Traffic lights out - no chaos

While taking my daughter to school today the traffic lights that we cross were not working due to a power cut.  The junction is reasonably busy with parents dropping off their children and shoppers driving into the supermarket car park which are both close.

I stayed to watch the traffic as I know that traffic lights are not very effective or efficient at managing traffic.  The fact that we all take them for granted is the principle reason that they are still in use.  There are cases where traffic lights have been removed but this is because there has been great public opposition when people can clearly see how things were before and after traffic lights are introduced.  This happened at the Cabstand junction in Portishead near Bristol where it was shown that the £800,000 lights doubled the congestion.

Here in West Dorset traffic management is very backward and there is no strategy other than more robotic management, the fact that it doesn't work or that other more enlightened councils are taking the opposite approach does not trouble us.

But today a power cut has given us the opportunity to see what happens when the lights do not work.  It must be remembered that there were no warning signs, nobody directing traffic, no substitute system such as a rounderbout, just driver awareness and common sense.    This junction has one other feature; it has a very narrow road to the west so that in normal operation it is treated as contraflow - one way traffic in turns.  This is generally the reason that the lights are thought to be there, to manage this long narrow approach to the junction.

 

   I took some video of what happened but to summarize; traffic slowed down as drivers were unsure of who had priority as the lights were not working.  The drivers looked more carefully before moving and negotiated with other drivers in the usual way with hand gestures, there was no horn blowing, no arguments and no jam.

The different temperaments of drivers was evident, from the overcautious to a few that didn't notice that there was no light and carried on regardless - the most dangerous situation.  Most drivers used the junction in a safe and timely fashion and got through quicker than usual.

As usual pedestrians and cyclists were treated as secondary, and lost out the most.  Drivers seem not to realise that these unmotorised travellers may want to follow a journey of their own, but there was enough space for them to use the junction. 

All in all the lights going off made everybody's journey quicker, the only wait was when someone else was in the way, which everybody coped with.