On a good turnout (thanks to everybody who took part) of 136 people, the results to last week's Fun Online Poll (multiple votes allowed) were as follows:
What sort of success will the new Irish government have in renegotiating the terms of the EU-IMF bail out?
None whatsoever - 54 votes
Some minor window dressing - 63 votes
The repayment period will be extended - 11 votes
The interest rate will be reduced - 6 votes
Bond holders will bear more of the losses - 8 votes
Other, please specify - 4 votes
Ooh you bunch of cynics! I reckoned that the EU-IMF would at least extend the repayment period, which reduces the annual instalments but increases the overall amount to be repaid, in which case they might even reduce the nominal interest rate a bit to even things out. But we'll see fairly shortly.
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This week's poll is nice and simple. I am trying to work out how much traffic lights cost the economy. The largest single item on the list is the value of the time wasted while stuck in the queue at traffic lights, so I'd be grateful if everybody could give me an estimate of how many minutes they waste in total on a normal week day.
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Monday, 7 March 2011
Fun Online Polls: Irish bail out and traffic lights
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6 comments:
Many of the traffic lights in my city are programmed to be green for the main road by default, ie change to green on the minor road only when a vehicle arrives to exit from it.
Recently however "they" have re-jigged some of them so that they are are on red for the main road even in the dead of night. To make things worse the lights go through their full sequence from the moment a car arrives at said red light rather than going green immediatly as they were designed to.
Yet more evidence that Highways Departments are more interested in delaying traffic rather than ensuring its free flow.
How are you going to work out how much not having traffic lights might cost the economy?
B, turning them off in the night time and on Sundays would be a tentative start.
H, can you give me some examples of how slowing traffic and putting everybody in a bad mood helps the economy?
Ah now, as an ex highway engineer I can make a comment here that might even be sensible.
When I was doing HE there weren't many 'puters so traffic lights were programmed and left to it. We also did things called COBAs - cost benefit analyses obviously - to work out the various befits or otherwise of various bits of highway engineering; building a bypass; putting in some 'traffic management' etc etc. And do you know want, roundabouts had a worse COBAs than traffic lights, because ALL of the traffic was delayed rather than some of it.
Personally I reckon that's bollocks, by simple observation, but there you go.
Traffic lights are a big delay cost for vehicle traffic. As they would be. They are bureaucratic road rationing by remote control.
L, it sounds to me as if their simulations must have been a bit like climate change forecasting and were intended to give the 'right' result (being more lights, more interference etc) whatever you input.
MW - Yes. this was early use of computers to calculate these things - preparing the data involved huge decks of punch cards. I should think they've got 'better at it' by now. It's all based on authoritariansim tho'. Engineers don't see it that way. To us it was just a huge toy to play with!
Mind you there are some good ideas. Variable speed limits work in increasing traffic flow along under-capacity roads. As traffic speeds up it stretches out, so you get less of it in a given space and even with the higher speed it doesn't move as much through a given length of road. Of course you could build a couple more lanes, but then there would be a land and build cost to factor against the time saved. And as VSL are used in times of peak flow such a COBA would likely be marginal at best.
Traffic lights tho' are straightforward bureaucratic road rationing. Most could easily be turned off -if combined with other re-engineering; 'shared space' for example.
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