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

[K. Tsourlakis]

The mistake hidden in this rationalization is that it erroneously assumes that traffic volume will remain constant after the intervention (in this case, after traffic lights abolition). But actually any facilitation of car use will increase car use and traffic. This kind of fallacy is constantly used, not only as a justification, but also for greenwashing of various motorized traffic projects, like parkings (they deter drivers to burn fuel for searching park space), motorways (less congestion hence less fuel use and pollution) even parks and pedestrian spaces destruction (they are more efficiently used).

In the case of traffic lights removal there is in addition the danger to discourage walking and biking and thus to encourage even further car and motorcycle use. I am very sceptical about the general friendliness of the "naked streets" concept. It may indeed work in small Dutch or German towns, but in the case of Indian (and lot of other places) cities, it clearly creates an inhuman environment.

However I think we can draw some very useful conclusions from these experiments and the undoubtedly fact that less accidents happen there. For instance when very often the corrupt and car use favouring administrations (using the above described perverted way of justification) set up barriers along the sidewalks, as a measure supposedly to protect pedestrians from car "accidents". But it turns out from these "naked street" cases, that this intervention creates a more dangerous environment (not only for pedestrians, but also for car and motorcycle users), because it gives to the drivers a false sense of security and encourages speeding.

I am inclined to conclude that the best environment is created when regulations are completeley stripped out for pedestrians, are minimal for bikers and are strictly enforced to motorized traffic.


-----Original Message-----

In the interests of long-term survival, people need to find other ways
of getting about, work more from home, develop new energy sources. But
something can be done NOW to make an impact on climate change: scrap
traffic lights, the biggest gas-guzzlers of them all. From a Canadian
website: “If every driver in Canada avoided idling for 5 minutes a day,
1.6 million tonnes of CO2 would not enter the atmosphere. It is
estimated that idling and stop-go traffic costs motorists 753 million
gallons of gas a year, or $1,194 per driver in wasted fuel and time.”
But how do we avoid idling when traffic lights block progress in every
sense? (In haste again, sorry)


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