A Traffic Light Experiment

kona

I've decided to record the behaviour of the traffic lights on my commute, I use the same route everyday, which takes me past 20 traffic lights during a 5 mile commute.

Today I counted that I was stopped at 10 of them, which I reckon added almost 10mins onto my commute.

So that means that I have to stop at 50% of the lights I come across. The reason Im posting this is because of the 10 lights I was stopped at I'd say 3 were red for no reason because they were pedestrian lights, which were giving a green man for nobody.
Thats almost 3mins of me standing there, along with traffic like a dick. Surely DCC should do a survey of this because they are adding to congestion for a start, and are a pain in the ass.

I'm trying to figure out what the cyclists who ignore traffic lights gain?

Anybody want to join in and post their results tomorrow morning?

poochiem

kona wrote: »

I've decided to record the behaviour of the traffic lights on my commute, I use the same route everyday, which takes me past 20 traffic lights during a 5 mile commute.


Anybody want to join in and post their results tomorrow morning?

that's a good idea... had this discussion over coffees with members of various transport modal choices, the general conclusion was not the George Hook theory that Irish people can't drive at 30kph nor are they worse jaywalkers than anyone else but that Irish drivers don't observe the pedestrian's right of way on a zebra crossing so we have to put shaggin traffic lights on every crossing no matter if its only used for 5 minutes a day at school time.

In Italy and I think Germany the traffic lights are all turned off (eg all green or all amber) at midnight, and caution is advised.

I'll keep an eye tomorrow and see how many of the pointless reds I waste minutes on.

sexpot

I think I gain a few mins for not stopping at SOME red lights. I stop at the majority of red lights because it's unsafe to keep going. I will only break a light if it's absolutely safe.

I think this is one of the advantages of cycling, not having to stop at some lights or take some roads etc. I'm all for breaking red lights, sometimes.

Poochiem: You ever been to Rome? we went on a college trip last year and were advised to step out in front of cars as that's the only way to cross the road, they always gave right of way once you stepped off the footpath, still very dangerous though. This is probably not realy that relevant actually

SerialComplaint

kona wrote: »

3 were red for no reason because they were pedestrian lights, which were giving a green man for nobody.

Probably means that a ped pressed the button, then skipped across the road without waiting for the green man. When the green man appears later, the ped has gone.

blorg

I looked at this before as my Garmin has a "stopped time" counter which simply counts up all the time you are not moving. I found I was stopped substantially less than it "felt" I was stopped. Like really surprisingly less. I will confess that I will take a left on red if it is clear.

buffalo

There's a pedestrian light on Cork Street that goes even if nobody presses the button. I've waited at the bus stop there before, and it goes every three or four minutes. No junction, just a pedestrian crossing. Stand there long enough, you see cars just fly through it. It's a stupid sequence.

The other thing I noticed last week on a morning commute (which is from Harold's Cross down Clanbrassil St, up Dame St, and on to Eden Quay) was a guy who broke every light he could. I was on my old banger of a bike, and I still ultimately overtook him on Eden Quay.
Same as the 30kmph limit - it's not the speed you go at, it's the lights that decide how long your journey is. If we could get shorter sequences, or more flashing amber lights at ped crossing, it'd be a fine thing.

electrogrimey

I run red lights, but mostly only pedestrian lights, or at those silly times where all the lights at a junction are red for good minute (which seem to be made so cyclists can get a good headstart on the cars :pac:).

I also vaguely hold the opinion that as cyclists are given so little respect by the council (terrible, dangerous cyclelanes etc) we have no choice but to more or less invent our own, safer, rules of the road, until they provide the facilities so that we can safely abide by theirs.

Lumen

electrogrimey wrote: »

I run red lights...I also vaguely hold the opinion that as cyclists are given so little respect by the council (terrible, dangerous cyclelanes etc) we have no choice but to more or less invent our own, safer, rules of the road, until they provide the facilities so that we can safely abide by theirs.

How convenient.

Jumpy

electrogrimey wrote: »

I run red lights, but mostly only pedestrian lights, or at those silly times where all the lights at a junction are red for good minute (which seem to be made so cyclists can get a good headstart on the cars :pac:).

I also vaguely hold the opinion that as cyclists are given so little respect by the council (terrible, dangerous cyclelanes etc) we have no choice but to more or less invent our own, safer, rules of the road, until they provide the facilities so that we can safely abide by theirs.

And thus increasing the "us and them" gap with motorists. Bravo good sir.

Take the lane by all means, its a way to stop you getting killed, but leave the red lights alone. Do it for other cyclists.

swingking

sexpot wrote: »

I think I gain a few mins for not stopping at SOME red lights. I stop at the majority of red lights because it's unsafe to keep going. I will only break a light if it's absolutely safe.

I think this is one of the advantages of cycling, not having to stop at some lights or take some roads etc. I'm all for breaking red lights, sometimes.

How dare you think it's okay to break lights. The lights are put there for a
reason. I'm sick of nearly being mowed down by cyclists such as yourself when crossing the road.

You should have more cop-on when using the roads or else don't use them. Very ignorant attitude and I prey to God you are not involved in a collision due to selfishness and stupidity :mad:

onesoma

Lumen wrote: »

How convenient.

Jumpy wrote: »

And thus increasing the "us and them" gap with motorists. Bravo good sir.

swingking wrote: »

How dare you think it's okay to break lights.

what's with all the political correctness? i break red lights all the time, constantly. as do most cyclists and pedestrians.

electrogrimey's stance is entirely honourable - civil disobedience / peaceful protest.

Lumen

onesoma wrote: »

what's with all the political correctness? i break red lights all the time, constantly. as do most cyclists and pedestrians.

electrogrimey's stance is entirely honourable - civil disobedience / peaceful protest.

It has nothing to do with political correctness.

Peds can "break red lights" because they are not subject to the ROTR. Cyclists are.

You can't expect to be taken seriously as a road user if you're not prepared to abide by the ROTR.

When cyclists act like pedestrians, they are likely to get treated like pedestrians - just look at the way cycle tracks in Dublin are designed.

Every road user may feel that they have a grievance with some aspect of the system under which they are operating. By the same logic taxi drivers might feel they can jump red lights because of their perception that the licensing system has been misregulated and they have to earn a living.

It is difficult to express this without sounding sanctimonious. It's not something that keeps me awake at night, I just think that it makes sense to do the right thing, regardless of what others do.

It is no great hardship to stop at a light with the other traffic.

Hagar

kona wrote: »

I'm trying to figure out what the cyclists who ignore traffic lights gain?

Anybody want to join in and post their results tomorrow morning?

Are you honestly asking people to break the law and post the results here to encourage other people to do it? :eek:

peterako

69 wrote: »

Are you honestly asking people to break the law and post the results here to encourage other people to do it? :eek:

No, I think the survey is (I think):

STOP at Red light.

If the red light is red for no apparrent reason (eg. NO traffic crossing....no pedestrians crossing etc.) time how long you are stationary (sic?) for...

Add these times up on your commute and...hey presto....there's the time lost by NOT breaking THOSE red lights.

I in no way condone breaking red lights.....but as a pedestrian, cyclist and car driver I am amazed (or maybe not ) at the lack of REAL traffic management in Ireland.

Luckily I live in the coluntryside so traffic lights when I go for my cycles are a rarity...

DirkVoodoo

69 wrote: »

Are you honestly asking people to break the law and post the results here to encourage other people to do it? :eek:

I think you misread.

It looks like kona is asking people to add up the time "lost" at traffic lights and see what percentage of their commute this amounts to.

Unfortunately there are times when you HAVE to go through a red light as if it were a yield, ones that operate on sensors don't see bikes so it's not really realistic for a cyclist to wait at a junction in the hope that a car might come along. This is not the same as sailing through major junctions however and I'm not advocating it, just pointing out that situations do exist.

EDIT: I love stopping at red really, gives me a chance to work on trackstanding. Getting there, slowly but surely...

ednwireland

whats a traffic light ? ( i think theres one 20 miles up the road) (its friday allright)

Chips Lovell

Oh god.

(Looks at thread and then hastily backs away towards the door).

DirkVoodoo

ednwireland wrote: »

whats a traffic light ? ( i think theres one 20 miles up the road) (its friday allright)

Are you from Leitrim? My mate from Leitrim says there is only one set of traffic lights there.

Hagar

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

I think you misread.

I don't think so. The change in journey time is not simply adding up the times of the red lights. By going through the first red light you change the sequence of all subsequent lights that you meet and you could meet red lights that would have been green the first time, arrive at a red light which changes in 5 seconds etc etc. You can't simply take the full time of a red light of the journey.

You must do the journey to get the true time taken and the only way to do that is to break the law as per the OP.

DirkVoodoo

69 wrote: »

I don't think so. The change in journey time is not simply adding up the times of the red lights. By going through the first red light you change the sequence of all subsequent lights that you meet and you could meet red lights that would have been green the first time, arrive at a red light which changes in 5 seconds etc etc. You can't simply take the full time of a red light of the journey.

You must do the journey to get the true time taken and the only way to do that is to break the law as per the OP.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. There are two times he is interested in: the absolute time based on a clear run and the time lost from stopping at all red lights you encounter.

If you stop at the first red light then any other hypothesizing about "if I had left 2 minutes earlier, this might not have happened" or "now I've gone through a green this is going to mess everything up". The best way to do it is add the times over a period of a month and get the average, I mean it hardly needs to be scientific, I don't see why you are getting so worried about it.

By true time you mean clear run? Well, if you can guess your average speed over the route with any degree of accuracy and honesty then you can work out your "true" time from google maps. Over most commutes the error will be pretty small seeing as the distances are short and people are not going to be too far out on their average speed guesses. So no, law breaking not required.

ednwireland

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

Are you from Leitrim? My mate from Leitrim says there is only one set of traffic lights there.

nah donegal, we have loads more than those boggers in leitrim (but we put most of them in letterkenny to annoy them city slickers )

thought i'd better put a smilie in there before someone gets offended by comments from a blow in

DirkVoodoo

@69: If you want it done in your absolute way (which I think is pointless, I think the "average" waiting time on the route is more accurate) then all you need do is stop at every set of lights you encounter, wait for them to turn red and start counting. You would be very unlucky to get stopped at every set of lights AS they turn red, but it would give you the two extremes...clear run and most unlucky commute. Good luck!

victorcarrera

kona wrote: »

Anybody want to join in and post their results tomorrow morning?

I don't have an urban commute at present so I can't reply directly to that, but I lived and worked in Dublin from 1982 to 1996 so I witnessed the creation of the mess that now persists.
After one week of commuting by car between Balinteer and Ballsbridge I decided not to take part in it and bought a commuter motorcycle.
Back then, due to technical or industrial relation problems we had regular ESB Power outages and the general opinion in the office was that traffic congestion was greatly reduced when the traffic lights were not working.
I travelled regularly to Manchester then and couldnt believe the difference in traffic flow all because they used roundabouts wherever they could.
The story going round in Dublin at the time was that the corpo had ordered too many lights an justified it by putting them up everywhere.
Because of their start stop operation traffic lights essentially are a very inefficient way of processing intersecting road users as in most cases they are not observed and have no inbuilt intelligence. A much more efficient system could be designed based on the intelligence and altruism of the road users maybe similar to the way ants or bees move around in a hive without injuring or killing each other.
I think most of our urban road users are accustomed to the traffic light culture now so they have adaptod by just leaving earlier. Its the one who is running late you have to watch out for.

dave.obrien

I remember reading an article in some architecture magazine (and as I say this I realise my position is weakened by not having any references, and I couldn't be bothered hunting them out because my office is not that tidy) which carried out a survey on various parts of London, and came to the conclusion that congestion and traffic collisions would be lessened by a drastic reduction in traffic lights and traffic signage. The logic behind it was that drivers view these objects as things which do the thinking for them, and pay less attention to what is actually on the road. If this comfort blanket was removed, they would be forced to be more perceptive and as a result would be safer drivers. I think it's a sketchy claim, and remember thinking that they basically collated data and then used that to support a claim they wanted to make anyway, which is hardly scientific, but then again, unless you want to do what DirkVoodoo suggests, I'm not sure how scientific this study would be.

Sorry, got a little off topic there...

Lumen

victorcarrera wrote: »

we had regular ESB Power outages and the general opinion in the office was that traffic congestion was greatly reduced when the traffic lights were not working....Because of their start stop operation traffic lights essentially are a very inefficient way of processing intersecting road users as in most cases they are not observed and have no inbuilt intelligence. A much more efficient system could be designed based on the intelligence and altruism of the road users maybe similar to the way ants or bees move around in a hive without injuring or killing each other.

I'm sure a qualified urban planner could comment more authoritatively, but I believe that roundabouts only provide better throughput with low to medium traffic densities.

Whilst I'm not in favour of blanketing the country with surveillance devices like in the UK, I do believe that better yellow box enforcement would help keep things moving. There is a certain amount of inevitable game playing that goes on once traffic density rises above a certain point, with people effectively being forced to enter a yellow box because everyone else is.

jaqian

I think it is time for an update to the ROTR for cyclists...

Like in America I think it should be legal to turn left on red if the coast is clear.

I also think that our traffic lights should be the same as England where they go red-amber-green. Cyclists should get a five second start and be allowed to go on amber ahead of motorised traffic.

What do ye think?

Tradnuts

jaqian wrote: »

I think it is time for an update to the ROTR for cyclists...

Like in America I think it should be legal to turn left on red if the coast is clear.

I also think that our traffic lights should be the same as England where they go red-amber-green. Cyclists should get a five second start and be allowed to go on amber ahead of motorised traffic.

What do ye think?

It seems to make perfect sense to me, the English system. People (cars and bikes) are much quicker off the mark, and thus moves things along a lot quicker, maybe an extra 2/3 cars get through for each sequence.

I'm constantly annoying my girlfriend, commenting that we are all 'all stopped for no reason'. where 15 cars are waiting on one side, 20 on the other, and yet the road that has a green light has no cars on it.....Really annoying, but also, so bad for the environment. In my example, thats 35 cars ticking over, wasting fuel, wasting money, emitting carbon.
All for no reason.

blorg

jaqian wrote: »

I also think that our traffic lights should be the same as England where they go red-amber-green. Cyclists should get a five second start and be allowed to go on amber ahead of motorised traffic.

What do ye think?

Wouldn't work here as drivers do not see amber as meaning "stop" but "accelerate."

Lumen

The UK system is actually:

Red
Red/Amber
Green
Amber

In the UK there are traffic light cameras almost everywhere and in my experience it is very rare for people to break them.

victorcarrera

Lumen wrote: »

I'm sure a qualified urban planner could comment more authoritatively.QUOTE]

I'm sure they couldn't.
Examples like M50 fiasco (no need to expand on that one), catchment area of Dart (50% of it is the irish sea). Luas lines with no conectivity and more on topic lets not forget the subsequent installation of traffic lights on roundabouts as an afterthought.
Irish planning strategy is simple and has only two rules.
1. Ignore existing demographics and predictions.
2. Let the infrastructure catch up in its own time.

According to a recent news bulletin Dublin's poor planning is now being used internationally as a worst case example of how not to do it.

You see we have had a bit of a problem with over here with the concept of planning. Planning in ireland is usually a result of a meeting of criminal minds, namely politicians, bankers and developers.
Only two irish government ministers have been jailed so far. Ok a few more are resigning lately and the bankers and developers have been found out. But the urban decay and decline they have created will remain.

jaqian

blorg wrote: »

Wouldn't work here as drivers do not see amber as meaning "stop" but "accelerate."

True but this is different. You are already stopped, the amber tells you to get ready to go as green is next. So letting the cyclists go on amber would give you a few seconds head start before lights went green.

Hagar

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

@69: If you want it done in your absolute way (which I think is pointless, I think the "average" waiting time on the route is more accurate) then all you need do is stop at every set of lights you encounter, wait for them to turn red and start counting. You would be very unlucky to get stopped at every set of lights AS they turn red, but it would give you the two extremes...clear run and most unlucky commute. Good luck!

I accept the theoretical merits of your mathematical approach, but there is an obvious flaw. You are assuming that you can go through red lights everytime thereby saving the two minutes or whatever. In reality there will be cross traffic on many/most occasions that will prevent this. You may get through some junctions handy enough on the red but to assume that you will be able to do it on every one is going to yield a wildly optimistic journey time. The only way to find out is get out and peddle and hope you are not wiped out on any of the junctions. Best of luck with that.

kona

69 wrote: »

I don't think so. The change in journey time is not simply adding up the times of the red lights. By going through the first red light you change the sequence of all subsequent lights that you meet and you could meet red lights that would have been green the first time, arrive at a red light which changes in 5 seconds etc etc. You can't simply take the full time of a red light of the journey.

You must do the journey to get the true time taken and the only way to do that is to break the law as per the OP.

Cop on, why the hell would I post a Thread here asking people to break lights. Its quite clear what I ment and most people who are up to Junior Certificate English could comprehend. I even gave a Example.
Stop trying to drag the Thread off into a pile of crap.

DirkVoodoo

69 wrote: »

I accept the theoretical merits of your mathematical approach, but there is an obvious flaw. You are assuming that you can go through red lights everytime thereby saving the two minutes or whatever. In reality there will be cross traffic on many/most occasions that will prevent this. You may get through some junctions handy enough on the red but to assume that you will be able to do it on every one is going to yield a wildly optimistic journey time. The only way to find out is get out and peddle and hope you are not wiped out on any of the junctions. Best of luck with that.

I don't recall saying anywhere that breaking red lights was apart of this experiment. Like I said, google maps can be used to approximate if you have an average speed. For example, my route from my house to say UCD might represent a standard commute of 8km, with downhill and flat. If I averaged 25 km/hr on a clear run, my time would be 19mins. Upping this considerably to 30 km/hr brings the time down to 16 minutes. Not a massive difference for a large change in effort, so I can reasonably guess my average without upsetting the "clear run" estimate. I don't need to risk my life and break the law to come up with a pretty accurate figure. So, stopping at the red lights to work out the percentage of my commuting time lost is pretty easy after this.

Of course, if you are commuting over larger distances then estimates need to be more precise.

oflahero

69 wrote: »

The only way to find out is get out and peddle and hope you are not wiped out on any of the junctions

That sounds like the job description of the lads in the orange jumpsuits flogging the Evening Herald. Why not ask one of them?

kona

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

EDIT: I love stopping at red really, gives me a chance to work on trackstanding. Getting there, slowly but surely...

Snap, I love getting home knowing I havnt put my foot down in the entire commute

blorg

jaqian wrote: »

True but this is different. You are already stopped, the amber tells you to get ready to go as green is next. So letting the cyclists go on amber would give you a few seconds head start before lights went green.

I understand that, my point is that if used in this country when red+amber to "get ready to go" appears, traffic will still be going through the amber and indeed red in the other direction. Traffic is often still going though as it is when the light goes green.

Hagar

kona wrote: »

I'm trying to figure out what the cyclists who ignore traffic lights gain?

Anybody want to join in and post their results tomorrow morning?

No ambiguity there. You are inviting feedback from cyclists who ignore traffic lights, how else could you get an accurate response? I would go as far as saying you are encouraging people to do it as an experiment. Hence your thread title.

All my posts were good humoured and polite and directly relevent to figuring out what trip would be saved by cyclist who "ignore traffic lights". You sir, would do well to curb your ire and keep a civil tone in your posts.

DirkVoodoo

69 wrote: »

No ambiguity there. You are inviting feedback from cyclists who ignore traffic lights, how else could you get an accurate response? I would go as far as saying you are encouraging people to do it as an experiment. Hence your thread title.

All my posts were good humoured and polite and directly relevent to figuring out what trip would be saved by cyclist who "ignore traffic lights". You sir, would do well to curb your ire and keep a civil tone in your posts.

You can find out what they gain by stopping at all the lights and seeing how it differs from the "clear route" time, no? Not much time I would wager, but a lot of energy saved.

kona

69 wrote: »

No ambiguity there. You are inviting feedback from cyclists who ignore traffic lights, how else could you get an accurate response? I would go as far as saying you are encouraging people to do it as an experiment. Hence your thread title.

All my posts were good humoured and polite and directly relevent to figuring out what trip would be saved by cyclist who "ignore traffic lights". You sir, would do well to curb your ire and keep a civil tone in your posts.

You are accusing me of asking people to break the law, I will adress you in what ever manner I feel fit.

I asked how do these people gain? If you figure out how much time you spend stopped, then you can work it out how much somebody gains by not stopping. Its not a scientific experiment, I have no control over the many variables.


Understand this:
No where in my post did I say lets break red lights and see what I gain

So dont go around twisting my posts into something they are not and dragging this off topic, if you want a senseless argument over something I have no bother entertaining you, just create a new thread with a suitable title and I will argue with you, just dont clog up this thread with your twisted comprehension of my post.

kona

69 wrote: »

No ambiguity there..

Id suggest you stop taking things out of context and read the entire sentance.

You strike me as the kind of person who back in the 80s thought that if you played a Judas Priest record backwards it told you to blow your head off, then went and dragged them to court over it.

Cop on.

DirkVoodoo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOsdS5irjAo

kona

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOsdS5irjAo

Unless you can amuse yourselves for today, its gunna be a long Friday, I'm busy today unfortunatley so dont have the time to piss away arguing with brick walls.

Ryaner

victorcarrera wrote: »

Back then, due to technical or industrial relation problems we had regular ESB Power outages and the general opinion in the office was that traffic congestion was greatly reduced when the traffic lights were not working.

A large amount of traffic lights in Dublin city are designed to slow down traffic at peak times and make it harder to get into the city. There are very few roads where traffic will actually be backed up more when the lights aren't working.

blorg

69 wrote: »

You sir, would do well to curb your ire and keep a civil tone in your posts.

Haha, 69, you seem to be new around these parts, meet Kona.

Hagar

blorg wrote: »

Haha, 69, you seem to be new around these parts, meet Kona.

He's a little feisty little minx isn't he?

Lumen

69 wrote: »

He's a little feisty little minx isn't he?

Just don't feed him after midnight, and never get him wet.

DirkVoodoo

69 wrote: »

He's a little feisty little minx isn't he?

Indeed.

I have to disagree however, in that I think kona's original post was entirely ambiguous and I can see how you arrived at your conclusion for a "call to break red lights". In the end, however, this is your own interpretation and I don't think it was fair to say he was encouraging people to break lights.

You got off lightly though, I have seen people get far worse from him for far less, he must like you!

Hagar

Is he spoken for?

dunleakelleher

electrogrimey wrote: »

I run red lights, but mostly only pedestrian lights, or at those silly times where all the lights at a junction are red for good minute (which seem to be made so cyclists can get a good headstart on the cars :pac:).

Seems reasonable. I also run the odd red light but only when cyclists given the green on the opposite road. Doesn't effect me in the least and it does save me quit a bit of time, but then again I drive a truck.

Blowfish

blorg wrote: »

I understand that, my point is that if used in this country when red+amber to "get ready to go" appears, traffic will still be going through the amber and indeed red in the other direction. Traffic is often still going though as it is when the light goes green.

Indeed. Plus, considering how they handle the 'normal' amber lights, they are likely to treat "get ready to go" amber in the same fashion and just start going whenever it appears.