A couple of years ago I blogged about the counterintuitive idea of removing traffic lights to reduce traffic congestion, accidents, pollution & road clutter.
More recently we have seen the results of the fantastic traffic re-engineering scheme in Poynton, Cheshire which shows how much better roads can be for all users.
This morning I was lucky enough to witness an outage of the traffic lights at the junction of Fosse Road and Hinckley Road in Leicester (one of the first junctions to have lights I believe).
Did this lead to crashes, road rage and general chaos?
Absolutely not. What I saw was a textbook example of how Leicester drivers can behave in a sensible and conscientious way when faced with an ambiguous traffic situation. Drivers spotted the lights were out, approached the junction with care and filtered off politely, stopping to allow nervous pedestrians to cross too. In addition, the typical queues that I witness at this junction every morning on my walk to work were completely absent.
Here's a rather shaky phone video of what I witnessed:-
Update 12/06/13 - here's how the junction is at the same time of day with the traffic lights working:-
Tuesday 11 June 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
