Projection much

The DOT planning department I worked for (in the 80s) had studies showing that synchronizing the lights 10-15mph ABOVE the speed limit kept traffic flowing "optimally" to minimize congestion without having to expand the infrastructure (mostly: lanes). Even today I see city traffic lights synchronized mostly +10mph over the posted limit in the direction of highest flow on major arteries - you can tell when you "make" one yellow light, then lock in cruise control at limit+10 and "make" the next 3+ lights at exactly the same flash of yellow as you approach.

They do this to delay improvement projects like additional lanes, straightening curves, etc. by showing a higher "level of service" for the roadway than they would have with the lights synchronized at, say: speed limit -10mph. If you're talking about a 45mph roadway, moving the cars at 55mph instead of 35mph means 157% as many vehicles per hour at the same spacing, and we all know that people don't actually increase following distances at higher speeds, so... it's a real, and significant difference. Not as significant as getting people to carpool, or take public transit, but that's about as likely to happen as increasing following distances.

"Essentially, rather than encouraging drivers to speed up by presenting an endless succession of green lights, this strategy makes red the default state for lights on a busy road. When traffic approaches the red light, the cycle triggers. Traffic moving faster than the limit will approach the light while it’s still red, forcing it to slow or stop for the light before it changes, while traffic moving at the limit will be met with a perfectly-timed green.

Drive the limit, in other words, and you’re rewarded with a constant rhythm of green lights."

That's why the title makes sense

If it scales with income, it stays a punishment.

In France they installed roundabouts. And a lot of them. I mean really a lot! It works.

If it scales with wealth. The rich are very good at hiding their income.

Username checks out

Of course you will. Toxic individualists always put their own convenience above the safety of others.

I agree - I should have said medium mixed zoning as that's what I was intending to convery :)

Also, for wheelchair users like me, higher density would probably lead to cheaper delivery services of all kinds - Walmart has that market cornered at the moment, and I hate that it's Walmart that figured it out. :|

engineers who set up the timing cycles

The engineers who set up the timing cycles in my DOT planning department set the cycles to run over the speed limit intentionally to get more cars per hour through the same roadway compared with moving them slower. Accident statistics were equivocal - similar accident rates at or +10 above the speed limit, but that is a politically charged statement, so you don't say it loudly.

Herd animal instincts, desire to lead the pack...

More efficient is more cars per hour. When cars move faster, you can get more cars per hour through those intersections when the lights are green.

Big box grocery is a big part of the problem. We've got a relative abundance of grocery stores here - in US terms, but that means a 2-5 mile interval between then, and who is going to walk several miles carrying groceries? It doesn't help when competing groceries open directly across the street from each other, but even fixing that and making distribution of the current stores more even, there would still be a lot of the population 2+ miles to the nearest store, in our relatively high density suburban "core". Get that down to a maximum of 1km from every home to the nearest grocery and you're starting to have a walkable / bikeable solution for food.

As for bikes, we also have near-zero practical support for biking to get your groceries - starting to get something calling itself bike lanes, but they're not terribly safe looking, and then you get to the store and you're extremely lucky if there's even a rack provided to lock the bike to - the racks that do exist seem to be in direct conflict with pedestrian use of the sidewalks.

implement whatever measures will slow them down

Spike strips?

more along the lines of losing one’s license.

Don't forget that the wealthy can afford lawyers to forestall license revocation, usually indefinitely.

state seizure of the vehicle

Sure, no problems with power-tripping LEOs yet, let's give them more ability to abuse their position arbitrarily.

less perverse incentive for law enforcement to just grab things for shits, giggles and greed

Shits, giggles and power trips are the only reason most LEOs get into the career in the first place. If they're greedy, they go into politics.

that road is slower, calmer, no road rage or angry drivers and everyone gets through in less time

Perception is a funny thing. Experiencing road rage and anger distorts one's sense of how much time something takes. The true test of "everyone gets through in less time" is a clock and a car counter.

the location of the sensor for going the speed limit

Unfortunately, placing sensors that far back from the intersection is costly, both in initial installation and maintenance. Most sensors in the US are right at the stop-lines for the intersection only (with frustrating effect when an overly light scooter or other phenomenon stops the sensor from sensing a vehicle).

Nothing angers drivers more

Most traffic engineering ignores driver mood - it's difficult to quantify and harder still to place a value on.

Citizen rage and complaints to politicians are effective inputs to the system to get an area examined, but once the examination starts, mood generally doesn't enter into the equations.

already becoming more of a problem.

Lots of cars on lots of roads with lots of traffic lights has been "a thing" for 80+ years now, nothing about it is "becoming more of a problem" - we're pretty much at steady state for many years now. Always was a problem, still is the leading cause of death for children aged 1 to 13, but not much changes.

In the last 30 years some major technological advances have rather dramatically improved safety, and I'm not talking about air bags or traction control (though anti-lock brakes do help significantly) - the big one nobody seems to acknowledge is: tire technology. Comparing modern tires to tires from the 1960s/70s - it's amazing there weren't more horrible crashes back then than there were.

And people who can't handle their own lives ask the government to help. Don't be naive

The best way to stop drivers from speeding is to take their licence if the caught speeding

Interesting... I'm curious to know more about the details of that experiment. I could think of a few hypotheses for why that might've happened.

My first thought is maybe that particular road's speed limit was just lower than what it should be? If the road design and location allow for a similar level of safety at a higher speed, the limit itself might just be a bit too conservative.

Or, perhaps the previous cycle timings weren't as effective at slowing down drivers as first thought? I don't know the previous circumstances, though.

There's also the possibility that speed-reducing measures just don't have much of an impact on overall safe driving behaviors, and that dangerous drivers are going to drive dangerously no matter how fast they're able to go. I could even see the possibility of a negative feedback loop in which being constantly being slowed down by red light cycles frustrates aggressive drivers into engaging in other dangerous behaviors, i.e. running reds.

If it's that last case... Yeah, I don't really know what you do with that one. I would hope that safer driving could be encouraged through positive reinforcement, because the alternatives for negative reinforcement are either a massive ramp-up in police traffic enforcement, or aggressive use of speed cameras and automated ticketing. I do not think that making people have more encounters with US police officers would do anything good for public safety, and while speed cameras could work in principle, they would be massively unpopular, and career suicide for any politician that tries to make a push for it.

Bullshit

There’s one street in a major metro near me that has been timed this way for decades and it’s incredibly noticeable because it is a dead straight thoroughfare through a few dozen small blocks of housing. You can see the next 3-5 lights lined up ahead of you at all times. You absolutely learn to pace yourself so you aren’t stopping/starting constantly, looking like an idiot when you get to the next light too fast and have to stop and then watch slow cruising cars whip past you when the light turns green. It’s like a game. I think about nothing else when I’m on that street. Not even remotely new, and it definitely works. But you have to pick which big street gets this treatment and then all streets intersecting with it have to work around that.

Nothing that involves the phrase "more cars" is more efficient. Cars are massively inefficient monuments to toxic individualism and ecocidal narcissism.

there's a similar street that they're recently changed like that in my small city. it's a 25 street. my bike only does 20 until fix the front derailleur. if i catch the front of the wave and don't have anything heavy in my basket i can usually make 4 or 5 lights in a row before i hit a red and it's glorious.

Please dont put anymore roundabouts in the US until its included in the drivers license test. Every trip to work is a gamble and I have to slam my breaks while in the circle at least once a day, people will even use the right turn only lane to go fully around...

Good point!!

Speed-reducing measures just don’t have much of an impact on overall safe driving behaviors, and that dangerous drivers are going to drive dangerously no matter how fast the speed limit and green light sync are, that's pretty much a given.

In another county, somebody decided they wanted to screw with a 2 lane road out in the country and they narrowed the lanes - didn't change the existing 40mph limit, not putting in space in the median, but squeezing the oncoming lanes together in the middle. Said it would "increase safety" through reduced speed, meanwhile the lanes were so narrow that school buses had to drive over the rain/rumble strips in many places to not cross the center line. Sometimes BS is just BS, a politician wanted it, so a politician got it. I called them on it, asked to see the studies backing up their statements, they didn't have any.

i can point to specific roads in local cities that they probably used for those studies. been that way for a few decades now out in sacramento specifically. they shifted the lanes a little bit, narrowed the road, and moved the curb/sidewalk/crosswalk such that (1) there's less road to cross and (2) traffic slows down because the road naturally slows down before the crosswalk. also added botts dotts to give a little rumble as you cross the crosswalk in your car.

More like horseshit - and if you're smelling it, you're not in the lead.

More cars per hour is less cars stuck in traffic on the roads... the number of cars is a given, getting them off the road ASAP is the goal.

Power tripping murderpigs and ecocidal narcissists with their two-ton pollution powered people crushers are basically equivalent evils, anything that pits them against each other without adding any risk to pedestrians is a win.

i paid you tacos. that landing was worse than i thought

i don't think i've even taken my foot off the brake on that stretch.

also, note to any y'all who want to visit, it's a gorgeous walk down the street but you do not want to drive it. this photo does not do the grade justice

there'd be a car in front of them to brake their descent

Yep. My hometown went to speed limit timed lights over 20 years ago. It was fantastic if you could catch the “Green Wave” and make ot all the way through a busy part of town without stopping.

I had a friend who had an apartment in Hamburg, roughly 600m from an S-Bahn station. within 50m of that station was the neighborhood grocery. You walk up to take the train to wherever, and on your way home you stop off in the Biergarten first, have a few, then stop in the grocery before walking home - downhill no less for the arms full of packages side of the trip. Not a bad layout, but about half the residents still had cars parked all over the streets which they used more or less daily. So, in some ways, the US arrangement just doesn't bother with the under-utilized trains, but it also eliminates them as an option which really sucks when you want to go to the airport, or take an inter-city train somewhere...

Yeah, we get it. You think any limit on you doing exactly as you please at all times irrespective of the consequences to others is somehow a massive violation of your human rights.

the number of cars is a given,

No the number of cars is a policy choice.

Nobody is forcing cities and counties to only build for the carbrained, they do that on their own. If they'd make driving less convenient and transit more convenient, the number of cars would decrease significantly.

i drove it once just to say i did. mercifully downhill and one-way at least.

Dude, I don't like speeding as much as the next guy. You miss the point though. Aggressive driving paired with high speed is a problem. If someone wants to move more quickly than me on a highway it's no problem. It becomes an issue when someone is being excessively dangerous. You talk like going 1mph over the speed limit is a moral failure when in reality you're mad at the wrong person.

No, you miss the point.

The problem is cars existing at all as personal transportation. The solution is to make driving as miserable a fucking experience as possible until the ecocidal narcissists finally give up. They'll never choose the right thing over their own convenience, so the wrong thing needs to be made far more inconvenient.

I'm in favor of absolutely anything that forces drivers to follow traffic laws, even when they could otherwise get away with not doing so, because it will piss off the worst people on the world and also save pedestrian and cyclist lives.

If they’d make driving less convenient and transit more convenient, the number of cars would decrease significantly.

Of course you're talking about billions of dollars in construction projects, is it you in the construction industry, or a family member? It took 100 years of infrastructure build to get here, it's going to take quite a few to change course.

Making life worse for the average person only to annoy a few assholes? Again, that is extremely authoritarian.