to install and maintain?
In this instance, I would assume they are operated by the Highways Agency rather than the council and as long as it makes their accident statistics go down (which I'm sure it will) then they don't care how much more hassle and obstruction is caused.
Actually, I wonder if they have considered traffic lights on the motorway? A few random sets will slow the traffic down loads! (Joke!)

Free Left Turn

2010-09-29T16:44:00.002+01:00

They have them in America, they have them in India and presumably various other places too. Japan has a combination of a free left turn coupled with a priority crossing for pedestrians so that traffic is never blocked by people who aren't actually crossing. For some reason in the UK it has never happened.
Picture this, Cheltenham Ring Road, dual carriageway, rush hour in the morning so really busy. A car is leaving a side road, just one car, and he is turning left onto the dual carriageway. Common sense would say, let him wait for a gap and turn left but since we cannot work out anything so complicated, since there are lights to help these same people turn right across traffic, instead all 100 of us had to stop at a red light to let one person out, the total time to change back to green is not soon enough to avoid stopping at the lights and the jokers in councils up and down the country simply insist that these lights help "control" the traffic. Of course they control traffic, they just don't help it at all.
Most lights have detectors in the roads and for various reasons you might want to disallow the free left turn at some junctions but just like part-time signals, why can't this be the default permission for road users and prevent it only where required. Like the US, if you hit someone when turning at a red light, it is always your fault. I fear another idea way beyond what anyone in this country is allowed to do.

Puffin Crossing, Shannon Way, Tewkesbury

2010-09-29T16:40:00.003+01:00

I think I have mentioned this crossing before, mainly because it is 100 yards in front of a major set of lights, as if there aren't enough already. The other thing I noticed this morning was just how inefficient they are. They are one of those puffin crossing types that are supposed to detect people still using the crossing and stay on red for longer, fair enough. However, there was a young lad this morning who for some reason couldn't simply cross the road so he pressed the button (and waited at least!). The lights then changed to red just as we were given the right filter arrow into Shannon Way. He was a good 10/20 metres beyond the lights before we finally got an amber to allow us to proceed. Of course, we couldn't simply drive through the lights on red (why not have pelicans that only display amber so the traffic isn't held for no reason?). In itself, not a big deal but multiplied by the 25 sets of lights I pass on the way to work, it all adds up to muchos hassle.

Junction of Cheltenham Road and Old Cheltenham Road, Gloucester

2010-09-29T16:37:00.002+01:00

I don't go to Gloucester very often but I did last night and I was reminded that you can tell how well lights are set up by what they are like at night when there is little traffic around. In general, they should show green to the main roads and change very quickly if they detect vehicles coming from a side road. These strange lights are not only round the wrong way (the main road seems to get a red light by default) but also both times I went through them (there and back) I seemed to see a red light for no reason, the first time i think for the fact they are reversed but the second time a car in front was already held at the red for no obvious reason. More sloppiness.

Cheltenham Ring Road, what else?

2010-09-07T13:43:00.003+01:00

You would think that the number of times I have moaned about this debacle, I would be bitter-free by now but nope!
I hate everything about the system. I hate the setup, the number of lights, the fact it seems to offer nothing except congestion and more than anything else, the excuses from the County Council about how it is "optimised" or some sort of "no win" situation.
Let us look statistically at my journey in the morning and evening through 5 sets of the lights at the western end (apparently the last two of these not controlled by the management system). If I travel along the main road, then out of 10 journeys, I would expect at least 5 of them to be through green lights all the way, after all, I am on the main road - the dual-carriageway. Now if I am totally honest, I have NEVER gone through all green lights over the space of about 6 months (I used to go another way to work). My journey to work involves usually a red light at 1 (fair enough, I'm on a side road), red lights at 2 and 3 and then perhaps 1 green at 4 or 5. On my journey home, I usually get red at 5, 4 and 3 and then I go a different way to avoid the traffic lights at 1 and 2.
All it takes is someone to come and watch it, and they will see the congestion, they will see lots of cars stopped at lights for one or perhaps zero cars to emerge from a side road but they don't or they don't care or they are incompetent.
Just look at the lights at 4 (next to the old Homebase) because they have detectors, you usually hit a red light because you are stopped at the previous lights and by the time you are given the green, the lights at 4 decide no traffic is coming and go to red. After this happens you firstly get a filter westbound into Sainsburys, then you get the traffic emerging from Sainsburys and then you get traffic emerging from Springbank which can take a total of over 2 minutes! Lights on a main road that are green for maybe 10-20 seconds and red for over 2 minutes? Do you want it in braille? It doesn't work - sort it out or switch it off.

Junction of Smithdown Road and Ullet Road, Liverpool

2010-09-06T11:31:00.002+01:00

I was here the other week and this was a good example of "if you are going to install traffic lights, at least do it properly". Basically the problem here is when you are travelling east along Smithdown and want to turn right into Ullet Road or Greenbank Drive, you arrive at the lights and as you travel through into the turn right filter lane, there is ANOTHER set of traffic lights to prevent the right-hand turn while the main road has a green. Because buses turn right here, a bus and a car is all that is required to fill up the filter lane which does not go green until AFTER the main lights have gone red. So anything more than a few cars or a bus and a car and you create congestion for the sake of it. This traffic then obstructs the main road. Why can't they just have a filter light so you can turn right if it's clear or even set the filter light to green while the main road is still green so that you can actually clear the backlog of right-turning traffic before stopping cars again. It just all seems like such a pointless waste of time.

Junction of Brook Road and Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham

2010-08-17T16:37:00.002+01:00

Not sure why these haven't appeared on here before. Another joke on the Cheltenham Ring Road. The problem with these is that they create muchos delay for what might be a single car leaving either Brook Road (which leads into a small cul-de-sac of roads) and the Homebase industrial park. A massive and goodness-knows how expensive set of traffic lights and it still seems illogical when I ride along here in the morning, getting stopped along with 50 other cars on a dual-carriageway for what seems like too long as the traffic lights change with the speed of an old man to let out a single car who to be honest could have (and probably wouldn't have minded) waiting for a gap in traffic. With a couple of restrictions to force people from Brook road to go to the roundabout and turn round and a suitable refuge in the centre of the road, everyone could handle it with zero lights, zero installation and zero maintenance.
People just don't learn. If I installed that set of lights, I would watch it and think, "this doesn't work too good" and then avoid installing more. I still reckon Gloucestershire are in bed with a traffic light company.

Junction 9 - Update 3

2010-08-17T16:27:00.002+01:00

Well, the new traffic lights have been operational for some time but their annoyance has become compounded by another problem: unbelievably long roadworks occuring on the Northway Lane bridge causing it to be closed for 12 weeks (and this after the motorway was closed for 3 months below to strengthen the pillars!). This means all the traffic leaving the industrial estate leaves by a single entrance road by the Wheatsheaf which wouldn't be so bad except that other knock-on traffic problems in Ashchurch cause the motorway junction to become congested meaning that 1) cars turning left from Tewkesbury onto the motorway can't and 2) People turning right from Tewkesbury onto the motorway also can't.
The problem here is that the gap where the congestion occurs is so large that people are uncomfortable leaving a 100 foot gap in front of their car to avoid congestion, fearing that someone else will "jump into their grave". There is no grid painted (and most people ignore them anyway) and more annoying than everything else, not one single agency has taken resonsibility for the mess. The Highways Agency, whose road it is, the County Council? who are repairing the bridges, the Police, the Town Council etc. Although I travel by motorbike, some people are taking 45 minutes to travel 1/2 mile to the motorway. This is appalling and embarassing for everyone here but like most other things in this country, one agency won't take responsibility for anothers mess and no-one can order the people who caused the mess to do anything about it. In my opinion, sending a mail out saying that the bridges are closed for a total of 6 months and the best information available is a detour!? Sorry, unacceptable.
What can we do? Nothing really, complain and hope someone does something or look creatively at the problem and find a way to learn from it for the future for all other roadworks. Might cost some money but we need to stop being cheapskates in everything (although I think this stuff actually costs big bucks) but invest in things which make our lives easier or inconvenience us in less major ways. For instance who decides that the roadwork signs for the bridge on the motorway have to start 50 metres before a slip road in which case the slip road is littered with a load of signs saying "end of limit" when they could have pushed the 50mph signs 50 metres further and saved money. "Sorry guv, the law's the law. Might get sued".

Don't tell Gloucestershire, they might get ideas

2010-07-09T15:19:00.001+01:00

By the way it's only a sculpture but anyway!!!

Junction of A40 and Wyebridge Street, Monmouth

2010-06-14T12:14:00.003+01:00

Oh my goodness me, I had forgotten how terrible these lights are. You have a dual-carriageway main road through Monmouth from the Midlands to South Wales and right bang in the middle, a set of traffic lights which cause tailbacks of over a mile (and about 15-20 minutes) in normal evening conditions i.e. no crashes or tailbacks.
Another great Britich example how how incompetent traffic planners are allowed to make decisions that affect thousands of people. In this case, a give-way on both sides for people turning left, and another bridge, perhaps down on the roundabout or even God-forbid, an overpass for the A40 and the problem is removed. Presumably they would blame lack of money but it would be like me buying a new car and then saying I couldn't afford the full £15,000 so I decided to buy some dirty old engine, a rustbucket of body work and no seats because I can afford that instead despite the dangers of such a decision.
I would also like to see a formal way of forcing these authorities to remove traffic lights and to carry out a full cost/benefit analysis. I wouldn't suggest it is worth major roadworks near me to get to the motorway quickly just to serve maybe 500 people because it isn't worth it but this is exactly what happens in these places. Maybe they should have a traffic planning Tsar and maybe it should be me. The premise is easy - "No decision should make existing traffic worse".

Junction of Tewkesbury Road and Tescos, Cheltenham

2010-05-27T10:42:00.002+01:00

Another update to this typically British farce. They are currently replacing gas pipes near this junction and have parts of the dual-carriageway coned off. For reasons that can only be imagined, this has currently taken at least 6 weeks in the same part of the road and there is still a big hole in the road and temporary traffic lights. I have seen them manually operated during peak times which is unusual but welcome but there is something else here that again only alludes to the lethargic, non-progressive mindset that seems to pervade British government and which makes the common man very frustrated.
The other day, the temporary lights had stopped working for some reason. It was Friday evening and pretty busy but despite this, there were few problems. Even people on the main road slowed down to let people turn across the traffic, particularly to get into Tescos and there were NO queues apart from perhaps 5 or so cars waiting to leave Tescos. It should be borne in mind that the temporary lights are 3 way so each of the main routes gets green and then the two side roads get green toegther so in the 2 minutes that you might wait at red, as you can imagine, a LOT of traffic usually backs up waiting. Despite the fact that coming out of Tescos to turn right requires crossing 4 lanes of traffic and despite the fact that obviously various people are challenged in the driving skills department (lack of spatial awareness, fear, inability to calculate distances etc) there were few problems and at the end of the day, NOBODY was waiting at a red light when it was clear. The road was quite literally clear, totally counter to what you would expect with such chaos.
I couldn't believe it. Perhaps they had genuinely realised that no lights was better than temporary lights, perhaps it was a temporary trial to see if it worked (it did) but alas, I came back the next morning and they had all been switched back on and the traffic had returned.
Anyone with half a brain could see it was working OK but for whatever reason, the closed-minded British jobsworth decided the lights needed to go back on. Beggars belief really.

Junction 9 - Update 2

2010-05-17T10:49:00.002+01:00

Well the lights are in and operational and have been for a few weeks now. I must admit they haven't caused as much traffic problems as I thought (although I'm usually on a motorbike) but they have caused more congestion, I bemoan the idea of leaving them on 24 hours per day which is completely unecessary, and I also hate the idea that there is no formal post-mortem on traffic lights that asks whether they are still necessary or whether they have achieved what they set out to.
Lights tend to be installed and left, not sure I've ever seen lights removed unless they are being relocated 50 yards up the road. Perhaps we should ask government for the right to question every set of lights and require definitive proof that they are effective or at least allow people to both agree or not with their position. Put in a few more traffic islands and people can cross so easily, even on busy roads, without lights.

Junction 9 - Update

2010-03-29T16:30:00.003+01:00

I received some communication back from Amey today, re. these works. Get this: the lights will be on full-time despite the fact this is a problem for perhaps 2 hours per day! I love this bit though:
"It is an accepted problem of large circulatory carriageways with regard to the speed of vehicles on the roundabout. The installation of traffic signals will help provide a control on speed around this section of the roundabout at all times of the day and the new destination road markings will encourage better lane discipline and, in combination with the signals, allow traffic to join the roundabout safely."
So there you have it. Traffic signals are obviously the only way to control speed on large circulatory systems and road markings encourage better lane discipline.
You wonder if these people ever actually drive. Maybe they all live in London and travel by tube!
If you people really think that lane markings encourage lane discipline, I invite you to visit the big roundabout at Kingsditch. It has lights and destination lane markings so it must be the model of good driving by this logic. Unfortunately this is not the case. People tend to steer to the middle of the roundabout even with white lines, cutting up those in the middle, also, there is a nice right-hand turn lane but everyone decides to use the middle one to turn right so people going straight-on on the 2 lane road cannot because all the traffic is stopped at another red light.
Idiots.

Proposed Signals - Junction 9 of the M5

2010-03-26T16:11:00.003Z

We received an info-email about some proposed traffic signals that are going to be installed at this junction because apparently it has a higher than average number of 'incidents' for this type of junction (I assume they mean collisions or near-misses rather than somebody sticking their finger up at you). I wrote an email to the Highways Agency to complain, no reply yet.
This junction gets really busy in the evening. There is an industrial estate on either side of this roundabout, the main road into Tewkesbury and the Evesham Road A46 the other way. Traffic backs onto the roundabout and then presumably as people leaving the slip road try and slip through into the second lane of the roundabout, they can't see properly and someone doing 40mph round the roundabout then collides with them.
The solution - traffic lights. Designed, installed and approved by loads of people who never have to use the junction. Number of 'incidents' reduces but traffic congestion goes through the roof. Trying to phase the lights to match the other two sets within 100m of the roundabout will be impossible as well as trying to make sure that the slip road gets some green lights when the crossing traffic has backed-up so that it all works properly.
In reality the misery and slowness will increase. It could easily add 5 minutes to the journey by car but I would be interested to actually time it before and after just to see!

On the Ring Road - at night

2010-03-22T12:23:00.003Z

At some point, I promise videos to prove just how obscenely badly setup these lights are...
I was walking home the other night from town, about midnight, very quiet, few cars and I got to Blockbuster video on the Ring Road and wanted to cross. I noticed that a car was approaching around the ring-road but then the lights changed to red for it and it had to stop while the Winchcombe Street lights went green (the Wait button wasn't pressed). They stayed green for about 20 seconds while exactly zero cars went through. I took a picture to prove there weren't any close-by triggering the lights (not sure how to get it from my phone to the computer!) and then they went back to red and the ring road went green to let the poor sod carry on his journey.
Let me repeat myself so that eventually the idiots at County can understand. This system is supposed to be integrated, it is supposed to balance the conflicting requirements of multiple roads and pedestrians. I accept that this balance cannot always be won because it is a balance. Let us, however, consider the case in point: 1 car, zero pedestrians - the simplest scenario imaginable (apart from no cars but the system probably can't even handle that) and somehow it still doesn't work properly. Somehow the car driver still has to stop at a red light for no reason at all.
Ironically, I then noticed the next night exactly the same thing happen on the next road down (Portland street) where precisely no cars were crossing the green lights while someone else was waiting at a red. If he would have driven through, no doubt some non-understanding policeman would have fined him and given him points on his license.
Here is some logic that the manufacturers can feel free to incorporate into their very expensive and very underwhelming system:


if ( cars-on-road1 == 0 AND pedestrians-waiting == 0 )
{
    GiveGreenLightToRoad2();
}

I've just improved it by about 100%!

Junction of Tewkesbury Road and Tescos, Cheltenham

2010-03-22T12:16:00.002Z

Funny how each time I think I must have covered all of Cheltenhams lights, I find another set in need of removal or something!
I was coming back from Tewkesbury at about 10:30pm after a night on the curry and went into Tescos to get some petrol. As you can expect at this time of night, it was very quiet. I pulled out of Tescos garage and got to the traffic lights, which were on red. Assuming these were automatic lights all set up and optimised, I expected them to change for me since there were no cars on the main road. I waited possibly about a minute with NO cars crossing on the main road until they changed and went green. Of course, by this point, some cars then appeared on the main road and were met with a red light! Now, I'm sorry to repeat myself but this is not rocket science. If the lights detect NOBODY on the main road, why haven't they changed? I am happy to wait for people on the main road if there are some but nobody at all. Again, the only logical conclusion is the lights are broken, the system is rubbish, it is not programmed properly, the people in charge of it are idiots, they don't care or somehow they profit from it being rubbish (I doubt that though!).
I wrote another letter to the council about traffic lights and again more excuses, no real solutions or indication that solutions exist other than to increase the scope of this so-called super traffic light control system (that doesn't work !).

Traffic Lights Off Day

2010-03-10T11:27:00.003Z

I would like to propose a day/8 hours when the lights on the ring-road in Cheltenham are either switched off or covered to see whether we could actually live without them. It would cost nothing to try and give the only real solution to the current mess of a system. As in the previous post, Martin Cassini says that no lights works even though it is counter-intuitive.
I thought about it today on the way to work (which today was round the ring-road) and it is true that when I see a green light ahead, not only do I drive with less attention, assuming I am being protected, but also with less regard to other road users/pedestrians (who shouldn't be in my way!) but also if there is space between me and the lights, I speed up just to make sure I get through before they change to red. I also noticed further up that when 2 lanes becomes 1, most people are useless at merging in turn. It is one of the easiest things to do but people are used to being given the right of way and can't think for themselves when they have to work with other road users.
Anyway, not sure how to start a petition or publicise it, if anyone has any ideas, let me know!

Good News at Last

2010-03-08T14:42:00.003Z

I came across this today: http://www.fitroads.com/ a campaign to dismantle the over-zealous traffic management that has become part of our daily life. Martin Cassini is a producer and this whole traffic light thing has obviously got his goat as well. Also, because of his work, he produced some more useful facts and figures than I ever have and apparently a trial in Portishead with traffic lights switched off is being made permanent because it cut journey times by half. My hats off to the council there. I know I would expect all people to want to improve their council departments but sadly most of the time, it is met with lethargy and resistance so well done for leading the way!!

Junction of Brooklands Retail Park and A4050 Port Road, Cardiff

2010-02-22T12:29:00.002Z

These lights are wrong for two reasons. Firstly, what idiot allowed another set of lights 150 metres from a major roundabout which also has lights, this when the retail park actually borders a road that already goes to the roundabout and which could have its exit there instead (with no lights required) and secondly why is it that something that is only for a small percentage of the road users (the retails park) is allowed to cause such disruption to everyone else? Picture it, a retail park in the triangle of two roads which meet at a roundabout. The obvious solution? No traffic lights, entrance from the west road left-hand side and exit on the east road towards the roundabout where you can then go in any direction you want. You could even have your own exit lane from the exit all the way to the roundabout. Idiots. These people must be addicted to traffic lights or otherwise get back-handers from the traffic equipment manufacturers. Not only is it expensive and disruptive to install these, they then become a financial maintenance burden forever.

Junction of A48 and A4232, Cardiff

2010-02-22T12:22:00.002Z

Sorry I haven't posted for so long, been seeing mostly the same lights for a while now but went to Cardiff at the weekend. This is a pretty messy junction, it is one of those junctions that seems to make a mountain out of a molehill. It is two main roads but also a fifth road added to the mix with a small shopping park but it has traffic lights on it. Now I don't personally think traffic lights on a roundabout are ever going to work, you might as well make it a crossroads with free left turns but even if you agree with them, you go through a green light at the 3 o clock position and then see the lights in front change to red after about 10 cards went through. How is that ever going to work? You make people wait on the tributories sure but then surely those people need to quickly efficiently cross the roundabout otherwise they become obstacles for all the other cars. Another vote for a pigs-ear of a junction.

The disasterous Kingsditch Roundabout, Cheltenham

2009-12-09T11:38:00.002Z

A large busy roundabout, with traffic lights! Let's be honest, how will that ever work properly? A roundabout is designed to slow traffic and basically give everyone an equal priority to navigate it whereas traffic lights are designed to enforce priority and traffic flow along assumed logic. We are not talking about simply traffic lights controlling access to the roundabout, annoying as those are, but about traffic lights on EVERY entrance and EVERY quarter of the roundabout.
Anyone who knows anything about traffic lights (i.e. not Gloucestershire County Council) knows that the more sets of lights at a given position, the more complicated the phasing and the more obstruction you cause to traffic. You only do lots of lights if there is a big problem (i.e. Hangar Lane in London or Piccadilly Circus). Here, the road setup is basically like 4 crossroads all joined together.
Every time I reach it, the lights are on red (although they don't stay red for ages like some others). The main problem is, if you are going straight on and are in the second lane of the road, it only takes about 3 cars in front of you turning right and they meet a red light on the roundabout and then block the exit from the roundabout meaning you either wait and then get a red light yourself or you have to try and force your way into the left hand lane which is not easy on any roundabout (people like to travel as fast as possible round them and usually with poor lane discipline). Since the roundabout is quite high, you cannot even see whether the way is blocked until you are on the roundabout. Realistically, you cannot phase the lights to allow people to go straight on and right at the same time because then you are blocking main traffic in the other direction.
Basically, there shouldn't be any lights there at all. Put some Pelicans if you need them about 20 metres off the roundabout, paint some "keep clear" areas and ENFORCE THEM and then let traffic do what it actually does quite well - co-operate!

Junction of Gloucester Road and Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham

2009-11-20T16:52:00.003Z

I have mentioned this place before but for different reasons. I'm fed up with hitting at least 50% red lights on the Ring Road. I'm sure the main road is supposed to get most of the green light. You don't give green to a side road just because at that split second, there is a car on the side road and not the main road otherwise everyone on the main road keeps having to stop.

Anyway, at this particular junction, I was driving towards Cheltenham along Tewkesbury Road at about 11pm and there was almost no traffic around. Just as I get to the lights, they start to turn red and I get through but the guy behind doesn't and has to stop. I am curious to why this has occured and looked down Gloucester road for the cars that must have triggered the light change but alas, nothing. Nothing at all. The lights changed for no reason other than stupidity, defectiveness or deliberate obstruction. I'm sorry but people who believe in traffic lights, if you cannot get the basics right when there is little traffic, they are definitely not going to work when it's busy. Here for your benefit is a traffic light rule:

1) If there is traffic in one direction but not in the other, give a green light to the traffic and a red light to the empty road. The exception to this is during peak times where the main road should get a generous amount of green light to encourage people onto the main road and away from side roads.

Hans Monderman - Forgive Us

2009-11-13T15:36:00.003Z

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

2009-11-10T15:43:00.002Z

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

2009-11-06T08:58:00.003Z

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

2009-10-27T15:49:00.002Z

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:

Any traffic light that is within 1/4 mile of another set must be interconnected with a recognised traffic management system.
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.
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.
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!!)
Every set of lights must allow free turns where possible, a red aspect only protecting crossings when required.
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

2009-10-24T22:21:00.002+01:00

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

2009-10-24T22:11:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-14T11:01:00.003+01:00

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?

Junction of A40 and Old Gloucester Road, Andoversford

2009-09-14T10:55:00.003+01:00

Had two gripes with these, one on the way out and the other on the way back. More fundamental problems. When leaving Cheltenham, you have a nice long straight bit of road towards these lights and a steep hill up to a dual carriageway. You don't want to stop at the lights but because of traffic merging from the Old Gloucester Road you sometimes have to (fair enough) but approaching the lights, you are attempting that balance between slowing slightly so you give the lights time to change back to green but not too slowly to lose momentum. You see the last of the cars merging, there is a pause, a longish pause, very long pause and then you have to stop because they still haven't changed. Then they do so now you have to knacker your car trying to ascend the hill at more than 20 mph. I would report them but they're probably not broken just rubbish.
On the way back I saw a problem which might have been the cause of the first problem. I am coming down the hill and lights are red, traffic merging from Gloucester, these then change to red and a car waiting on the left hand side (some country lane) gets a green light and then although it was the only car (and possibly the only one in the whole week) his light stays green for another 5 or so seconds followed by the usual very laboured change in phase followed by my green. This is a main road, it is not helped by being a main junction so why can't they get these things right?

The journey of pain

2009-09-07T10:09:00.002+01:00

I drove from my house in central Cheltenham to my sister's house in Gloucester yesterday. I went through many sets of traffic lights and these were the aspects I met in my car:

Red, red, red, green, green, green (pelican), red, red, red, red (pelican), red, red, red(changed quickly), red, red, green, green, red, green (pelican).

That makes a total of 13 reds and 6 greens. Nothing like effective traffic planning. I got a cold shiver when I heard about the building of Gloucester Parkway station with some sort of strange bus priority system to ship people from there to places like GCHQ which is only about a mile from Cheltenham station.

God bless the idiots at County Hall.

Junction of Monson Avenue and Saint Margarets Road, Cheltenham

2009-09-01T09:13:00.002+01:00

This junction comes up again and again in discussions and goes to prove that old idea that you cannot please everyone all the time so why try?
It is at its simplist a T junction although one of the T's also has another set of lights about 20 metres away so traffic often backs up to this junction. Because a crossing is 'needed' for people going from an NCP car park over to the Cinema and Old Brewery complex, a set of lights is present on both sides of the carriageway and this crossing is about 20 feet back from the junction. What this means is people emerging from the side of the T turn the corner and then see two sets of lights which will show red because they are for the main flow of traffic, they also see a crossing and don't know what to do so they stop (naturally) and only about 3 cars can emerge from the side road.
Add the crazy phasing times and the whole thing is a mess. They put a hood on the red lights so people wouldn't see them as they turned but of course it doesn't make any difference because people are driving straight when they see the red lights so they stop.
A councillor I spoke to said he wanted a box junction so that the whole thing stayed open and would really like a zebra further away from the junction so there is no undue confusion but the council don't like zebras because they cause traffic obstruction! Ironic when you look at the whole ring road system which causes more congestion than a brick wall!
Well personally, I think the whole thing needs re-designing and whoever has presided over the current embarrassment should be sacked.

Temple Way Traffic Lights - Bristol

2009-08-17T10:32:00.002+01:00

Now, Bristol has quite a lot going for it. It is modern and lively and very popular with most people who live there from what I can tell....and then there are the Temple Way Traffic Lights! Now one thing that a lot of road and traffic planners do not understand is that what goes in must come out. So you put a motorway almost in to the middle of your city which is great for commuting (and getting to Ikea!) but what happens when all this fast moving traffic gets to the city centre? Well it meets traffic lights of course. Hmm, I dorve along it the other day and it was not a particularly busy time on Saturday but yet there was about 300 metres of stopped traffic backed up from the lights, this must be a nightmare in the rush hour. Anyway, through the first set and then left onto the Temple Way. Dual carriageway so potentially very fast moving but Oh no, more traffic lights and then more on the roundabout of Temple Gate (lights on roundabouts - should be a capital offence). So what is only about 1/2 mile took about 20 minutes to drive down, 20 minutes on the motorway would get you 24 miles! Once past the roundabout then a couple more sets of lights for a laugh at Temple Meads, Pylle Hill and the Bath road split and then a passable but generally slow drive all the way out of Bristol on the A37. Now that is another story and not related to traffic lights but come on people. You need to work out which roads are important for traffic and which do not have lights and pedestrian crossings and which ones are minor and can have. Sorry Bristol but you get the thumbs down for the Temple Way.

Junction of Clarence Street and A46, Cheltenham

2009-08-12T14:53:00.000+01:00

Was stopped at these yesterday about 10pm. Not much traffic around. I was coming up the A46 past the bus station and the lights ahead went to red. No problem, a couple of cars from Clarence Street went across the junction and then.......waiting.......waiting. I reckon another 10 or 15 seconds before the traffic lights noticed that there was no traffic and then changed back to us. Farily typical but then these are new lights with the traffic and pedestrian sensors on the heads so NO excuse for this pathetic so-called system of lights we have in Cheltenham!

Oh the incompetence

2009-08-05T12:58:00.002+01:00

I wrote to the council about a year ago concerning the lights outside my work on the junction of Shannon Way and Northway Lane. They have a crossing but this only operates with a push button so not generally bad the two main problems are lack of repeater lights on the other side so if you are turning right, you cannot see if the lights are changing to red (and you can therefore go) and secondly that there is no right-turn filter from Shannon Way into Northway Lane where lots of cars turn right and which causes muchos backlog up towards Ashchurch road.
Anyway, when I wrote to them, I got a reply that the lights were being replaced this summer in the school holidays - great I thought, we are moving forwards. Well guess what? They are not being replaced, the lights at the junction of Ashchurch Road and Shannon Way are being replaced.
Absolutely amazing, the County Council do not know one end of the road from the other! Doesn't bode well for us motorists does it and of course public employees are never really made accountable for their incompetence.

Junction of Colletts Drive and Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham

2009-08-05T09:20:00.002+01:00

The ring road makes me shiver. Sometimes I have to come from Tewkesbury down the motorway and in on the Tewkesbury road and for some crazy reason, the motorway and dual carriageway combination takes longer than the single carriageway roads through Severn Bends and Bishops Cleeve. Funny because it's the lights that slow this main traffic flow down. Anyway, I usually average stopping at about 50% of the sets of lights (which equates to about 5 on my section) and one of these is the above mentioned junction.
The foible here is that when going eastwards, the right-hand turn into Colletts Drive (for Tesco) goes green first and then it returns to red before the traffic going straight on gets a green. FOR NO REASON. There is a crossing on the far side of the junction so IF someone is waiting to cross, you could temporarily give red to the straight on traffic (for the 5 seconds you usually get on a crossing) and then give green regardless of what the right-turn filter is doing. Why do these people at County Hall not understand? Why have they not fixed it? When you have a hot-bed of traffic control, you should be shaving ALL dead time from the routes and hoping the computer works out everything else. These guys think the computer solves their rubbish design - it doesn't.

A bit of a rant

2009-08-05T09:15:00.002+01:00

I was thinking of the things that annoy me about traffic planners.

They mostly don't ever appear to drive the roads they plan otherwise they would produce something better.
Goodness knows how much money in R&D is spent on traffic planning over many years and what have we actually got out of it all? Nothing that we haven't had for 50 years/variations on a theme. Why not cancel the whole lot and let PhD students work out clever stuff. You could even give them generous grants and still make a saving.
We have a planning schizophrenia and are never really sure who it is we are prioritising: Motor vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians. You cannot please them all without big bucks and big building works so why pretend we can. Let main roads prioritise traffic and other roads prioritise cyclists and pedestrians. You wouldn't put zebra crossings on a motorway and expect the traffic to flow properly so why is it OK on main arteries into towns and cities?
Lights on roundabouts - I just hate them. The worst of all possible worlds with NO redeeming features over just lights or just a roundabout or better still nothing at all!

Junction of Elm Street and Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham

2009-08-05T09:11:00.002+01:00

Sorry it's been a while. Don't worry though, still plenty of ridiculously phased traffic lights. This particular set is pretty bad. It is one of the traffic lights of death on the Cheltenham ring road and controls access/egress onto a dual carriageway of a small industrial park on one side and a residential road on the other. I was going east into Cheltenham and as per usual, already been stopped by about 4 out of 5 sets of lights and then over the bridge and hey pesto, a red light. Now the confusing thing is that our light was red but the light coming the other way on the other side was green and I don't believe there is a filter arrow there (and no-one turning anyway) so all of the traffic I was in was held for a good 20 seconds for absolutely no reason I could fathom.
Rule number 1 for traffic lights: Lights always cause an obstruction so don't have them on red for any longer than is necessary. Gloucestershire County council must live in cloud cuckoo land because we continue to suffer.
Has anyone ever seen lights removed after a while or are they like bacteria?

Junction 8 M25 roundabout

2009-06-22T11:09:00.001+01:00

Another stupid example of traffic lights on roundabouts. Not only were we waiting at a red light while no traffic came onto the roundabout but the road markings were all over the place. I was behind a woman who went over to the left hand lane (of 3) at the lights, ended up in the right hand lane coming towards the M25 slip road and then realised she wanted to turn left onto the slip road. Stupid driving and a stupid roundabout.

Junction of York Road and Cheam Road, Cheam

2009-06-22T11:06:00.002+01:00

Couldn't believe my eyes. A mini-roundabout followed in about 3 car lengths by a pelican crossing. So that's two obstructions in 15 metres. Nice and easy to block the roundabout because you don't expect to cross it and immediately face lights. Idiots.

More issues with Cheltenham Lights

2009-06-15T09:13:00.004+01:00

Oh yes, the hassle has not all been covered yet by existing posts. I was working early on Saturday, left my house at 5:45am to go to the Town Hall for 6.00am. I have always contested that the way to test whether the lights really work that well is to drive around when there is no traffic. You should either get green lights on approach or at worst wait a very short time to allow the lights to change in your favour but there were a few sets of lights that were simply a pain.
Junction of the Promenade and St Georges Road, the time it takes to actually change is crazy. You can see the whole junction from where you are waiting so why give 3 seconds between going red in one direction and going green in the other? If it is not quite clear when it changes to green, you would obviously wait for traffic to clear otherwise like Sat morning, you are being held for no reason.
Anyway, went round past the bus station and got to the junction of Clarence Street, lights on red. Nothing coming the other way. Waited, waited, waited. How long do you legally have to wait before assuming they are broken and drive through the red? I figured about 10 seconds!! Round Boots corner and to the junction of Portland Street, another set of lights, another red, another lack of traffic going in the other direction, another lack of lights change (what are they thinking in their computer at the time?) another 10 seconds and another drive-through on red amd turned left. Fortunately, the lights on Fairview DID seem to work correctly and changed as I approached.
Now I understand that when it is really busy, you are playing a compromise or 'best fit' game but when there is no traffic, are we to believe that the logic cannot handle one car at a set of lights? If they don't work with one car, why would we assume that they work with many?

Priority of traffic light phases

2009-06-15T09:08:00.002+01:00

I wonder how often people who design the traffic light sequencing consider how main roads should have priority over minor roads. I was driving up the A40 between Oxford and Cheltenham and was approaching a set of lights at the junction of Witney Road in Eynsham. As I approached (someone was in front of me), the lights went to red and changed to green on the side road. We then had to pretty much stop as the lights then changed back to green again. No vehicles came out of the side road and as I went past, there was no obvious vehicle parked closed to the lights that might have been triggering it. I just don't know 1) Why they are not set up correctly or 2) Why there is not a foolproof way of detecting when detectors or lamps are not working so that the councils can know they need to fix them rather than waiting for somebody who can be bothered to phone up and report the problem.

Junction of Eastern Avenue and Coney Hill Road, Gloucester

2009-06-11T11:05:00.004+01:00

Another great example of the many suffering for the few. We have lights on a dual carriageway that stop everybody for a good 10 or 15 seconds (and in this time it can be a lot of cars) for only 1 car who wants to turn right out of Coney Hill onto the dual carriageway. Another good example of where people can either be forced to turn left and go round the roundabout (which is about 350 metres away) or they can go out the other end of the road onto Metz way and join the already nasty junction with Metz Way and Eastern avenue. I noticed last night that it was the first time I managed to get all the way from McDonalds through 2 sets of lights without stopping even though this is a major bypass. Hmm, still some way to go I think.
Actually, this is a good time to have a rant about the shocking town planning (or lack of) that has taken place in many places, particularly Gloucester near me, in the past 15 years. You have mazes of cookie cutter houses with no regard to including any amenities so everybody always has to drive to go anywhere or do anything. This puts a crazy burden on the road and traffic management systems which in some cases are simply not winnable and in others are managed badly. Just look at how few major roads are supporting these vast rabbit warrens. Does anyone ever get called up on this or do they just carry on regardless?

Quality - The lights are out and it's better

2009-06-08T11:18:00.002+01:00

I have currently only nominated one set of lights for a thumbs up. Junction of Evesham road and Southam lane near Bishops Cleeve. Busy junction but well controlled and pretty click (albeit with no pedestrian crossings to make it worse). Well today, the lights were out and I was amazed that even at this very busy junction with people going every which way possible, there were NO queues at all in any direction!! People had to drive more slowly across the junction of course but there was no dead time, no waiting for the lights to change, no block of traffic at a time just a 'free for all' it was great, I think they should leave them off!!!

Traffic Light Grid Problem

2009-06-04T15:29:00.002+01:00

I came across another problem with Cheltenham's traffic light addiction yesterday. I was driving from the Sorting Office on Swindon Road towards the cinema and was ultimately going to park out the back of Debenhams. I got to the North Place traffic lights and wondered whether to turn right there onto the inner ring road or to turn right at Blockbuster. I counted the lights and of course there were exactly the same number of lights both ways.
What planners need to do is to work out where they want traffic to go and to have no lights on that route then you can control the traffic on the other routes and encourage everyone onto the main trunk routes (in our case a through route as well as entry/exit to Cheltenham). The problem is here that because the so-called main roads are overdosing on traffic lights, the traffic finds the next path of least resistance which is roads like Swindon road and St Pauls road, neither of which are designed for the amount of traffic they now get. How ironic that the main roads are not main and the quiet roads are not quiet!!

Junction of London Road and Two Waters Way, Hemel Hempstead

2009-06-03T09:10:00.003+01:00

Was in Hemel on Saturday, mostly motorway driving and few traffic lights to contend with and then came across this monstrosity. Large junction, major road off of the main A41 into town crossing what presumably used to be the main London Road. Traffic lights to permit virtually every move you might want to make, left, right, straight-ahead but with the added evil of pedestrian crossings which then require traffic lights to protect them. It would be fair to say that the problem is basically compounded by too many routes and too busy roads but it could still be improved.
1) Don't permit every turn in every direction reduces the number of phases. Often you can force people who used to make that move to go slightly further but without having to stop so often.
2) Perhaps put a roundabout instead of lights (not both!)
3) Put the crossings further back from the junction so that left turns do not need to be light-controlled.
4) Get rid of the crossings and put in some adequate islands to make it easier to cross the road.
5) Put a flyover for the traffic going from the A41 into town. There is plenty of room and you are coming downhill anyway so shouldn't be too hard (even just 1 lane in each direction).

FIXED? Junction of Princess Elizabeth Way and Shakespeare Road, Cheltenham

2009-05-29T14:32:00.001+01:00

I think this junction might actually have been fixed. The previous entry complained that the detectors for the right turn were being triggered by cars going straight on but having to pass parked cars causing muchos hassle. I went passed the other day and didn't notice this happening any more. Have the lights actually been fixed? Let me know.

Pelican Crossing at junction of A435 and Stoke Road, Bishops Cleeve

2009-05-20T11:38:00.002+01:00

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk-traffic-management/

Someone asked me to write a book on this subject yesterday. Not sure it would be particularly interesting and potentially there are already plenty of related books but anyway...
The problem I have with the mentioned set of lights is very simple. They are not fit for purpose. They make the assumption that it is OK to inconvenience perhaps 30 or 40 people in cars for 10 or 15 seconds longer than necessary.
I noticed the lights change to red when I was barely off the southern end roundabout and I had time to approach, go past a car (i was on the bike) and wait for another 5 seconds at least for a single mum to cross with two children. By the time the lights went green, she was a good 20 metres away. Even if these lights had people detectors (maybe they do) they always err on the side of caution, as if the driver would knock them down if they changed back to green a bit sooner than necessary.
Interestingly, I have seen sets of lights that show a green man for what seems like a really short period but it is enough for the person crossing to get a gap in the traffic but does nto give undue delay to the road users.
Not like our County Council to learn from these things though!

Suggestion for better management

2009-05-14T15:34:00.003+01:00

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk-traffic-management/

I was wondering what could be done about the way council manage traffic systems and highways. It seems crazy that amongst all these so-called experts across so many councils, they haven't invented a useful fault logging procedure. Here's how it could work:
1) Every traffic light system has a code printed on the posts readable from your car.
2) If you want to log a fault or are not sure, you go to their web site and type in the code. It lists any known issues or outstanding faults against those lights and if your problem is listed, you click it to add your support, if not, you log a new one.
3) The council simply bring up the other end of the web system to find any outstanding fault logs and they don't need to try and staff a phone line which takes a minute to log a call on when someone can do it themselves on the web.

The same system could apply to highway surfaces/pending roadworks etc otherwise 500 people all ring up and ask whether the council will fix such-and-such a road. Be clever people.

Junction of Fairview Road and Monson Avenue, Cheltenham

2009-05-11T13:55:00.002+01:00

These lights need a mention for a traffic light as well as a road-layout problem.
In fact, these lights are part of the worst section of the ring road, probably the biggest issue is the very wide spread between the lights across the junction and the fact there is a crossing on the west side of the lights. If you are turning right from Monson Avenue onto Fairview, you pass through a green light and then you meet a red. Is this the red for the straight-on traffic or another independent set of lights that must be adhered to. If I am honest, I have absolutely no idea and it would appear neither does anyone else. Some people turn straight through the crossing, others stop and block up the junction not knowing what to do. Even people stuck in the traffic backlog from the next set of lights a whole 50 yards further on don't know whether they can pass because they went through the first lights on green. It is a big horrible mess and it is DANGEROUS to pedestrians. Related to this is the strange restriction of direction when you leave the NCP car park to force people onto the Ring Road, since most people would rather die than do that, they perform a slightly harder maneouvre to turn left down Monson and then through Clarence Square or St Pauls pushing loads of traffic into places it doesn't fit.
On another note, I saw something the other day which a friend mentioned to me since he was nearly knocked over. If you are on Fairview Road travelling west just before this junction, there is a traffic island which only allows one lane of traffic past to the left. Of course because the traffic is so bad, it is often stationary so people who want to turn right at the otherwise unobstructed right-hand turn into Monson decide to go to the right-hand (i.e. wrong) side of the traffic island risking hitting people who are not looking that way.

New forum

2009-05-11T13:53:00.001+01:00

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk-traffic-management/

Please browse and contribute to the forum above with any relevant information, comments, research etc. Replies are all moderated to try and distill away lots of "I agree" statements and keep the real gems. You can use "rate this post" to indicate your agreement or otherwise with the posts.

Junction of Hatherley Lane and Gloucester Road, Cheltenham

2009-05-06T12:32:00.002+01:00

Another nice set of lights. Of course, you say, this is the Doughnut entrance so we need lights. The thing is, there are roundabouts at either end of the dual carriageway on Gloucester Road, the obvious design would have been to leave the nice fast bit of road and run some side roads to the roundabouts. No problem, we'll just slice it in 2 and put in another set of lights to obstruct and frustrate drivers. It always seems a bit overkill out of hours when a whole raft of traffic is stopped for a single car to pull out.

Day of the red lights

2009-05-06T12:27:00.003+01:00

I had fun yesterday. I motorbike into work when I can since it is cheaper and you don't get stuck in traffic. The problem is that it is a choice between the slower but less obstructive route through Bishops Cleeve or the faster route via the M5, Tewkesbury Road and the gauntlet of traffic lights.
I decided to go the traffic light way. I come off the motorway, towards lights number 1 and they have changed to red about 1/4 mile in front of me. I approach and they are red. Eventually they change, I am at the front of the traffic and get to lights number 2 which have just changed to red, I leave these and lights number 3? Red again, round the roundabout, through lights 4 and 5 on green and lights 6? Yep, red, lights 7? Red, lights 8 green and 9 I just get through as they are changing to red. I get through about the next 5 sets on green but goodness knows what would have happened if I was stopped at lights 9.
Computer controlled!! Yeah, it looks like it. Maybe somebody unplugged the computer and nobody noticed!! Contrast the Southern Cheltenham ring road along the A40, not bad at all, a few sets of problem lights but largely fast and unobstructed.

Junction of Evesham Road and Wellington Road

2009-05-05T09:51:00.002+01:00

I thought I had already posted this set but can't see it anywhere and far be it from me to leave out an annoying set of lights. Another example here where you ony have to use them at night and you can see that they are quite clearly not working.
During the day, I assumed that they were synchronized with the lights up at Clarence street which would make sense seeing as they are quite close together and on a major route of Cheltenham. However, several times recently I have been at these lights late and I usually approach them from Wellington Road (east) and often meet a red light. Even though there appear to be detectors on the lights, you can then wait for 20 or 30 seconds with NO traffic crossing the other way before you get the green light. Now you can call it whatever you like but I call it broken. Even if the lights are snch'd with the ones on Clarence Street, there should be detectors on those lights that can inform these lights that nothing is coming so that they can change. They could leave all the lights on red and change on approach or better still, switch the stupid things off at night. I was there at 2 in the morning waiting at a clearly visible junction for NO reason.

Junction of the A40 and Gloucester Road, Andoversford

2009-04-30T13:15:00.002+01:00

Well these are a classic case of the wrong thing used in the wrong way. The basic problem is that there is an unrestricted dual carriageway (70mph for cars - that's right - read your highway code) and people who need to cross this road mostly for local traffic reasons - driving to the shops to collect your milk and newspaper every day. It is hard to cross a busy road, even staggered, when the visibility is not great and people are going 70mph. In fact it isn't that hard but old people take too long to pull away!
So what do you do? You could reduce the speed limit to 50 or 60 which isn't that fast and would give plenty of spaces to cross. You could even remove the second lane at this junction since it only lasts another 100 metres anyway and there is only then 1 lane to cross instead of 2. What did they do? They added traffic lights, that's right, a 70mph road with traffic lights and you only see them when it is time to brake (there are warning signs but who reads those). This way, you defeat the whole point of the 70mph limit since you have to slow anyway and there have been many occasions when the system simply cannot see that you are a lone car travelling at 70 and could be let through before changing lights for the people who are crossing so you have to stop and pull away even though the person waiting is already stopped.
We certainly need people who can think outside of the box and we are not talking about traffic lights on roundabouts, that is just double-hassle!

On the radio

2009-04-30T13:09:00.002+01:00

For some reason, I ended up reported in various news media two days ago and was asked to phone in to BBC Radio Glocs this morning. I got confused and thought I was on another station which I then tuned into and missed all the follow up. Never mind. Nice to see that people are supporting my stance against the inefficiency of traffic lights.
I do not necessarily think we can go straight to shared space where all the lights and signs are removed, since it requires a general understanding amongst motorists before they know what is happening. There are however some other ideas which would work:

Don't have red lights at pelican crossings or junctions with crossings, use amber instead. This way if people have already crossed the road (as is very common) the traffic is not stopped

Go with the Japan method where the crossing on a side road shows a green man without stopping the traffic turning into the side street, they simply have to give way to the pedestrians

Have 4 way intersections like the US and Canada where the first person who arrives has priority, in many cases you don't have to slow down too much and because it is organised chaos, people are more careful

Switch lights off at night or switch them to permanent amber

Put traffic islands in and remove crossing lights, most people can cross most roads after not very long if there is an island mid-way

Just a few ideas...

Junction of King Street and Queen Street Cheltenham

2009-04-29T13:09:00.002+01:00

Another Weymouth set while I remember. The thing about Weymouth is the road layout is very restrictive. The town is at the bottom of a peninsular and there are 3 main roads into Weymouth from the outside. Similarly in the town centre, a lot of traffic is concentrated around King Street and the clocktower with people looking for parking and driving through the town.
Anyway, because of the number of pedestrians and car parks near B&Q, there used to be a Pelican crossing outside the station to cross the road. It was pretty good from a pedestrian point of view and didn't have massive gaps between green man phases.
Then they decided that the people on Queen Street couldn't pull out easily because it was so busy so they got rid of the Pelican and put some lights directly on the junction including the dreaded "all cars stop" phase. Again for reasons not immediately obvious, but including the dead time between light phases, the whole of King Street becomes totally blocked up during the summer and this backs onto the B&Q roundabout (whatever it is actually called) and then knocks on over the swannery bridge and onto the main bypass for Portland traffic.
I know there is conflicting interest here but honestly, some things have to be off-limits to the traffic blockers and that includes major roads into towns. Let's put some speed bumps instead!!!

Vote 2: Junction of Hatherley Road and Lansdowne Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-29T13:05:00.002+01:00

Went through these lights again last night - they are already listed on the blog for slightly more subtle reasons.
This time, there was no traffic at all except for myself and the car behind me travelling into Cheltenham at 11:15pm on Lansdowne Road.
The lights in question were on red. No cars emerging from anywhere. I was expecting them to change on approach but no such luck, (still no cars emerging from anywhere) we then wait at the red light for a good few seconds, perhaps 5 (still no cars emerging from anywhere) and then we are given the green light.
The issue is that when the traffic is busy, it is hard to see whether the lights are that successful since every green light will allow traffic through. It is when it is quieter that things like broken detectors or poor phasing can be seen. Boo.

Junction of Cumberland Drive and Chickerell Road, Weymouth

2009-04-29T12:59:00.002+01:00

I got a text from a friend in Weymouth this morning claiming I was having another 5 minutes of fame. This blog has gone national and various newspapers have run small articles about it. Makes me wonder if anything is going on in the world when I make page 3 of the Western Daily Press (and was in the Sun - not page 3 - yesterday apparently!).
Anyway in honour of my friend Becky and the fact that I don't think Cheltenham is loads worse than anywhere else, I thought I should include an honourary entry from Dorset.
I used to work off Cumberland drive and the Chickerell road was a main road so there was congestion durnig the rush hours. Interestingly when the nearby school was closed for holidays, it was like driving on a Sunday!
Anyway, this complaint is not about the phasing of these lights as the fact that a few years ago, they were replaced. The work took several weeks (I'm sure with enough effort it could have been done in a few days) and was during the summer holidays which is bad in Weymouth because of holiday traffic. We suffered for weeks with delays due to temporary lights and then the new lights were operational.
The sad thing was from our point of view, they were exactly the same layout, phased the same and made no noticeable difference at 5pm after work. Nice to see money well spent (no doubt the council will have an excuse about functionality or long term costs etc).

Junction 14 M5

2009-04-29T09:13:00.001+01:00

Courtesey of sscanf

These lights are part-time lights. Great, you think, on in the rush hour, off at other times. No, these are OFF in the rush hour, ON at all other times!

The Highways Agency spent 3/4 million on adding traffic lights to control, mostly, the morning rush leaving the M5, particularly northbound. They improved the road layout and made a good job of that. But they can't get the timing right on the software for the lights. The first week they turned the system on, they caused enormous congestion, and I mean enormous. They have tried a number of times and failed each time. So, now, they leave the lights off in the rush hour and let the drivers sort themselves out. And do you know what - it works! It works on normal traffic rules, it works on courtesy (mostly) and it works on common sense (mostly). The traffic is heavier but it flows better. Part of the reason is the revised road layout, which makes it easier to let the traffic flow. But mostly it's because drivers are smarter than traffic computer systems.

What is crazy is that they turn the lights on at all other times. The lights follow a strict time sequence, so you can come off the motorway at 3am and get blocked by a red light and have to wait for the full sequence to complete. There is no other traffic around and yet you face a red light. Crazy.

The Highways Agency won't admit that the lights don't work - they should simply remove them.

Junction of Tollington Park and Hornsey Road, London

2009-04-28T11:50:00.002+01:00

I used to live next to these lights, we were right on the corner. You certainly notice the noise, not so much of people stopped at lights but when they pull away.
One day many years ago however, the powers that be decided that it was too dangerous to cross the road here without a crossing.
The junction is basically staggered with Tollington Way and the lights appear to be synchronized with each other but back in the day, if you wanted to turn into Tollington Park or Tollington Way, you waited for a gap and simply turned. Not only did the advent of the crossing prevent these turns, the crossing was given green for ages and you could only turn right onto the roads when the main road lights had gone to red, this gave an unfeasibly long time to people crossing (most of whom had obviously already crossed when there was a gap) and totally snarled up the junction which only really had room for about 4 cars to turn right into each side road before blocking the main road. Couple this with people who would not pull forwards enough or decide to turn right at the last minute and total carnage ensued.
Another regressive step by the various councils of England pressurised by people who obviously know nothing about road traffic needing to actually get places.
A few times these lights broke and totally went off. The traffic was so smooth and quiet and empty it was surreal. Nobody got knocked over when crossing the road because contrary to what some people would have us believe, car drivers don't drive over people crossing side roads.
If only people would pay attention to these and have the courage to remove traffic lights without fear of some idiot somewhere appearing to tell you are not allowed (read County Council, Central Government, Dept for Transport, Health and Safety Exec, Road Traffic Users Group, Pedestrians User Groups). Oh yeah, that's why nothing gets done any more!!

THUMBS UP Junction of Evesham Road, Southam Lane, Cheltenham

2009-04-27T16:09:00.003+01:00

Far be it from me to be entirely negative with regard to traffic lights, I thought it was time I also started to give credit where it is due. The first of these (which equates to about 20 bad sets for every good set!) is the above mentioned junction which I drive through on the way to work and sometimes on the way back.
Now this is a very awkward junction. Lots of traffic turns west when coming down the Cheltenham Road/Evesham Road and a lot of traffic comes from all 4 roads but clearly somebody has thought about the junction and although if you miss the green, it sometimes seems that you can wait a while, it has used all the tricks in the book to make it as slick as possible. Green filter arrows where possible, give way instead of a traffic light to protect a left turn and plenty of time for all routes to get through. Also helped by the lack of pedestrian crossings. If only all lights were as well set up as these!!

Junction of A39 and Stogursey Lane, Bridgwater

2009-04-27T16:02:00.002+01:00

Don't get to travel very far afield any more but was away in Somerset at the weekend so a chance to sample some of the delights of foreign towns. I was driving from Bridgwater up towards Watchett and heading up the A39 towards some lights. Got slowed right down by a red light which changed on approach to green by which time I had lost a load of speed and had to use some precious petrol to speed up again. Not sure whether this is a deliberate measure to slow people down at that junction but when coming back the other way I realised that the right-turn filter light was on by default so it was another classic but ridiculous example of the main road losing priority to a small road that simply goes into a village (Nether Stowey). It wouldn't be so bad if the lights could change before you had to slow down but they didn't.
Two thumbs down to Sedgmoor District Council or Somerset County Council, whoever operates these terrible lights!

Junction of Tewkesbury Road and Gloucester Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-21T23:24:00.003+01:00

A complicated set of lights here. The main road is really the Tewkesbury Road but Gloucester road has quite a lot of traffic too although the road opposite Gloucester road (Townsend Street) is only one way away from the junction.
What effectively happens from the Gloucester Road perspective is that firstly you get a left-turn filter arrow while the traffic is allowed to turn right from Tewkesbury Road into Gloucester road. After a while, the Tewkesbury Road traffic is stopped completely and the Gloucester road gets full green.
No problem in theory. Tonight, I was driving north and got to the lights, the left-hand filter arrow was already lit but no cars were going left. Funnily enough, no cars were turning into Gloucester Road either. The lights were allowing non-existent traffic to go through the junction. About 20 seconds later, we were given a green light and moved away again.
What is troubling is that people accept this. They accept that in a town with loads of poorly phased lights, it is acceptable to sit at a junction (as well as the others coming out from town) while nothing happens except some sort of craply written software gives the green light to the fresh air. Does nobody notice? Does nobody complain? Does nobody care?
I've written a few times to the County Council and I think the most complete answer I got was "we'll go and look at them" which ironically was before they resurfaced the A40 and busted a loads of them!!

Junction of Portland Street and Clarence Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-21T23:17:00.004+01:00

I usually think of these lights as pretty good. They seem to detect OK but there is still something amiss. There is definitely a time of day bias on these lights and they can easily cause traffic on Clarence Road to back up as far as St Pauls Road in the evening rush hour by being overly generous to the other two roads and not very generous to Clarence Road.
Well tonight, I'm coming up Clarence Rd to go straight over and there are a few cars coming from Portland Street past a green light. The traffic is now gone and the lights change to red for them, so far, so good. What then happens is Evesham road now gets the green light even though there is no traffic there. They get it for about 5 seconds and then it goes back to red and I get the green even though a bus is coming up to the lights and has to stop quickly because he doesn't quite make it.
What is going on!! Every time I think I must have driven past or listed all the lights in the whole of Cheltenham, I get obstructed by another set for no logical reason except incompetence, inferior equipment, lack of maintenance or simple indifference by the council. Come on guys!!

Junction of Princess Elizabeth Way and Cowper Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-21T23:12:00.002+01:00

Well actually the lights are a little south of this junction but the road they connect to by the new houses is not marked on multimap.
Problem here is that they seem to favour access from the new houses rather than the main drive on PE way. We were driving towards a red light and it detected us and changed to green but not before the people in front had to slow down. What on earth is going on here? When there is no traffic, why would the lights be on any other phase than green to the main road? I can't believe this town.

Aston Cross, nr Ashchurch

2009-04-20T10:31:00.002+01:00

The lights here are actually quite good. There are filters for turning right into severn bends and also left from severn bends onto the Evesham road but the reason I mention these is that they like many other sets of lights do not reliably detect motorbikes. I ride fairly frequently to work and bikes are traffic friendly, take up much less room than a car and are much more environmentally friendly not just because they use less fuel (I get double my car economy) but also have far fewer parts to wear out and need replacing.
I however dislike certain things about riding (ignoring people's generally shoddy driving which is more noticeable when you are on two wheels). There are loads of poor tarmac patches around Cheltenhams roads which can send the bike off to the side or at least make you feel like you're gonna fall off. I also don't like the fact that I can be stuck at a red light because I am not detected. The thing is, if I go through, I could easily be booked for it and be told I have no excuse (because the UK can be very draconian in such things), if i wait, I might be waiting for a few minutes or longer for a car to trigger the lights.
They are good lights though generally!!

Junction of Hatherley Road and Lansdowne Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-15T12:55:00.002+01:00

Was driving through these last night, another situation where the cars on the main road are stopped just so that one single car can pull out from Hatherley Road. What I noticed however was the amount of dead time between my lights going red and them changing to green again (there were no people crossing). It must have been 20 seconds or similar for a maneouvre that takes a few seconds tops, another example of where something cleverer could have been done such as a central refuge for cars turning right from Hatherley Road (since you can't turn right into it from Lansdowne Road anyway.
Also, another vote for lights that are either switched off at night or the introduction of free left turns at all traffic lights with priority given to people crossing the road you are turning into.

Changes to DfT guidelines on traffic lights

2009-04-14T14:49:00.003+01:00

I had to chuckle after reading this about the fact the government previously wanted motorists to spend a lot of time waiting and therefore increase the amount of money taken in fuel tax. Now they are sanctioning systems that allow motorists to catch a wave of green lights and get from A to B more efficiently and quickly. Typical money driven nonsense but I won't hold my breath to see Cheltenham implement it properly, just noticed another set of lights on Lansdowne Road not particularly far from the main lights by the Shell Garage, coupled with the confusing bus merging signs (from the lane that says left turn only!) it is another mess on the roads.

Switching traffic lights off at night

2009-04-08T13:31:00.002+01:00

Some countries either switch their lights off completely or put them on constant flashing amber at night since there is no reason for somebody to wait in the middle of the night for no reason. Wonder if it would be a good idea here? You could switch off the main road lights altogether and make the tributory ones flash so that they become like Give Way roads. All it would take would be one idiot to crash into somebody and they'd probably decide it was a mistake. What was interesting was when the traffic lights next to where I lived in London broke once in a while, the traffic was much clearer. Makes you think doesn't it.

Junction of Brook Road and Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-06T18:05:00.000+01:00

Oh, the pain of it. You have just negotiated 3 sets of lights and a roundabout inside half a mile and just when you smile at the prospect of some progress at 40mph up the dual carriageway, you are greeted with ANOTHER set of lights. Again, overly complex and obstructive and what do they serve? A dead end road into Homebase, KFC and a few industrial units. Oh and the people who live in Rowansfield. Now here is another case where you could prevent people from driving from Brook street across the road, they have to go 1/4 mile up to the roundabout and back (except the roundabout has been cocked up with traffic lights) that saves time, no traffic light required for that road and you could likewise force people from the East going into the estate to likewise travel around the roundabout and back up to enter the Estate, no right-turn filter required. People then coming from the west would not need a filter light to turn left into the estate and if you were really generous you would allow people to leave the Estate and head west across the main road but at least then the main road is only stopped for a short time. Man, if I designed these lights on Sim City, I think everyone would leave my town. In this case however, people have responsibility and roots here and can't just up and leave. It won't be long though, if I had a business, I would definitely not base it in Cheltenham, the traffic links are simply terrible.

Roundabout at Kingsditch, Tewkesbury Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-06T18:00:00.000+01:00

They have put traffic lights on the roundabout. A quick note for the numpty who thought of this: You should never have traffic lights on a roundabout. They are two different things. If the roundabout cannot cope with the traffic levels, replace it with a crossroads or at worst use part-time lights. This is so dangerous. I have seen so many cars either go past a green onto the roundabout only to meet an unexpected red light ON the roundabout and either go through it or have to brake sharply and the other one is by holding cars on the roundabout by traffic lights (you wouldn't actually believe it would you) you cause people who want to go straight on to pull into the path of cars in the left-hand lane. This has personally happened to me about 6 or 7 times and I don't even drive across it every day. There must have been enough accidents there - I dread to think. Do you think the council are ever held to account for these idiotic designs? I doubt it, it must be the motorist's fault for not paying attention (to the 4 million signs and traffic lights).

Junction of Tewkesbury Road and Manor Road

2009-04-06T17:55:00.000+01:00

These lights are a pain. There are 3 phases, one for the main drag on the Tewkesbury road and the other 2 for each of Manor Road and Hayden Road. The main problem is there appears to be no linking between these and the previous lights at the junction of the Old Gloucester Road. More than once I have been stopped at the first lights and then on getting a green I drive towards the next lights only to be met by the lights changing to red, presumably because the system doesn't detect any cars. You then have to wait for a significant time for the tributories to get their time before you get to travel onwards. Again this is a main road and we spend our time waiting - not clever. Not sure what they can do although a bit of cleverness and some restrictions and it should be possible for the main traffic to go about its business without interference. Things like being allowed to turn left onto the main road without being held by traffic lights would be useful since then the amount of time required for the conflicting car moves would be reduced. Cars coming up Hayden road could be made to use the previous lights and not be allowed to cross the main road thereby freeing up an entire light phase.

Letting traffic flow more easily.

2009-04-06T13:37:00.000+01:00

I bellyache a lot about traffic lights. Part of me thinks they are a fact of life and to get on with it and another part thinks it could be better. You might have heard about the experiments in Holland as well as other places. A good article is here and it talks about the theory behind these so-called shared spaces and how it has not worked brilliantly in the UK but it could work if promoted more clearly in very specific areas and in the national press so visitors to the area would also know what it means. The other thing is to follow the Japanese model which is actually in-between. It allows traffic flow very efficiently if you are driving straight over lights and enforces giving way for every turn off the main road, even at traffic lights. If you hit a pedestrian or cyclist it is automatically your fault so everybody wins. Not sure how the public space thing works on motorways! It might end up like Beirut. Let's just hope that people are brave enough to accept the current system is inefficient and frustrating to both motorists and pedestrians and think outside the box like the Dutch did.

Junction of Shannon Way and Northway Lane, Tewkesbury

2009-04-06T12:11:00.000+01:00

Funny road layout here. Although it looks like a normal crossroads, the left and straight on roads (looking north) are into dead-end industrial estates whereas the south and east roads are through roads used heavily in the morning and evening for people getting to and from work. This is a classic example of people only having to actually drive through these lights to see the problems. The southern approach is often backed up in both directions which blocks the junction and prevents people from turning right from the south (most of them). There is little room for people going straight over to get past the queue, no enforcement of the junction as a box junction and probably the worst pain is no traffic light repeaters on the other side of the junction so people turning right only know they can turn right when the traffic obviously stops by which time the the other direction gets the green light and only 2 cars get through. A filter arrow would be an obvious choice but then I suppose they would have to get rid of those stupid width restrictions over the bridge (one vehicle at a time) which often cause queues for no obvious benefit. To give them their due, i was told by the council that there were plans to sort these in the school holidays this year. I just shiver at the cost and hassle of the work and then coming into work and finding them either no better than before or perhaps defective in other ways!

Pelican Crossing Ashchurch, Tewkesbury

2009-04-06T12:07:00.000+01:00

There's a lollipop lady at this crossing since it is right next to a primary school. All good stuff of course but for some reason the red light phse seems to be well long. Let's just say it is long enough to change, the lollipop lady to walk to the middle, several families to cross and be about 50 feet clear of the crossing by the time it changes back. This is the main Tewkesbury to Evesham road and at 8:30 there is loads of traffic all waiting..for nothing...
When I used to live in Weymouth they had a normal crossroads set of lights with a lollipop man and they gave him a controller so he could quite literally stop the traffic for as long or as short as required. A push button and some wire, sad how that would probably cost the council about £20K to install and at the end of the day they can't see any real cost saving in doing it. All comes back to that same lack of progressive thought in Britain, everything is about money and nothing else.

Toucan Crossing, Lansdowne Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:39:00.000+01:00

The Toucan crossing in Montpelier across the Lansdowne Road makes me laugh. To be fair I believe it is the same as others across the country and knowing our ridiculously draconian laws cannot be changed but it is one of those crossings for cycles and people. The thing that makes me laugh is that it displays a green man/bike for longer than a Pelican crossing. Don't like to state the obvious and make people feel stupid but 1) Bikes are faster than people and clear the crossing sooner and 2) There are never that many bikes crossing that you need 20 seconds of clear time to do it. I cannot accept that people in my beloved England who design these things are stupid but I find it hard to come up with any other alternatives.

The Ring Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:31:00.000+01:00

A simple fact has alluded the County Council and the Borough Council who hashed the whole thing up in the first place. "The point of a ring road is to provide a fast and efficient means for traffic to get around and through the town while drawing traffic away from local roads". What is wrong with the ring road? It is quite literally the slowest way through Cheltenham by far. The result? People in the know fill up the smaller local roads to get somewhere quicker and people who don't know which way to go end up frustrated in traffic. Here is a frightening fact and I challenge anyone to beat it, if you drive up Tewkesbury Road into Cheltenham heading for Oxford, you will pass through no less than 21 sets of traffic lights including Pelicans, between Sainsburys in Kingsditch and the junction of Hales Road and the London Road where the A40 meets London Road. A total distance of? About 2.5 miles. Yes 21 sets of lights in 2.5 miles, that is one set for every tenth of a mile. Every time i think it is farcical, they put another set up for a laugh. In comparison, I drive 4 times as far from home to work in the morning and go through 6 sets of traffic lights in 10 miles. Funnily enough it is usually quicker driving to work than going round the ringroad. Shame on you council and shame on your 'computerised system' excuses!!

Junction of Portland Street and Fairview Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:25:00.000+01:00

The lights on the ring road are basically a disaster in every way. Most of them work technically but there are far too many of them and in some places the phasing is amateur. Take for instance the junction mentioned above. You are coming into Cheltenham from Oxford and you need somewhere to park so you decide on the Portland Street car park. You come round the ring road and go past Blockbuster video to turn right at the next lights. You cannot however turn right here until you are given a green light. It doesn't matter that your colleagues going straight ahead have a green light and no-one is to be seen coming the other way for a mile. Nope, no siree Bob, you cannot turn right here until you .. oh the light has changed... whoops, took too long and now it's changed back. Nice, only 3 cars got through there, sometimes only a single coach or lorry makes it before Big Brother decides that too many cars have been foolish enough to want to turn right. Of course the traffic is backing up Fairview Road and causing all kinds of hassle but who cares? You will be pleased to know however that, "the ring road lights are computer controller" makes you feel much better when the idiot in front of you took 1.5 seconds to pull away and denied you the right turn on this occasion!!

Junction of Shakespeare Road and Princess Elizabeth Way, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:20:00.000+01:00

Again, fair play to the traffic light people, nothing technically wrong with the lights, they seem to detect correctly and change accordingly but the problem is with the highway. Going south, you have two lanes, one for left and straight ahead and the other for turning right on separate lights. However, because you are allowed to park near to them on the left, people have to go round the cars even when going straight ahead so you guessed it, the lights are triggered for a right-turn which seems to have a high priority (presumably for the college traffic) and the lights to go straight on go red. No-one is turning right however so nothing happens for 10 seconds until the lights change again. Now picture this on race week with everybody going home and only about 6 cars getting through each light change the traffic backing all the way up to Kingsditch about 1.5 miles away. Now imagine that no-one notices this and decides either to suspend parking by these lights of by disabling the 1st sensor for turning right so you only trigger it nearer to the turn. You have Cheltenham, the worst traffic control ever compared to about 10 other places I have lived (including London).

Junction of Bath Road and Suffolk Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:16:00.000+01:00

These lights were refurbished only a couple of months ago and have not worked properly since. This makes me angry because they seemed to work before and have been broken and noone has noticed or bothered to do anything about it. This is a major junction, both roads having a lot of traffic so why is it when I was driving up to it the other day (one example of many) despite there being no cars coming across Suffolk Road, I saw the lights change to red in front of me and had to wait for about 10 seconds for the zero cars to cross the other way before I got a green. Is this supposed to be professional? Do these things ever get checked by anyone?

Pelican Crossing Princess Elizabeth Way, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:14:00.000+01:00

This Pelican is about 1/2 mile south of Kingsditch just by a church building. What I noticed here was that although only one person was crossing, the green man was for ages so again, cars are delayed for no reason (as if there weren't enough other delays on your journey). Do they think that when it is busier after school that cars are going to drive over people if they haven't quite finished crossing when the lights change?

6 Ways, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:10:00.000+01:00

It's called 6 ways because 6 roads meet at the same junction, although one is now closed off. The pain here is that the London Road crosses here so they get the lion's share of the green light time. Everyone else has to wait but the real issue here is that the other 3 roads each get their own slice of green time with dead time in between which means you wait for about 2 minutes if you just miss the green and this seems like an eternity when you are waiting. The road layout is sloppy so that they can't be more clever and there are lights to prevent people turning across the oncoming traffic until you get a green light. This is another case where people should be allowed to turn if its clear and if by the filter time there are no cars detected, the lights can either stay green a little longer or change phase.

Junction of London Road and College Road, Cheltenham

2009-04-04T21:06:00.000+01:00

These lights are technically OK. They seem to detect cars and they are only 2 position in that traffic goes north and south on one position and east/west on the other. The problem is they are one of those sets of lights so popular in Cheltenham that have a 4 x red position so that people can cross all four roads at the same time. Now we all know what happens. Someone presses the Wait button and after about 3 seconds realises they can cross so they cross, they cannot, assuming they care, reset the wait button so about 30 seconds later all the cars wait for about 15 to 20 seconds for absolutely nothing at all. In two days, I have passed these lights twice and both times I had to wait for non-existent people to cross. It's just one of those things that needs sorting. Again I refer to the Japanese system where when the north/south was green, the crossings across the other two roads would show a green man and people have the right-of-way to cross and any traffic turning must give way to them. Chances are most of the time that either there won't be anybody there in which case there is no delay, or the people who are waiting have all crossed in a few seconds and get out the way.