The essence of cycling is to keep moving, but London’s chaotic roads often make this difficult. My solution: fewer, not more rules, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins
Traffic lights can now be rendered sensitive to queues waiting at them
Smart traffic lights probably have all kinds of technical challenges, but if you can do them well, traffic lights can finally catch up with human-directed traffic—you never need to wind up with a situation where intersections are empty and users are still blocked.
It’d be especially nice at night or other low-traffic times, where there’s more of that.
I’d cost more, but I think that a lot of people would be okay with more cost for better throughput.
I’d also add that they could even change before vehicles reach them—they don’t need to wait for a queue to form.
I liked this bit:
Smart traffic lights probably have all kinds of technical challenges, but if you can do them well, traffic lights can finally catch up with human-directed traffic—you never need to wind up with a situation where intersections are empty and users are still blocked.
It’d be especially nice at night or other low-traffic times, where there’s more of that.
I’d cost more, but I think that a lot of people would be okay with more cost for better throughput.
I’d also add that they could even change before vehicles reach them—they don’t need to wait for a queue to form.