Traffic lights Irish Stylee

mike65

In Cork two sets of lights have been bugging me for a while, today I manged to get decent pix of both sets to illustrate thier failings

First Grand Parade which is an ongoing misery for anyone heading into the very centre of the city.

You cannot drive straight ahead from the direction I'm facing which is south leaving Patrick Street.

All is normal on red



Then hey its the "you can go straight on, green light" except you cant (note hoarding on left) and er 'whats the red light for then????' asks stupid tourist.



Finally you can go but only on a right turn and not straight ahead as the lights suggest.



Yes I know I'm being anal but hell those street works are on going for months, so the city council really should tweak the lights to suit.

Mike.

mike65

Rights here's the second set half-way up the long hill towards the airport and Kinsale. These lights are quite new, installed last Autumn.

Note the red on the right.





If you are sat in the middle lane going straight ahead you will reference the red to the right before the two above you this particuarly true if you happen to have a large vehicle blocking the view to your left.

Mike.

Victor

mike65 wrote:

Ahem, you block out the registration plate of the taxi, but keep his taxi number.

Chris_533976

mike65 wrote:

In Cork two sets of lights have been bugging me for a while, today I manged to get decent pix of both sets to illustrate thier failings

First Grand Parade which is an ongoing misery for anyone heading into the very centre of the city.

You cannot drive straight ahead from the direction I'm facing which is south leaving Patrick Street.

All is normal on red



Then hey its the "you can go straight on, green light" except you cant (note hoarding on left) and er 'whats the red light for then????' asks stupid tourist.

[IM G]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/mike65/GrandParadetrafficlight2.jpg[/IMG]

Finally you can go but only on a right turn and not straight ahead as the lights suggest.

[IM G]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/mike65/GrandParadetrafficlight3.jpg[/IMG]

Yes I know I'm being anal but hell those street works are on going for months, so the city council really should tweak the lights to suit.

Mike.

Please, I beg you, if you get bored one day go out with a sledgehammer and an axe and destroy these ****ing lights. I hate them more than anything else in Cork. They are a ridiculously long sequence for traffic wanting to turn right and with the roadworks you end up with a queue going halfway back up Patricks street at the best of the time.

They are awful bloody things.

Pfungstadter

Traffic lights with filters don't seem to be the same everywhere.

The one thing that I don't understand is that the red light for a filter arrow (not a normal green) is just a normal red light, why isn't it a red arrow? shows the driver where to look. It just leads to confusion. Especially if you don't know the road

Lennoxschips

yeah, some of the lights in ireland are very odd, to say the least. those on the airport road look very confusing.

This is how it's done in Holland:



Turning lights have red and orange arrows as well as green ones. This also makes you able to see which lane you should be in when you are approaching more complicated junctions and you can't see the road markings (i.e. the airport road picture as demonstrated earlier)

edit: found better picture

daymobrew

Chris_533976 wrote:

Please, I beg you, if you get bored one day go out with a sledgehammer and an axe and destroy these ****ing lights. I hate them more than anything else in Cork. They are a ridiculously long sequence for traffic wanting to turn right and with the roadworks you end up with a queue going halfway back up Patricks street at the best of the time.

Has anyone contacted Cork County Council Roads department ?
They may not realise the problem.

Victor

Pfungstadter wrote:

The one thing that I don't understand is that the red light for a filter arrow (not a normal green) is just a normal red light, why isn't it a red arrow? shows the driver where to look. It just leads to confusion. Especially if you don't know the road

Its a fail-safe, in case someone sees a red no right turn but doesn't see the no straight on.

Red Alert

if there's red it means red except for any of the lighted arrows. worst case is you get delayed if there's a bulb blown, not killed.

MT

mike65 wrote:

If you are sat in the middle lane going straight ahead you will reference the red to the right before the two above you this particuarly true if you happen to have a large vehicle blocking the view to your left.

Yeah, I’ve seen similar layouts elsewhere, with three lanes but only two lights up on the mast arm. The best solution appears in Lennoxchips post. Having a gantry, or even longer mast arm as the Americans frequently make use of, with three sets of lights in a row would remove much of the confusion. You’d then be sure that the only light that relates to you is the one directly opposite your lane.

In general I find traffic lights down there are often poorly maintained – many of the white surrounds have fallen off without being replaced – and many appear to have been poorly installed too. A variety of different sets have been used over the years, some have backing boards – others don’t, they’re often mounted on bare galvanised poles with sharp edged access doors and a few too many are leaning over. The final failing might suggest a lack of control over the amount of concrete used for their support – surely LAs wouldn’t skimp?!

The other inconsistency is the number of aspects used for pedestrian crossings – some have just two and others three by including an amber ‘man’. Why can’t this be standardised? Similarly there are a number of different pedestrian control buttons in use – standardisation would be more helpful to blind people. And then there’s the inability of councils down there to keep the road markings around lights/junctions properly touched up.

The Dutch junction pictured also demonstrates that warning stripes on roadside structures might best be employed only at junctions/traffic lights and not in the rather random hit and miss fashion that seems popular with councils down south. ‘Stripes here, stripes there but rarely everywhere’ seems to be the motto.

Anyway, here is a British tourist’s summary of the variety on offer in Dublin.

Victor

MT wrote:

The other inconsistency is the number of aspects used for pedestrian crossings – some have just two and others three by including an amber ‘man’.

Cork is all 2-light, Dublin is all 3-light, not sure about the rest.

Why can’t this be standardised? Similarly there are a number of different pedestrian control buttons in use – standardisation would be more helpful to blind people. And then there’s the inability of councils down there to keep the road markings around lights/junctions properly touched up.

Dublin City Council has been on a 10-year cruasade to update virtually all crossings, but realise there are 690 traffic lights and a few hundred pedestrian (pelican) crossings. There are no zebra crossings. The risk with complete standardisation is block obsolesence.

Chris_533976

Cork is beginning to upgrade some of its ped lights. They now have a 30 second timer when the Green Man appears. Very very useful cos you know if you have time for a last minute dash across the road

Trouble is, they've put them on a pile of minor crossings instead of the major ones.

Pfungstadter

as I can see Dublin is changing all of it's lights at the moment

MT

Victor wrote:

Cork is all 2-light, Dublin is all 3-light, not sure about the rest.

But surely something as fundamental as this should be standardised across the country. While I can accept your point about block obsolescence for different manufactured components the design basics should be the same. What next? Will Cork introduce horizontal traffic lights like those in Japan? Might Galway bring in European (triangular) style warning signs? There has to be a certain degree of uniformity to maximise the understanding of warnings and signals by all motorists no matter where they might find themselves.

This ties into the problem I have with the pedestrian buttons. They are so different that a blind persons confidence in using an unfamiliar one is bound to be affected. There’s also the ease and lower costs of replacement to consider if all authorities used the same buttons. How can a country of 60 million manage a standardisation that seems to illusive for one of 4 million?

Couldn’t the various councils and the NRA have at least agreed upon the number of aspects for pelican crossings? As that collection of pics by a tourist demonstrates there’s just far to much inconsistency at present.

Chris533936 wrote:

They now have a 30 second timer when the Green Man appears.

There’s one of those photographed in that link in my previous post at Dublin airport. But again why couldn’t this have been standardised with what uniformity of the practise that does exist in the city where a timer is used as well the amber man and not instead of that aspect?!

Pfungstadter wrote:

as I can see Dublin is changing all of it's lights at the moment

Yeah, the new sets are very well finished and look good on those stainless steel(?) posts. A definite improvement on the mishmash that went before. Plus, it looks as if they’ll stay that way as the surrounds seem unlikely to fall off unlike the Mellor sets.