[sustran] Re: Indian roads - planes, cows, elephants, mosques

[Martin Cassini]

Markus,

Sorry if my dogma/logic posting was rather glib. I don't claim to be an
expert. I just have my doubts about the claim that traffic will expand
to fill the available road space is true. There are thousands of miles
of virtually empty roads even here in the UK. It seems to me that
misguided priority rules, limited junction capacity and artificial
barriers to traffic flow and dispersal are at the root of many of our
congestion problems. 

(From a forthcoming article in Traffic Technology International:) I used
to commute between London and Cambridge by National Express. Buses too
have to idle, often pointlessly, at lights. Approaching the London end
of the M11, 6-mile-long tailbacks were routine. It wasn't just that 3
lanes became two and then one. As we inched east along the North
Circular, the cause of the extended queue became apparent: lights at
Redbridge roundabout. Each leg had its allotted green time. Although we
were the main stream, we got just 12 seconds. Reaction times alone
squander 13% of every minute 
 Priority from the right, as at
roundabouts, is wrong too because it denies our instinct to give way to
people who were there first. Moreover, it can produce a "need" for
lights at roundabouts ... And the authorities blame us for climate
change! 

BW
Martin

-----Original Message-----
From:
sustran-discuss-bounces+martincassini=blueyonder.co.uk at list.jca.apc.org
[mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+martincassini=blueyonder.co.uk at list.jca.
apc.org] On Behalf Of Markus Sander
Sent: 07 May 2007 08:56
To: Global 'South' Sustainable Transport
Subject: [sustran] Re: Indian roads - planes, cows, elephants, mosques


On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 11:04:30PM +0100, Martin Cassini wrote:

> Could the assertion that the long term effect of eliminating idling 
> "will be longer ways, etc" have more to do with dogma than logic?

No, just transportation science and mathematics. Could it be that your
statements base on lack of the first one?

If you know that the average time people participate in traffic is
constant for hundrets of years, many transportation issuses get very
simple and obvisious. 

-- 
 (c) markus
-------------------------------------------------------- 
IMPORTANT NOTE to everyone who gets sustran-discuss messages via
YAHOOGROUPS. 

Please go to http://list.jca.apc.org/manage/listinfo/sustran-discuss to
join the real sustran-discuss and get full membership rights. The
yahoogroups version is only a mirror and 'members' there cannot post to
the real sustran-discuss (even if the yahoogroups site makes it seem
like you can). Apologies for the confusing arrangement.

================================================================
SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred,
equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries
(the 'Global South'). 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.jca.apc.org/public/sustran-discuss/attachments/20070507/96b79261/attachment.html