Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/14/watch-how-traffic-light-prog.html
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Oblig…
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You know what manages traffic congestion even better than traffic lights and stop signs? Actual yield-to-merge (not stop) traffic circles. When I drive in the UK it feels like I slipped into a Gernsbackian future utopia where one can drive from mid-England to mid-Wales stopping only for rest or fuel breaks.
Seriously: traffic circles. Most of the advantages of stop signs (no lanes of traffic fully stopped), and most of the advantages of stop lights (controlled flow of traffic through an intersection), with neither disadvantage.
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Is that in Boston between the Arboretum and Dorchester?
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Came here to see if roundabouts were mentioned.
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Everything I know about Boston I learned from playing Fallout 4…
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Roundabouts (traffic circles) are fine, but introducing them in a place where everyone is used to traffic lights sows mass confusion, and a steep learning curve. We have one a short distance from home, and no one quite knows how to use it; I frequently see people stopped waiting for cross traffic to stop as well, which naturally it doesn’t.
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Seriously: yield is not some strange new traffic law.
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Unfortunately, Americans have no idea how to use them. No matter what is happening in the circle, traffic will come to a complete dead stop almost every time. Drives me nuts.
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Traffic light programming cannot reduce traffic congestion. The only way to make things better is to remove road capacity. Seems counter-intuitive, but it works.
Bear with me here. First, you have to understand latent demand. In modern dense urban environments, more people want to drive than can ever be accommodated given the available space. But people’s mode choices are largely determined by their perceptions about travel time. So if you build more roads (or add lanes to existing roads), all you do is release more of that latent demand, and the volume of traffic goes up, till it hits a level of congestion that starts to deter people again. So the level of congestion is essentially invariant. Improving throughput by optimizing flow through intersections has the same effect, for the same reasons.
What’s the solution? Remove vehicle lanes and replace them with streetcars, light rail, dedicated bus lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks, cafes, trees and greenery, etc. When people realize they cannot drive through the city in a reasonable amount of time, they don’t. And by giving preference to mass transit and active transport, you encourage people to choose those things. Plus you get a much more pleasant urban environment in the process. Win-win.
ob-viz:
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How do traffic circles work once you add pedestrians into the mix?
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You’d be surprised. These are people who had trouble with the traditional ‘person on your right gets to go next.’
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I like your suggestion but just to clarify, I didn’t say traffic light programming reduces congestion. I said it helps manage it.
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In town they typically have right of way, out of town there are typically under- or over-passes.
That’s just an argument against traffic control generally.
Very likely yes, as the author of xkcd lives in Somerville (or at least, he did around the time that strip was published).
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Civil engineering tickles my brain for some reason. This video was rad.
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Roundabouts are definitely making inroads here in the Twin Cities. They’re being introduced at places like freeway exits, and minor throughways. And after a (lengthy) adjustment phase, drivers do eventually figure them out. And yes, while bad drivers occasionally gum up the works for a few cars, they self correct pretty quickly.
But they are very expensive to build, and they take up a lot more space than signal controlled intersections.
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It is a huge pet peeve of mine when people yield right of way (and wave me on) when we both arrived at a stop sign simultaneously and they’re to my right.
I ride a bicycle. I will roll a stop sign if I don’t have to yield. But if someone is stopped to my right I will absolutely come to a full stop and put a foot down 100% of the time, unless they do the correct thing and exercise their right of way by going first, in which case I can just slow enough that they’re clear by the time I enter. So when they insist on being “nice” and waving me on even though they have the right of way, it’s actually super annoying because I end up coming to a full stop unnecessarily and then they have to wait while I get up to speed again…
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I am in favor of traffic control, especially proper timing of traffic lights, and I am saying that people who haven’t encountered traffic circles before tend to freak out about them and not know how to behave.
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