Green wave

[HillmanImp]

Has anyone seen this before?

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7998182.stm

 

It has been a bug bear of mine for years the way the council could not co-ordinate traffic lights to make it possible to get home without stopping at every one, however it was a bloody government policy! WTF!.

 

How many hours of my life have they wasted sat at these poxy lights? Tossers.

 

It is probably why they have those lights for no reason stuck all round Leeds as its more time burning fuel and not raising tax.

 

[AXrescuer]

They used to use the green wave system on Marylebone/Euston Road in London. It was great if you managed to catch it.

[Volksy]

It is probably why they have those lights for no reason stuck all round Leeds as its more time burning fuel and not raising tax.

As you know Mr Imp, I have to navigate round Leeds centre to get anywhere, and the City-Centre-Loop is a real bugbear, can take up to 20 mins to go round, and most of the waiting is for traffic lights. Even in light traffic its the same. I can watch the average fuel consumption drop dramatically along with the fuel gauge...Some road systems in Leeds do work i.e. from the Cobourg Lights down the hill to Sheepscar, if you stick to the 30 limit they change just as you approach. But they are rare. To get to my local supermarket (approx 1.5 miles) there are 7 sets of lights. All of which just change to red as you approach.

[Pillock]

The lights down the A610 from the M1 into Nottingham were always rigged that if you drove at the speed limit from the first one, you got them all on green. My grandfather was a very smug person when people used to go racing past him and he could cruise up to a red light where they'd had to stop, and have it change with yards to spare.Astonishing that they used to make this NOT happen in order to raise more money from lower fuel efficiency! When, I wonder, will they admit how many millions they make from speed ramps lowering MPG....

[FredTransit]

So let me get this right, in the past the lights had been phased to make sure we used more fuel? Why am I not surprised? Now can we get rid of speed bumps and speed cameras? Cos they are just as big a culprit for wasting petrol!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Thats unbeliveble that traffic lights were/are deliberately timed to make folk sit around wasting fuel. There must be more to it than that. 'Lets make folk sit in traffic when they could be doing some work/looking after their kids/doing something constructive, we'll earn loads of extra petrol tax money that way' FFS why not just bump the duty up by 1p and let folk spend more time doing proper work/earning money (on which they will pay tax of course). Tell you what, fugg it, leave the lights as they are but just bump up the duty a bit anyway eh?That sounds like the sort of totally hare-brained thing that a 3rd world dictator would come up with after 20 years in power to help his brother who runs the state oil company.

[dollywobbler]

Must agree. Think they just didn't really think about it first until someone thought "I've got an idea - let's synchronise the lights!"

[Guest]

Previously the Department for Transport (DfT) had discouraged the systems which reduce fuel use, resulting in less tax being paid to the Treasury.

Thats got to be horse shit, to phrase it a different way surely there has never been any government guidance to ENCOURAGE systems which INCREASE fuel use.

 

I did traffic engineering at university and the main argument against green wave signal synchronisation is that it simply speeds large number of vehicles along to the next big bottleneck (usually town centres). Its usually policy to make signal junctions in the suburbs act as 'reservoirs' i.e. to hold up a proportion of the traffic so as it doesnt flood the centre as much as it could.

 

Plus its quite difficult to co-ordinate all the various side roads, ped crossings and such.

 

We once paid a visit to Leeds urban traffic control centre, it was great to see how you could bugger up the Meanwood Road green wave by adjusting the settings by a couple of seconds... all done remotely and in real-time. Amazing to watch the bank of TV screens and see the effect on queues by simply giving the major flow 5sec less green time

[FredTransit]

I did traffic engineering at university and the main argument against green wave signal synchronisation is that it simply speeds large number of vehicles along to the next big bottleneck We once paid a visit to Leeds urban traffic control centre, it was great to see how you could bugger up the Meanwood Road green wave by adjusting the settings by a couple of seconds... all done remotely and in real-time. Amazing to watch the bank of TV screens and see the effect on queues by simply giving the major flow 5sec less green time

Are you getting out a bit more now? Medication working?

[Guest]

Yup, I have seen the light and ditched traffic engineering as a career aspiration. For the time being, anyway

[Richard]

We once paid a visit to Leeds urban traffic control centre, it was great to see how you could bugger up the Meanwood Road green wave by adjusting the settings by a couple of seconds... all done remotely and in real-time. Amazing to watch the bank of TV screens and see the effect on queues by simply giving the major flow 5sec less green time

The main road leading to the Forth Road Bridge used to be the A8000, which was a major bottleneck. No matter what time of day you were travelling the A8000 would add at least an hour to your journey time. I drove up from Newcastle the day after its replacement, the M9 Spur, was announced and there was no hold up at all on the A8000. Nor did I ever get stuck there again. I am convinced that people were employed to bugger up the traffic flow (as xr1984 has pointed out, it isn't hard to do) so that the new road would get the go-ahead.Back on topic- traffic lights can fuck off.

[Mash]

There's a set of lights in Hull at a T-junction which piss me off. They are baissed to red not green on the main road (30 limit) and the sensor is aimed very close to the lights. This means that 90% of the time you have to slow and change down and lose momentum to get it to go to green. I don't know if it's to stop people going too fast past the end of the junction but it should be irrelevant as the side road lights would be at red anyway

[Station]

There's a number of roads near me that go to red after the previous light has turned to green. Infuriating.Why is it always a speeding factor? I've owned loads of fast cars and not once do I speed (I get a 'thrill' from doing 70 on the motorway). Fuck these small minded councils and local authorities, they're a bunch of fist-fucking fags.

[seth]

While I'm not sure it was ever officially admitted, many London cabbies complained that certain lights in London were re-phased in the run up to the Congestion Charge being implemented to slow down average speeds and help prove how effective the charge was at reducing congenstion.