Mephistos

Sequenced Traffic Lights

By Ray on November 7th, 2008

I am driving around somewhere the other day and I got really annoyed about the traffic lights. It usually works, especially on stretches of by-passes and main through routes that you get stopped by just about as many lights as there are on the stretch of the road. I have always thought this was kind of lame. After all, the idea of the traffic signals is to keep traffic flowing in as orderly a fashion as possible. In fact what usually happens is the lights retard the flow of traffic by causing excessive amounts of stopping.

To illustrate just exactly what I mean, my route to and from work has me regularly going down a state highway, that used to go right through downtown. It now by-passes the downtown area on one said of the town, but at each major cross-road, as well as where the by-pass itself connects up to the business area connectors there are stop lights. In addition, there are a three other stop lights that are there for local to the by-pass business entrances. In total there are seven traffic lights that I can recall in my mind. The by-pass speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour. It is rare indeed when I am not stopped on at least five of those controls, impacting not only my time and adding additional wear and tear on my vehicle, but and here is the big one, decreasing my fuel economy. Typically there is just enough distance and then some between each light to accelerate easily back up to the full fifty-five miles per hour speed and then see a light changing to yellow just at the point of where you need to stop again.

Aside from my frustration and general stupidity of the lights doing traffic retardation instead of traffic flow, I really want to think about the fuel economy. Especially consider that given the interest in being more green that I have and the general pressure over the last year in that direction. Cars are advertised here in the US with typically two different MPG (miles per gallon) ratings, one for open highway driving and one for in town driving. My car for instance is about thirty-two MPG for the highway and around twenty-three when in town. The difference? Stopping. Every time you stop you have to accelerate. That acceleration takes more fuel to get going then to just maintain the speed you already have. And that assumes that you don’t accelerate like most of us do, with a heavy foot on the gas to get up to speed even more quickly. There is also that amount of time sitting at the light, where you car engine is idling, doing nothing to move you, but yet burning fuel all the same – granted a small amount, but add it up and over all the cars sitting at light any given day and you begin to see the point.

Now I know a few places where traffic control has some computerization and the lights are set in sequence. Basically they set in order and computer controlled, the cross streets all changing at the same rough time for the same time span in order. So that if you are indeed going pretty close to the speed limit, once you are stopped and get a green light the next stretch of lights will align for you to be green.

It makes perfect sense to do that from a “green” standpoint. And further, just think of the jobs that could be created for programmers and technicians to install those all around the country. Granted, hard-wired is not the way to go – but we have wireless capabilities in so many places now as well, and equipment for that is that many more jobs. Heck, I should send this idea of President-Elect Obama – it is a green plan, offers job creation, and great for economic stimulation. Granted it does have a price that will have to come from somewhere, but I know I would okay my tax dollars going to this if I could hit one red light and the rest be just going on my merry way.