"We don't need no traffic control"?

Back in May 2007 in one of my early bloggings I wrote about a recent failure of some traffic lights that resulted in shorter queues of traffic:

'Traffic leading onto the Chiswick roundabout on a Sunday or Bank Holiday Monday is usually terrible; long queues especially coming from Kew Bridge, from the A4 going east and off the North Circular Road going south. So I was surprised to find hardly any traffic queueing on this Bank Holiday Monday. The reason, the lights had failed and so the traffic was filtering nicely onto the roundabout in the way that people filter onto roundabouts that have no traffic lights on them. There was less traffic queueing on all roads coming onto the roundabout than would normally be the case. I have experienced this before at major crossroads as well, drivers do a better job of managing the traffic movement than does an imposed control system.

I presume that the traffic lights will be fixed early this week and so next weekend the queues will be as big as was previously the case!'

Note that I reported that 'the lights had failed and so the traffic was filtering nicely onto the roundabout'.

I was reminded of this piece by something I read at The UK Libertarian who has posted two videos; the first explains the theory and shows what happens when traffic lights fail at a junction in Central London, the second shows what happens when a local council (Portishead) turns off traffic lights as an experiment. In both case my point that people filter and the traffic runs quicker is confirmed and pedestrians seem happy as well.


The fist junction shown is one I know well being the junction of Goodge Street & Charlotte Street. This is a fairly busy junction during the day and well into the evening as Charlotte Street is a road at its southern end that is devoted to eating and drinking. Watch how the cars, vans, motorcycles and bikes all take it in turns to cross or turn with no hooting, aggression or queues. The second junction is just North of the Barbican and is also a junction I know well having crossed it from each direction many times. Note again the way the traffic flows more easily and how pedestrians are crossing seemingly without having to wait as long as they do now for the lights to change. I have never been to Sweden, let alone Knorrkopping. Will Westminster Council try out this idea or do they earn too much money from junction control cameras?


This is from the Portishead lights-off trial which began on 14 September 2009 and went permanent after journey times fell by over half with no loss of pedestrian safety. Watch the video and especially listen to the woman interviewed before and after the experiment from 1:15 to 2:14.


In the first video do ignore the narrator's comment that 'is it any wonder that polar bears are running out of ice" - someone else seems to have fallen for another piece of eco propaganda.


For more information please visit Fit Roads who have the wonderful slogan/mission statement 'Advancing the right of all road-users to use commonsense on roads free of vexatious traffic controls'. It's not often that the word vexatious appears in a such a place.