Traffic lights

As I drove home, I noticed that the traffic lights at a fairly busy crossroads at one end of the main road in our village-suburb were turned off and traffic seemed to be flowing smoothly.

I parked at home and walked back and watched for ten minutes. Traffic is at its heaviest on Saturday afternoons, and when the lights are working, there is usually a queue of ten or twenty cars on each of the four approach roads. The longest queue that formed was no more than three or four cars on one approach road if the car in front wanted to turn right (the most awkward turn on those particular cross roads). Within a few seconds, there would be a gap or somebody would just slow down and let them in.

Drivers also stopped more or less immediately for pedestrians who wanted to cross; buses could plough straight through. I crossed at the pedestrian crossing (Pelican crossing) a little further up the hill. Even though those lights were turned off as well, cars stopped for pedestrians more or less immediately

It filled my heart with joy. I wonder whether the council (or whichever authority is in charge) will see sense and leave them turned off permanently? If they want to do 'something', I think a yellow box wouldn't go amiss.

"Traffic lights go out at Beverley's Grovehill junction – and flow improves"

From Hull Daily Mail:

The 42 traffic lights which control the new junction – dubbed the “red light district” – went out this morning.

Grovehill Road resident Anita Tomlinson said: “The traffic has been flowing very well since the lights went out, it’s flowing like it used to do when it was just a roundabout.

“I had wondered myself what would happen if all 42 lights went out but drivers are being very careful, they are seeing what is going on and so far it appears to be flowing well.”

This will be no surprise to anybody who's already seen what happens when traffic lights are turned off, and most of us have.

So that's it then?

Driving home this evening I happened to be listening to P.M. on R4.  They broadcast an item on cycling in Paris.  Apparently the Parisian authorites have decided that cyclists don't need to obey traffic lights.  Particularly when turning right against the red.  Some sexy sounding French lady explained that this was OK, in fact she felt safer, since all you had to do was take care and be vigilant.  They then aired the views of a taxi driver who sounded off on how unsafe this was.

Then came the killer argument.  The BBC reporter  got on his bike to navigate the Arc de Triomphe interchange where he said something on the lines of , "...despite the 'chaos' the traffic takes care and thanks to the give way from the right rule it all works well.  In fact the TRAFFIC LIGHT CONTROLLED JUNCTION ON THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE AT THE OTHER END OF THE CHAMPS ELYSEES HAS FIVE TIMES THE ACCIDENT RATE OF THE UNCONTROLLED ARC DE TRIOMPHE JUNCTION".

Really, it's so bloody obvious isn't it.  Needless to say Eddy bloody Maier didn't get it.

Listen lads, Turn Off The Damn' Traffic Lights.

But it gets worse for the dirigiste French does it not?  This factoid is a proxy for the success of freedom and markets and is another nail in the coffin of bureaucratic central planning; traffic lights being bureaucratic road rationing by remote control

(PS. In a previous life I was a highway design Engineer - letters after my name and everything).

Meskel Square, Addis Ababa

They showed this on Rude(ish) Tube just now.

"Thirty-two lanes of traffic and no traffic lights!" gushed the presenter. As if that were a bad thing.

So... what's the problem? It seems to be working fine.

Traffic lights and drugs

Oh dear, those pesky facts and real life evidence from other countries getting in the way of blind prejudice again...

Exhibit One

London Assembly Tory transport spokesman Richard Tracey said:

“Every year Londoners waste over 170 million hours sitting in traffic, costing London’s economy £4 billion. Many of these journeys in our city are unavoidable.

"But rather than hurting motorists with ridiculous charges and taxes, we should look at innovative ways to cut congestion and make traffic flow more smoothly. Turning off traffic lights at night, like they do in parts of Europe and North America, is one measure which would boost the economy and help the environment.”

Exhibit Two

There is "no obvious" link between tough laws and levels of illegal drug use, a government report has found.

Liberal Democrat Home Office minister Norman Baker said the report, comparing the UK with other countries, should end "mindless rhetoric" on drugs policy. He accused the Conservatives of "suppressing" the findings for months.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the research did not offer "specific conclusions" and said he did not "believe in" decriminalising drugs.

It strikes me that there are so many well-documented real life experiments in most things from so many different countries, there's little room for airy-fairy debates any more. It's just a question of choosing the ones with the best outcomes.

That goes for speed limits, traffic lights, education, the health, immigration, the tax and welfare systems, legalising/criminalising drugs and prostitution, you name it.

"The wrong kind of bird droppings"

From AOL.co.uk:

Two cities in Nagano Prefecture, Japan had a total of 25 thousand traffic lights disabled as a result of a buildup of bird droppings.

"Viewpoint: Is it time to get rid of traffic lights?"

Martin Cassini was on Radio 4's Four Thoughts just now, explaining how damaging traffic lights are, due to be repeated this Saturday at 10.15 pm.

The BBC's normal website provide a full summary here, it's all good stuff. He's got nearly a thousand comments so far, seems like a fair mixture of pro- and anti-.

Fun Online Polls: Xmas decorations & Philip Hammond

OK, I shall close the fill-in FOP on Xmas decorations. By now, half of us have seen some and half of us haven't (or have managed to ignore them to the point of not even noticing them) and return to more interesting matters.
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Defence Secretary is normally seen as a very senior job, certainly more senior than Transport Secretary, so on the face of it, Philip Hammond was promoted once the totally not-corrupt-at-all Liam Fox resigned in such an honourable and dignified fashion last week. Interestingly, the defence lobbyists seem to have got their knives out for Hammond already, but hey.

Now, as it happens, Philip Hammond was originally pencilled in by the Tories as Treasury Secretary (or 'Chief Secretary to the Treasury' or whatever the exact fancy title is) but was shuffled sideways because they had to give the job to a Lib Dem as part of the Coalition negotiations. The first incumbent David Laws was booted out because of some expense-claim shenanigans and was replaced by another Lib Dem, Danny Alexander.

Despite all this, and having been made Transport Secretary at short notice, Philip Hammond seemed to a) know what he was talking about and b) be enjoying the job. I just can't help liking him and his ve-e-ery dry sense of humour (despite him being an über-Home-Owner-Ist and all, at least he was prepared to go into battle over the HS2 route).

But is it really a promotion? Who really wants the job as Defence Secretary?

I'd far rather be Transport Secretary and really achieve something - raise the speed limit on motorways, turn off the traffic lights, build a few new railway lines, allow a new runway to be built at Gatwick or Luton, cut bus fares, whatever - than be blundering around in the MoD morass, there is no concept of 'value for money' in that department, it's all about massive vanity projects and nothing to do with what really benefits the UK. As Transport Secretary, you can quietly plan out the next few years and work towards a target; as Defence Secretary you are pushed and pulled every which way, and by and large, you usually end up resigning and being hated by all and sundry.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Which job would you prefer... Minister for Defence or Minister for Transport?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Philip Hammond On Top Form

If he goes on like this (his slot starts 2 min 50 seconds into the clip), he'll end up turning off the traffic lights or something:

Greek Traffic Light Fun

If you fast forward to 1 min 33 seconds into this clip, the reporter says that workers at a power plant in Greece went on strike, which "left large parts of the mainland with no electricity [cut to picture of traffic lights which are clearly off] and throwing traffic into chaos".

Problem is, the traffic in the background is flowing smoothly - I don't know whether traffic slows even more smoothly than this in Greece when the lights are 'working', of course - but turning off the traffic lights doesn't appear to have made things noticeably worse.

"Not much"

DBC Reed left the following comment on my post For whom the bridge tolls (2):

A fairly beneficent toll is the London Congestion Charge, emanating from the same Georgist-minded people like Dave Wetzel who created the near-mythical (although it actually happened)Fares Fair scheme which subsidised tranport out of the rates.

Do you know how much London fares could be reduced by cross subsidies from Congestion Charge receipts?

Ho hum.

The total budget of Transport for London is about £5.6 billion (2010 accounts), £3.6 billion of  which is paid for by fares, advertising revenues etc, and the rest is made up of all manner of grants, cross charges and a £400 million accounting deficit.

Income and expenditure from the Congestion Charge scheme is included in those accounts, showing net income (i.e. income minus expenditure) of £158 million.

So the words "not much" spring to mind.

IMHO, the Congestion Charge is not really a revenue raising measure, it is a rationing measure. Even if net revenues were zero, it might still be worth doing if it ensured that those people who really need to drive around London can do so more smoothly, and those who don't really need to drive can take the bus or train instead. Emphasis on "might". Simply turning off the traffic lights would probably achieve the same end, as well as saving a chunk of money.

Fun Online Polls: Lost Causes and EU propaganda

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll, excellent turnout of 169 in only four days. I deliberately didn't have a 'none of the above' option because I was depressed enough. Results as follows:

Which of the following "lost causes" do you support?

Above the line (more than 85 votes):
Allow smoking in pubs and cafes 122 votes
Leave the EU, the UN etc. 121 votes
Legalise cannabis 111 votes
Legalise brothels 108 votes
Allow fox hunting 105
Replace entire welfare system with a Citizen's Income 93 votes

Below the line (fewer than 85 votes):
Replace old age pensions with a Citizen's Pension 78 votes
Replace as many taxes as possible with Land Value Tax 75 votes
Use Proportional Representation 69 votes
Turn off the traffic lights 59 votes

The Citizen's Pension was the joker in the pack as Iain Duncan Smith is going to do it anyway; I'm obviously disappointed about lack of support for LVT; proportional representation is a secondary issue; and I'm particularly surprised about the lack of enthusiasm for turning off traffic lights.
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And lo, to this week's Fun Online Poll.

We've established on several occasions that the readers of this 'blog would vote to leave the EU in an In-Out referendum, and it's just about conceivable that if there were a snap In-Out referendum next week that a slim majority would vote for "Out" but that's not really the issue.

As we have learned from the No2AV campaign, you can get any result you want if you pump out enough propaganda; and I imagine that if They announced that there'd be In-Out Referendum in six months' time, then we would be subjected to a 24/7 barrage of a few simple - but somehow plausible - lies for those six months and the result would be "Stay in".

So this week's Fun Online Poll is whether you think that They would be able to pump out enough propaganda to swing the vote their way.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: AV and Lost Causes

Thanks to everybody (nearly two hundred votes in four days!) who cast a vote in this week's Fun Online Poll, which I might as well shut down now that polling has closed. Results as follows:

How will you vote in Thursday's referendum?

Yes to AV - 51%
No to AV - 37%
I won't bother - 12%

I doubt whether the official result will be as favourable. Ah well.

This does not bode well for an In-Out Referendum on the EU. All They need to do is choose a few simple lies and stick to them, such as Three million jobs depend on our membership of the European Union (scroll down to the end of Channel4's Fact Check service) and that will be the end of that for a few decades
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Which brings me back to my favourite topic of "Lost causes". It seems that pretty much anything I campaign for (actively or otherwise) is pretty much a lost cause, so out of interest, how many of my favourite "Lost causes" do you support?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar, multiple answers allowed.

Back on the campaign trail

I shall be meeting up with anti-traffic ligts campaigner Martin Cassini at the Evening Standard's AV debate in Westminster at 6 o'clock this evening.

Whether we'll actually be admitted is a thorny issue.

Send me an email if you're up for it.

Outbreak of commonsense...

... in Portsmouth:

Motorists won’t have to wait at red traffic lights at quiet times in the future if a new plan gets the go-ahead. All the lights at a junction could be switched to flashing amber – most likely in the middle of the night. Drivers would be expected to proceed with caution, rather than waiting for the red light to change.

Highways staff at Portsmouth city council is applying to the department for transport for permission to trial the scheme in a national first. If all goes to plan, the new lighting rules could be introduced in the city within a year...

A similar system already operates in Spain and France but motoring organisation the AA cast doubt on whether it would work safely in Britain. "It sounds like a great idea but I have concerns," said Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the AA, "The idea that drunks and young drivers are going to get to the flashing lights after midnight and say “after you” is nonsense."

A tentative first step in the right diretion, methinks, but what is the man from Alcoholics Anonymous wailing on about? It is quite true that drunks and young drivers tend to be a bit inconsiderate, but the notion that merely plonking down a few traffic lights at a random selection of junctions to hold them up at random intervals will improve their behaviour is clearly insane.

Fun Online Polls: Traffic Lights and Investing

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll, results as follows:

How many minutes do you spend waiting at traffic lights on a normal week day?

0 minmutes - 27%
0 to 5 minutes - 33%
5 to 10 minutes - 18%
10 to 15 minutes - 8%
15 or more minutes - 10%
Other, please specify - 3%

The weighted average of all those is about six minutes, which is (happily) the number I first thought of, so we can pencil in an economic loss of £12 billion a year*.

* 40 million adults x 6 minutes x 5 days per week = 1,000 million hours per year. 1,000 million hours @ £12/hour = £12 billion per annum (or 1% of GDP). The £12 is an arbitrary figure, being half the value of output per hour worked in the UK economy (it's difficult to put a value on leisure time lost).
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Inspired by Tim W, this week's Fun Online Poll asks which is the better investment: paying off your mortgage as quick as possible/saving up a deposit to buy a house; or investing spare cash in stocks and shares?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar. There's no 'other' option this week as the possibilities are endless.

Fun Online Polls: Irish bail out and traffic lights

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.

The One Show

Veteran anti-traffic light campaigner Martin Cassini has wangled himself a slot on this evening's show on BBC One between seven and seven-thirty.

Be there or be square!

UPDATE: he got his thirty (rather than fifteen seconds of fame) near the end of the show. If you missed it, you missed nothing. Go and visit the post to which Dick Puddlecote links in the comments for a fuller exposé of Martin C's work.

Traffic Lights Fun

Here's a dreary article about some traffic lights being out of action at the Sowton roundabout:

The disruption caused is expected to bring further problems during next Monday's bank holiday — traditionally one of the busiest days of the year. Thousands of motorists have been left to rely on their own driving skills to avoid collisions at the Honiton Road junction...

One city motorist, who uses the junction daily to get to work, described the situation as "dangerous and confusing... This is a major junction used by thousands of drivers every day and it seems extraordinary the lights have been left out of action. It is an accident waiting to happen."

A county council spokesman has urged motorists to drive with extreme caution...

Yadda, yadda. The comments are priceless though:

Oh wow, it's so much better without the lights! How can they justify putting them back on? Is it time to start asking questions about what brown envelopes are being passed from the traffic light companies to the council? Seems to be the only logical explanation for having so many around the city, with more being added all the time. Got to be something in it for someone - and it's not the road users. Eric, Exeter.

Traffic flows much better without traffic lights. I did not go below 40 all the way. Also managed to scare a cyclist. Win win situation. fast freddie, exeter.

Traffic lights are generally yet another pointless waste of money instigated by traffic light salesmen. I remember when they they replaced the roundabout at creech castle in taunton with a set of lights, and within a week, one of my sisters friends was killed in a car accident at the lights, and then within a couple of months there was another fatal car crash on the same junction. And it still has huge tailbacks. Jimmy, Exeter.

Yep, I do this roundabout every morning, and it's much much better now. Take the lights down, don't waste money fixing them. Save some cash and fix the traffic. Tim Saunders, Exeter.

The Traffic is flowing much, much better than usual. I actually get to work 15 minutes earlier with these lights not working. Hopefully the control box will never be fixed! Lee, Exeter (Sowton).

Via.

Goin' Dutch

Vince Cable, interviewed in today's ES Magazine:

What would you do as Mayor for the day?
I would try the Dutch experiment of switching off the traffic lights.

What can possibly go wrong?