Designing for danger

Posted on 16th June 2012 by Martin Cassini

The priority-based system is designed for danger (unequal rights, conflicting speeds, distracting signals, etc), then traffic officers devise increasingly expensive systems (more of the above, pedestrian countdown, etc)  to mitigate the danger they themselves have cooked up. You can of course design for safety, pace Equality Streets. Somehow, lily-livered politicians have ceded power to unelected officials who lord it over us to our detriment and at our cost. Any old irony?

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Brassed off

Posted on 6th June 2012 by Martin Cassini

Today I was timing the traffic lights in Braunton (near Barnstaple) where I still have plans for a lights-off trial, despite a refusal from Devon Highways and apathy from the current Parish Council. The trial is to prove the obvious: that we’re better off under self-control, without lights or priority. 45 secs of red time for the main A39, 40 secs for Caen Rd to/ from Croyde. There is no pedestrian phase; as the lights change against one stream of traffic, they change for the other. Once, I was crossing the junction on foot as the lights changed. I didn’t run. Why should I? I have just as much right to the road space – or I should have. In doing so, I delayed a Mercedes, first in line, by maybe two seconds. As I reached the pavement and he set off, he sounded his horn which echoed incongruously around the village, prompting a middle finger from me. Of course I blame the driver far less than I blame the traffic control system which turns Jekylls into Hydes.

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Equality = no austerity

Posted on 4th June 2012 by Martin Cassini

Does Will Hutton have a tendency to exaggerate bad news? In this piece, he quotes economics professor, Yanis Varoufakis: “There is zero chance of austerity working. It’s like thinking you can escape gravity by waving your arms up and down.” Broadsheet comment used to be all about the inevitability of painful cuts. Now it’s all about the desirability of growth. Will wants government to borrow, and quotes Keynes in his defence. I can’t quote anyone in support of me (yet), but at the risk of repetition: without needing to shell out vast sums, traffic system reform can provide growth and tens of billions of painless cuts. OK, Will is talking in trillions. Hundreds of trillions in bad bank contracts and loans. Underwritten by governments. So “private bank debt has steadily become public debt … where the gains were privatised and the losses socialised.” So much for the “free” market. But Equality Streets would still do more good on more levels, I submit, than most of the pendulum-swinging proposed in this article.

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Wind or traffic lights?

Posted on 3rd June 2012 by Martin Cassini

Proposed cuts to windfarm subsidies are rattling recipients, and challenging government claims to be “the greenest ever”. No less a seer than James Lovelock rubbished the claims made for wind power. I’m blue from saying it, but not only can traffic system reform provide vast efficiency savings, kind cuts, growth, improved air quality and quality of life, it can cut emissions and help achieve CO2 reduction targets, all at minimal cost. Is anyone listening?

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Guernsey, the home of FiT (filter in turn), gets a traffic light

Posted on 2nd June 2012 by Martin Cassini

Article here.

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One roundabout, 70 traffic lights

Posted on 2nd June 2012 by Martin Cassini

Funny how Highways Agency spokespersons are never named. The roundabout is at Canford Bottom, near Bournemouth. Article and photograph here.

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Tale of a late-night driver

Posted on 1st June 2012 by Martin Cassini

Courtesy of imgur

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Parking

Posted on 31st May 2012 by Martin Cassini

PM had an item claiming traffic wardens are welcome back after a break from duty (no April Fool apparently). No-one minds reasonable regulation, but parking enforcement is overwhelmingly unreasonable, vexatious, even extortionate. How many times have we been ticketed, clamped or towed for inoffensive, non-obstructive parking?

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Brick walls

Posted on 30th May 2012 by Martin Cassini

Our traffic control system makes roads dangerous, causes congestion, generates ill-will, encourages delinquency, damages air quality, damages our health, and costs a fortune. Despite my efforts to enlighten government and media (over the years I’ve emailed the Today programme a dozen times without reply), they remain blithely ignorant of its defects and potential for both constructive spending cuts and economic growth.

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Strange brew

Posted on 28th May 2012 by Martin Cassini

In her Four Thought, Kate Smurthwaite told us that donkeys receive more in charity than homeless humans. The acres of newsprint and hours of airtime devoted to phone hacking also reveal eccentric priorities, considering the dearth of coverage devoted to the humans, many of them children, who are killed on our roads every day – not through any fault of their own but because of a traffic control system which imposes inferior rights on the vulnerable road-user – in defiance of common law principles of equal rights and responsibilities – and then inconveniences and makes us pay through the nose for additional controls that fail to address the cancer at the heart of the system. I often pitch articles to the press and pitch programmes on the subject to TV, but they aren’t interested.

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