Today is a big day for road traffic. The schools are back. The school runs are up and running. And today of all days, the main traffic lights in Woodbridge, Suffolk were not working!
You might think this would make the traffic disaster even worse. But no. As predicted by me for years, the pointless addition of traffic lights at the junction of Lime Kiln Quay Road and Thoroughfare only cause traffic problems and increase pollution; they do nothing to improve traffic flow. How often have you seen traffic sitting at a red light with no traffic going through the green lights?
Councillor Cocker has been concerned about the air quality around the junction for some time. It is obviously caused by queues of stationery traffic that were never there before the traffic lights were installed. These queues often reach right back to the other pointless traffic lights at the junction of Quayside and Hamblin Road.
These traffic lights should be removed and replaced with a single or even double mini-roundabout. It would save the electricity, save on maintenance, keep traffic moving, clean up the air, and reduce fuel wastage. The traffic lights might be green some of the time but mini-roundabouts are greener, permanently.
But what about pedestrians? First, many pedestrians totally ignore the “red man” signs that are intended to stop them crossing. They use their common sense and judgement to cross when the road is clear. Secondly, it would be possible to leave pedestrian-controlled lights in Lime Kiln Quay Road, which would be left at “green” for traffic and only changed to “red” when a pedestrian needed to cross, not simply at a timed interval.
There is a precedents: About twenty years ago in Brentwood, Essex, a complex mis-aligned crossroads at Wilson's Corner had traffic lights. The day they failed, the usual long queues of traffic on the four approaches dissipated. The responsible authority was bold enough to listen to the grapevine suggestions that the traffic lights had been causing the congestion, not alleviating it. They installed temporary, experimental double-mini-roundabouts and the traffic continued to flow reasonably and "fairly" – allowing the volume of traffic to automatically adjust priorities. And the multiple-mini-roundabouts are still working successfully today, with far higher traffic volumes than twenty years ago.
Come on Woodbridge/SCDC/SCC – get our traffic moving again!
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