Kind cuts

Posted on 14th September 2011 by Martin Cassini

Amid the claims about the inevitability of painful cuts, I’ve lost count of the number of times over the past couple of years that I’ve pitched to editors an article that explains the scope in traffic system reform for painless cuts of tens of billions. Do they commission it? No. An extract from a recent pitch that landed on stony ground:

Traffic control – the last bastion of institutionalised inequality, and a rich source of painless spending cuts

The claim, “There is no alternative to painful spending cuts” is a painful reminder that government and media are missing a huge opportunity. It concerns an area of public expenditure that is overlooked but in dire need of reform: roads. It might sound boring, but we’re all road-users and all affected.

Reform would lead us out of congestion and road safety problems that kill thousands, delay millions, cost billions, stump governments and plague us all. It would disadvantage no-one except the technocrats who have been ruling our lives for too long. The core reform – to replace priority (an engineering model) with equality (a social model) – would eliminate the “need” for most high-cost traffic control, and create a level playing-field on which all road-users could merge in harmony. These ideas are supported by mounting evidence, e.g. our successful lights-off trial in Portishead, and the regeneration of a Cheshire town through the biggest shared space scheme yet seen in the UK.

Scandalously, the precise cost of traffic management is unknown, but it dwarfs the £18bn in welfare cuts that are stoking strike action and striking fear into the poor. My initial analysis (checked and ticked by an accountant) shows there are annual savings of £40bn to be made. In addition, redesigning the public realm would provide sustainable jobs and revitalise the economy.

If you need a peg in addition to the cuts, despite written evidence from myself and another critic of the current system, there is nothing in the Transport Select Committee’s report about the role of traffic lights in causing danger and congestion.

There are some exposés too, but I don’t want to give it all away.

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Missing the point again?

Posted on 8th September 2011 by Martin Cassini

Next Thursday (15.9.11) the Transport Select Committee publishes a report, “Out of the jam – reducing congestion on our roads”. Traffic critic, Kenneth Todd, submitted a well-worded statement, and I submitted something in haste. Today I learned that the report contains nothing about the role of traffic lights in causing congestion. If the Committee bothered to read our submissions, it seems it failed to investigate fully or give them due weight.

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Highway toad

Posted on 8th September 2011 by Martin Cassini

Walking home this afternoon, I was crossing an angled junction, aware that a car had arrived behind me to turn in. I didn’t look up because, according to the Highway Code, pedestrians have right-of-way at junctions. Also I was already crossing, so the driver could wait and turn behind me. But no, it traced an exggerated arc and turned in front of me. Looking up, I saw it was a police car, driven by a WPC. If the police don’t know the Highway Code and how to behave, what hope for the rest? Again, it comes back to culture
change.

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Traffic lights off at night?

Posted on 8th September 2011 by Martin Cassini

The Bristol Evening Post asked for my views about switching off traffic lights at night to save energy. Article here.

The full text of my reply was: In a sense, any advance on the current system of mandatory traffic lights is better than nothing. But does switch-off make more sense in daytime, when other road-users are more visible? Enlightened thinking supported by mounting evidence shows that we’re perfectly capable of negotiating safe movement when left to our own devices. The default setting should be no lights. Only if things prove problematic, e.g. at multi-lane intersections at peak times, should we resort to signal control.

The rules of the road confer unequal rights and responsibilities. They put the onus on pedestrians to beware motorists when it could and should be the other way round. The point is to discourage main road traffic from assuming priority. We should be free to act sociably and give way to others who were there first, as we do in all other walks of life.

Deregulation is not enough on its own. It needs to be combined with culture change to help people unlearn the bad habits of a lifetime instilled by the anti-social rules of the road. To a degree, the change can be achieved through roadway redesign that expresses a social context. The point is to stimulate kindness and empathy: “After you,” instead of “Get out of my way!” Simply switching lights off at night to achieve economic gains seems paltry when comprehensive reform could bring transformational gains across the board.

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The folly of traffic control

Posted on 6th September 2011 by Martin Cassini

On Radio 4’s A Point of View, John Gray discussed Barbara Tuchman who defined folly as pursuit of policy which is demonstrably counterproductive. Quoting from the BBC article: a policy can be identified as folly if it meets three tests. It must have been perceived as counterproductive at the time and not just by hindsight; a feasible alternative must have been available; and the policy must be that of a group and persist over a span of time, not the act of an individual ruler. Spot on with regard to traffic control. As we know from Kenneth Todd, as far back as the 1920s, traffic lights were deemed undesirable. “Roger L. Morrison, Professor of Highway Engineering at the University of Michigan, listed their drawbacks in 1929: delay to traffic; speeding up to beat a green light; running red lights; making detours to avoid lights; contempt for unnecessary traffic regulations; rear-end collisions; helping criminals rob their victims (see Morrison, 1931).” On 5 October 1929, the Washington Herald quoted testimony from renowned traffic expert, William Phelps Eno, before a Senate subcommittee, which included his condemnation of automated traffic signals as “the greatest detriment to the regulation of traffic yet invented”. Eno, Blackmore and the AA all advocated offside priority. Feasible alternative? Equality Streets/filter in turn.

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The IAAF, FIFA, and traffic policy

Posted on 30th August 2011 by Martin Cassini

The IAAF’s one-false-start-and-you’re-disqualified rule is the latest example of joy-killing by regulation-obsessed bureaucrats. The starting gun in athletics should fire at zero in a 5-second countdown. The current system is unpredictable, which prompts false starts. To solve the problem they caused in the first place, officials now punish the victims of their own defective system. In a similar way, priority rather than equality on the roads sets the stage for dangerous conflict, and produces a “need” for traffic regulation in a doomed bid to solve problems contrived by the “experts”.

The IAAF’s stupidity is matched only by FIFA, who should have introduced action replay years ago. Traffic managers and policymakers too, of course, should have reformed the high-cost, counterproductive traffic system by which we still have to live, and 28,000 people have to die, every year.

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What goes around …

Posted on 15th August 2011 by Martin Cassini

Is it far-fetched to suggest that social discontent is prompted by public policy which treats us like morons (most traffic control) or cash cows (fuel duty, parking controls, speed cameras, 0844 phone numbers, etc)? Such public policy failures widen the gap between Them and Us.

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Naughtie but too nice?

Posted on 11th August 2011 by Martin Cassini

In the news today: cuts in government subsidies to local bus services, i.e. a kick in the teeth for the people, against a backdrop of abysmal existing provision, punitive parking controls in towns, and government obsession with a £60bn hi-speed rail link which will do nothing for local communities. The Today Programme’s uncritical coverage prompted this irritable email from me to the editor: “Has your investigative streak finally withered away? There is a solution to the cuts question that I have tried to bring to your attention for months, even years. Our counterproductive traffic control system offers scope for kind cuts which would avoid the “need” for other cuts, and go a long way to solving the entire deficit. They would disadvantage no-one except traffic managers and systems manufacturers who have been ruling our lives to our detriment for too long. You want arguments and evidence? I have them.” That must be the 10th email to the programme (including named editors) which has gone unheeded. I’ve asked this before but I’ll ask it again: just as traffic managers are failing in their duty of care to our time, health, quality of life and the planet, are the broadcasters failing in their duty to air new ideas?

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Is street design enough?

Posted on 4th August 2011 by Martin Cassini

Ben Hamilton-Baillie, street designer and proponent of shared space (he penned the phrase), thinks streetscape redesign is enough on its own, and that streets are designed to express a social context, road-users will instinctively start behaving sociably. I accept that to a degree, but my view is there are other essential elements to make the reforms work. These include culture change, re-education and legal reform. People need to unlearn the bad habits of a lifetime instilled by the anti-social rules of the road. Also there is deep opposition to shared space from the GDA (Guide Dogs Association for the Blind). This is partly because shared space is often confused with shared surfaces = level streets with no kerb or obvious distinction between road and pavement. But there’s more to it. We know the current priority system is inane, inept, wasteful and intrinsically dangerous, but it’s one that people have been brought up with, so it’s asking a lot of pedestrians, especially the most vulnerable, suddenly to trust motorists to give way just because the road surface looks different. Instead of the barbaric situation we have now, where pedestrians have to beware motorists, legal reform would switch the onus so the motorist had to beware the vulnerable road-user. Drivers would become automatically liable unless they could prove a reckless act. In the event of an “accident” with a child under 14, the driver would be liable in any event. That would encourage drivers in busy streets to proceed at walking pace. When there are no children or pedestrians around, they can speed up – a sensible trade-off.

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Good and bad cuts

Posted on 29th July 2011 by Martin Cassini

It’s reported that NHS managers are delaying surgery in the hope that patients will die first or go private. The justification is that the NHS has to find £20bn in spending cuts by 2015. Meanwhile, there is scope in traffic system reform for kind cuts in the order of £40bn a year. So far, my repeated efforts to pitch this exclusive to national broadcasters, editors and government ministers have landed on stony ground. Meanwhile, we continue to suffer expensive regulation that makes roads dangerous, squanders time and money, and costs the earth.

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