Because who needs traffic calming measures and bollards and roundabouts, right?
There’s a residential stroad near me that does this without advertising it. It’s a neat trick if you know about it, but a solid majority of the folks I see on that street just haul ass from red light to red light (and I catch up to them right when it turns green again).
I’m not too optimistic about traffic calming coming up in this road’s future. Maybe it’ll get speed cameras.
I’m a habitual speeder, but if I know the lights will all be green if I go the speed limit, I’m going the speed limit. In Germany this is called the Green Wave. Saves a lot of gas too.
The problem is, they want the revenue from speeding tickets.
Damn, I thought it’d be speed sensitive quick-deploy bollards.
If anybody reads the article, this initiative seems to be results driven. They say that they’ve used this “rest on red” strategy where they punish speeders by giving them more red lights, and that I think it was in Albuquerque where they successfully reduced the average driving speed from 39 to 30 on a road using this strategy.
The medium sized city I spent a lot of time in encouraged 5 over or more in places, if you went the speed limit, you would hit every light.
I grew up near a road that I swear did the opposite of this. Drive the limit, and you hit every light, drive 5 over the limit, and you get endless green. Didn’t help that the road was a horrible stroad that visually facilitated cars going easily 20 over. Coincidentally the local police also kept like 75% of the on-duty cops on that road.
Light timing has got to be really complicated, so the approach seems like it couldn’t work everywhere, but where it can be implemented, it seems like a no brainer.
No they just did the math wrong. Lots of cities do.
yup, did this for a couple years a while back. I could drive 75 across town and make it to work in 12 minutes on an empty stroad at 530am, or I could drive the speed limit of 60 and it would take 20
guess which option I took
As a bicycle, I’m all about it. Imagine lights timed to a 20-25mph speed limit? tits.
Obv, physical traffic calming are required as well and I’m all for timing the lights to a less dangerous speed limit.
I’ll argue that don’t giving RAM or Ford truck to man-child could do more good than augmenting the number of green light
After that, there wouldn’t be any sold. Will you please think of the share holders!
Who decides? The authorities?
The “flow of green” thing doesn’t work for a couple reasons. One, imagine one driver doing the speed limit catching every green light. Now imagine, 2 blocks back, there’s another car doing the speed limit, but they’re catching reds because they’re behind the target car. So they are now incentivised to speed to catch up to the car that is reaping the benefit, so they too, can reap the benefit.
But then you get local businesses saying that if someone never has to stop, what they pay extra to be on a corner and run advertisements on billboards or other signage isn’t paying off because people aren’t being stopped there. They might as well pay less to not be on the corner. By letting traffic flow free, people are getting more miles out of their tyres and brake pads, so your auto body shops are losing money, too. On top of that, ICE engines use more gas when they have to stop and start, which is why most people can go, at most, 1-2 lights before stopping, because your local city government doesn’t think you’re paying enough for petrol.
Timing traffic lights is a science, and it makes a huge difference.
The “flow of green” thing doesn’t work for a couple reasons. One, imagine one driver doing the speed limit catching every green light. Now imagine, 2 blocks back, there’s another car doing the speed limit, but they’re catching reds because they’re behind the target car. So they are now incentivised to speed to catch up to the car that is reaping the benefit, so they too, can reap the benefit.
What….?
If you’re stopped at one red light, all the others will be timed to be green when you get to the next. If you speed from the red, you’ll only hit the next red.