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Hah, and people who buy diesel car with low enough commission to be exempt end up being banned.
You know what work better in the past? messing up the traffic flow encouraging people to take public transport, walk or cycle.
That went well until Boris decided to fix it to "smooth traffic flow".
edscoble-
You know what work better in the past? messing up the traffic flow
encouraging people to take public transport, walk or cycle. That went well until Boris decided to fix it to "smooth traffic flow".Please...elaborate.
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You know what work better in the past? messing up the traffic flow encouraging people to take public transport, walk or cycle.
That went well until Boris decided to fix it to "smooth traffic flow".
Well, it's hard to respond to all of this without multi-quoting. :)
I certainly don't want to jump on Ed when he refers to 'smoothing the flow' in a critical way, but its effect as a policy is pretty hard to grasp. In essence it's something very simple, and an attempt towards fulfilling the unfulfilled dreams of highway engineering--optimal usage of available highway capacity, largely by means of 'intelligent' (i.e., cleverly programmed) signal control systems. The concept itself, of course, is not new--the LCC did an interview with the then Traffic Director for London, Derek Turner, in 1995 in which he used the expression. In London recently, this has mainly been attempted to be put into practice using things like SCOOT and 'pedestrian countdown'.
I'm certainly not familiar with every detail of how traffic signal phasing may have changed.
What we have heard, mostly anecdotally, is that at numerous locations where 'pedestrian countdown' has been implemented, the time during which the green man has been displayed to pedestrians has been shortened and part or all of this time transferred to the 'countdown' time. This has in most cases made much shorter 'intergreen' times (it should be self-explanatory what they are) possible, and non-'All Green Pedestrian Phase' (green man for pedestrians across all arms of a junction) timings have been changed as a result. However, as I say, this is only anecdotal and may not be correct. We don't normally have to go into this kind of detail when discussing traffic schemes. SCOOT does various other things to do with signals 'optimisation', too.
In the end, 'smoothing the traffic flow' is essentially self-defeating, as its entire effect is a mild form of induced demand.
Mickie_Cricket
Oliver Schick
Meanwhile, in campaigner-land: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/11280067/London-will-follow-Paris-and-ban-diesel-cars-campaigners-warn.html