London traffic light system

[jammer139]

Finally London is upgrading the Traffic Light system.

http://www.lfpress.com/2017/10/24/lo...mmittee-briefs

If they do this right; we can finally have a system that encourages the smooth flow of traffic so your not stopping at every red light.

Now it seems the lights are deliberately programmed to be sync'd to go red.

A smart traffic light system can dramatically improve traffic flow and transit times during rush hours and in wee hours of the night.

Please get it right.

[Dupcheck]

Originally Posted by jammer139

Finally London is upgrading the Traffic Light system.

http://www.lfpress.com/2017/10/24/lo...mmittee-briefs

If they do this right; we can finally have a system that encourages the smooth flow of traffic so your not stopping at every red light.

Now it seems the lights are deliberately programmed to be sync'd to go red.

A smart traffic light system can dramatically improve traffic flow and transit times during rush hours and in wee hours of the night.

Please get it right.

Cool, maybe we will not need Red Light Cameras after all.

[K85]

lol, yea right

Originally Posted by Dupcheck

Cool, maybe we will not need Red Light Cameras after all.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by jammer139

Finally London is upgrading the Traffic Light system.

http://www.lfpress.com/2017/10/24/lo...mmittee-briefs

If they do this right; we can finally have a system that encourages the smooth flow of traffic so your not stopping at every red light.

Now it seems the lights are deliberately programmed to be sync'd to go red.

A smart traffic light system can dramatically improve traffic flow and transit times during rush hours and in wee hours of the night.

Please get it right.

I hope so. I was driving down Southdale (easterly from Wonderbread), and I managed to hit every single goddamned fucking traffic light (there are about a million) past Wellington. Cursing, I was.

[tyeman200]

Good, about time! & I hope the fix the sensors, they are terrible. Half the time you're sitting there forever waiting for the light to change. But another cool idea, I got it from driving in Tillsonburg at night. I'd say from 12am to 6am, have the traffic lights on the main streets flashing yellow, and red for the side streets. I would exclude downtown though on the weekends till about 3am or so.

[CanadianTalk]

The city will be piloting a new traffic-signal system that will give pedestrians a 5 second head-start before the light turns green for vehicles. This is called a leading pedestrian interval, and it will be piloted at Dundas and Wellington.

Other cities such as Toronto have this set-up at some intersections and it has been successful over there.

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/...A1U1GimRl8aVL4

[haljackey]

I hope right turns on red aren't allowed with that kind of setup.

You could also do a pedestrian scramble- where pedestrians can use the whole intersection for like 30 seconds. You can cross diagonally here while all road traffic is stopped. Maybe too ambitious for London however... you need a lot of pedestrians to make that work best.

[inimrepus]

Originally Posted by haljackey

You could also do a pedestrian scramble- where pedestrians can use the whole intersection for like 30 seconds. You can cross diagonally here while all road traffic is stopped. Maybe too ambitious for London however... you need a lot of pedestrians to make that work best.

I could be mistaken but I thought that London used to have an intersection like that. Possibly at King and Clarence?

[Djeffery]

How old are you people? lol. I don't remember when it was taken out, but I remember very clearly the scramble crosswalk at King and Clarence. Used to use it to go from Wellington Square to the London Centre Arcade, and then over to Novacks and Dr Disc. I know it was in operation back in the 60's, which is even before my time.

Dundas and Wellington is a terrible intersection to pilot this at. What info are they going to get when you have one direction completely closed to traffic (westbound) and both directions of Wellington restricted due to construction at King?

[jammer139]

Hopefully this is part of the computerized light sync system to fix the non stop red lights and needless idling.

[tyeman200]

Originally Posted by haljackey

I hope right turns on red aren't allowed with that kind of setup.

It's a pipe dream. I still see many people making right hand turns off of King Street, even though you aren't supposed to anymore.

[inimrepus]

Originally Posted by tyeman200

It's a pipe dream. I still see many people making right hand turns off of King Street, even though you aren't supposed to anymore.

Well at the one intersection that they have put this in they also made it so you can't turn right on a red.

[jammer139]

So another two years have come and gone and we have heard nothing but crickets on the new computerized traffic light management system that got millions of dollars of funding as part of the BRT budget. What has been happening and where is this new system?

[CanadianTalk]

Originally Posted by jammer139

So another two years have come and gone and we have heard nothing but crickets on the new computerized traffic light management system that got millions of dollars of funding as part of the BRT budget. What has been happening and where is this new system?

Still ongoing it seems... the project webpage states that the project is scheduled to run from 2019 to 2027, and that timeline was before the pandemic, so I wouldn't be surprised if the completion date is pushed back a bit, given that so many other projects in the city have been pushed back since then.

https://london.ca/living-london/road...raffic-signals

As I understand it, the city has to upgrade each and every single older traffic signal along the roads that are part of this "intelligent traffic signal" network, so I can see how this may take a little bit of time. I believe the "Transportation Management Centre" that the project page speaks of was constructed a few years ago in Byron.

But yes I agree that better traffic signal synchronization would be awesome. I've probably told this story here before lol, but once I was driving along Fanshawe Park Road from Hyde Park to my home near Highbury on a Sunday morning, and with the exception of one light, I hit every single red light along the way.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by jammer139

So another two years have come and gone and we have heard nothing but crickets on the new computerized traffic light management system that got millions of dollars of funding as part of the BRT budget. What has been happening and where is this new system?

The money for that has gone where the money for Southdale west, Highbury, Bradley extension, Wharncliffe and Oxford and who knows how many other projects has gone - into the overbudget sinkhole that is the BRT.

CT, I never heard of a new transportation management centre being built in Byron while I lived there, might you be thinking of the emergency operations centre that's connected to the Byron fire hall? (the place where senior city and emergency officials gathered during events like the Woodman Ave explosion).

[savevp]

.

[savevp]

Originally Posted by jammer139

So another two years have come and gone and we have heard nothing but crickets on the new computerized traffic light management system that got millions of dollars of funding as part of the BRT budget. What has been happening and where is this new system?

The rest of the world, outside of the US, found the solution to this ages ago. Waterloo figured it out pretty recently, too.



Point being, London would spend millions of dollars on an empirically inferior solution when a better option for many intersections is there. Sorry for the attempted derailment of the conversation - this has become very frustrating! It's embarrassing, really.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by savevp

The rest of the world, outside of the US, found the solution to this ages ago. Waterloo figured it out pretty recently, too.



Point being, London would spend millions of dollars on an empirically inferior solution when a better option for many intersections is there. Sorry for the attempted derailment of the conversation - this has become very frustrating! It's embarrassing, really.

It's not like London is totally ignoring roundabouts, they are gradually adding them. Not just the half dozen or so major intersections that have been done so far (with more planned), but practically every new subdivision built in at least the last 10 years or more has roundabouts all the way through them.

[jammer139]

Seriously the city is not building a nuclear power air craft carrier. We're talking about the control units of a couple of hundred traffic lights. There is no excuse for taking 8 years to implement the system. Nor does it need to be fully installed to start operating it on stretches of primary roads that are not impacted by construction. ie: Wonderland Rd from the north to the south should already be operating and many other roads.