From The Evening Standard:
Olympics chiefs have proposed radical measures to reduce congestion on London's roads during the Games. Games bosses said they would switch off about 1,000 sets of traffic lights in the capital and build temporary pedestrian bridges over busy roads in a bid to keep the average speed for cars transporting athletes and officials at about 45mph.
Plans were outlined at the annual congress in Vancouver of the International Olympic Committee which is focusing on how the capital will cope with the extra Games traffic. The IOC said it had the backing of Boris Johnson to turn off the lights, which could be decommissioned permanently as a legacy of the Games...
Why not just turn 'em all off (or leave them flashing amber) right now, and see what happens?
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Why wait until the Olympics?
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8 comments:
But MW, that means we would have a choice of turning left, right or going straight on - all at our own discretion!
Somehow I can't see our political masters allowing us to exercise our discretion - can you?
That involves us making a choice - hang on, I need to look up the definition of choice..............
MW, your suggestion is, of course, obvious. We had a name for it in my earlier life. A pilot test; try it out in advance to make sure that it won't completely destroy the steroid-fest. And if it is a disaster (unlikely), then come up with another idea. That doesn't include Zil lanes.
WFW, they deleted that word from modern dictionaries.
VFTS, we don't really need pilot tests. In my previous life as a non-car owner, I noticed that when local traffic lights were turned off for road repairs round where I lived, the traffic flowed much more smoothly, there were no queues at junctions AND most importantly, car drivers were far more relaxed about giving way to pedestrians, and bus journeys were quicker as well, of course.
As a highway engineer in a previous life I got into trouble by describing traffic lights as remote control bureaucratic road rationing systems that like all lefty economic calculation are forever and always some distance behind what's actually needed. The people having already sorted it out.
'Oh. It'll be all alright when we have universal computer control that can monitor and adjust the phasing in real time' they said.
'Yes', I said 'we already have that computing power, but it's not being used.'
'Oh yeah? Where is it then?'
'In the driver's fucking 'eads you dolts!'
Exit stage left from another 'planning meeting'.
Why not drive on either side of the road. Another pilot test you could have.
It's essentially unsustainable in the UK - the whole driving culture needs to change and this having to commute long distances cease. this comes down to productivity, the end of the KPI tickbox disease and local jobs.
JH, as to commute times, the answer is simple - allow more workplaces to be built near where houses are; and allow more houses to be built near where workplaces are (or have a better rail network, like in London and environs).
JH, also stop building so many bloody roads. As soon as two places come within commuting distance (timewise), people will commute from one to the other who didn't before. While this makes sense for railways, with roads it just leads to the very congestion that the road-builders ostensibly set out to avoid, the M25 being a prime example of this.
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