A to Z Challenge: Traffic Light Syncing
Apr. 24th, 2015 07:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdeb(Oops, forgot to post yesterday.)
The traffic engineers in my town are not good at syncing the traffic lights. There is this scary thing called math that could help.
I used to think it was just my part of town, under the assumption that I live in the same neighborhood and somebody's evil ex. But this appears to be the case in many parts of town.
On one of my trips the other day, it looked like someone had decided to turn all the lights along a street green (and then red) at the same time. No, that is not a good way to sync your lights.
The traffic engineers in my town are not good at syncing the traffic lights. There is this scary thing called math that could help.
I used to think it was just my part of town, under the assumption that I live in the same neighborhood and somebody's evil ex. But this appears to be the case in many parts of town.
On one of my trips the other day, it looked like someone had decided to turn all the lights along a street green (and then red) at the same time. No, that is not a good way to sync your lights.
no subject
on 2015-04-24 08:01 pm (UTC)When I ride over to the Platte river to meet CatMan for our bike rides, I have to cross a fairly major 6 lane thoroughfare. Thankfully there's a stoplight with a push-button crosswalk where the bike path crosses it. But for reasons that I just can't understand, they have it set up so that during busy traffic times it takes FOREVER to change. Seriously, you can see that there are red lights a block or two in either direction forcing traffic to stop anyhow, but for some reason the crosswalk light won't change. The result is that LOTS of people take their chances and try to cross without the light. It scares the pants off of me though because this particular street has the highest pedestrian/cyclist kill rate of any place in the entire Denver metro area. I always wonder how many lives could be saved if they'd just sync that stupid crosswalk signal better.
Sigh.
-Cat
no subject
on 2015-04-24 08:25 pm (UTC)The light nearest my house takes 1 minute and 15 seconds to cycle (which feels like forever), and it only cycles if there's a car in the left-turning lane (you have to turn right or left) or if a pedestrian pushes the walk button. (It might also cycle if a bike is in the left-turning lane, but I have not yet witnessed that scenario.)
The second-closest light to me says that pedestrians should go right when a functionally infinite line of cars is trying to turn left through the crosswalk. There is another part of the cycle where there are no cars, though one lane does have a green light for some reason, and that's when I cross. Robin has learned to just follow my lead when we're walking somewhere because I'm more likely to "understand" how the intersections work (for pedestrians).