A new approach to traffic in towns

How interesting. You can add to the traffic lights item the new craze in Surrey for narrowing lanes onto roundabouts. What this does is make vehicles line up one behind the other not allowing those that go left to slip put and do so. Thus traffic builds up in queues creating all the usual issues of pollution and longer journey times and frustration.. This is happening in back roads not just main highways. Why I ask? So I did ask, and so far not a single councillor has replied.

I read the article, which starts by mentioning "(traffic light installations) boosted by an additional 1800 sets imposed on London’s streets under Ken Livingstone". Also that there are "25,000 pelican crossings" and that "Between 2007-2008, for example, the number of signals giving priority to buses more than doubled to 8,500". You can see what they're trying to do here, right? Clearing some space so that walking, cycling and using public transport can grow into it, even if this (rather questionably) costs us, economically, in the here and now for the sake of relieving the burden of private transport in the future. You then go on to draw on Poynton in Cheshire as an example. This is a small town with just two trunk routes crossing pretty much at right angles. I have no doubt that changes to road traffic control here has had an impact on what is a very small scale and simple arrangement. Now scale this up to something the size and complication of London. Not only are the road networks vastly more complicated, they also have to consider the vast increase in both pedestrians (including the blind, partially sighted, deaf, disabled) and cyclists which need enforced protection. An increase in cycling and walking coupled with public transport use will reduce the economic impact of car dependency. Like anything, the horse has to go in front of the cart; we need to make this space first and coax people back out of their cars and into this space even if this seems to be uneconomical now (although it doesn't, to me). Not only this, but looking at other studies almost all of these traffic flow experiments have resulted in a net increase of car traffic. Is anyone at the IEF actually performing total accounting here, i.e. including the costs created by having a sedentary population with in active lifestyles? Costs of treating health related issues, accidents and injuries? Noise pollution? Air pollution? Environmental impacts of road maintenance and even manufacturing / decommissioning of the cars themselves? Is the success criteria of the Poynton scheme that it does carry 26,000 vehicles a day through the heart of the village? Really... You go on to say that "The latest safety audit from Westminster City Council shows that no less than 44% of personal injury accidents occurred at traffic lights." This statistic is hardly surprising and is most likely more to do with the fact that the places pedestrians most frequently come into conflict with motor traffic is at crossing, which have traffic lights. Do "traffic jams resulting from traffic controls increase fuel use and pollution levels" at the same level that the net increase in cars resulting from most of these schemes does? You say that "A handful of local authorities have begun to recognise the negative effects of traffic controls. In 2009, lights were switched off at the Cabstand double junction in Portishead. Despite an increase in traffic, queues disappeared, journey times fell by over 50%, and there was no decline in road safety". Do you understand that the increased traffic is not a good thing? Do you understand that there not being a decline in road safety *could* be related to a decline in the use of such roads by cyclists and pedestrians? I don't know as there is a lack of citation. However, an increase in traffic alone will act to increase the perceived danger to potential cyclists and pedestrians wanting to use the roads and the provisions around them. Again this is another relatively small scale, "not in London" example used, after opening with criticism of London planning. To conclude I'll repeat my initial assertion that these traffic flow measures are the early stages of transition. They're there to create a space for alternatives to the "locked in" patterns of car usage we have. Such car dependency is only going to be economically problematic as we see fuel prices continue to increase and people demand viable alternatives, which are arguably being suppressed by the thinking on display in this article.