Guided Traffic Jams

As we grow older many of us tend to become clones of Victor Meldrew and prone to moaning about anything and everything but every day I do see and hear things which make me feel that this country is run by lunatics. Today I was caught up in considerable traffic jams in Crawley partly caused by the police closing the A23 during the rush hour in order to deal with an accident. The jam was exacerbated by the ridiculous guided bus system that still blights the town. This guided bus system was never more than a gimmick but a gimmick that cost £35,000.000 to install and much disruption over a period of about 18 months. Does it make a profit? It is subsidised but to what extent is not clear. Today as I sat in queues of traffic, an occasional guided bus came along, remotely operated the traffic lights and increased the delays. As I traversed the total length of Southgate Avenue I saw three guided buses and two conventional buses — which were not allowed to use the guided bus ways — and one of the guided buses was almost empty. While 50% of the available road space was made available to three buses the other 50% was being used by hundreds [thousands?] of cars, vans, trucks, taxis, ordinary buses, etc. The system is absurd. I told West Sussex County Council before they embarked on the project that guided buses was a daft idea and an utter waste of tax payers money. I have not changed that view. I am not opposed to all buses, guided buses just cost too much and get much more than their fair share of scarce road space. But all the arguments made in favour of buses in general seem to assume that a handful of buses with infinitely variable capacity can provide a service to all at all times which replace all the cars on the road, cut pollution, abolish parking problems, cut world fuel consumption and save the planet. None of this is true. Buses are environmentally friendly because there are not many of them.

In addition to my opposition to buses that have priority on the road in spite of the fact that they only account for about 5% to 10% of all passenger journeys there is the matter of traffic lights in general. The bureaucrats regard traffic lights as devices for stopping traffic from moving. In many countries in Europe traffic lights are used for the opposite purpose — to keep traffic moving. That is anathema for our traffic managers. In these days of computers, it should be possible to manage traffic lights in such a way that they maximise traffic flows and make 100 % use of the road space available. That does not happen here. Day after day I see traffic lights displaying green but no traffic; the traffic is held up by another set of lights which, when they change to green give the signal to the first set of lights to change to red and thus stop the traffic flow again. I have sat, impotent, eunuch like looking at acres of empty road waiting at a red light and then, as I see a green light and I move off another traffic light changes, triumphantly to red and I stop again. There is a large roundabout in Crawley that is controlled by traffic lights — lots of them — God knows what it all cost — and it is possible to see this wondrous scheme operating with queues of traffic on every road leading into the roundabout, all held up by traffic lights and to see the roundabout and its multiplicity of traffic lanes completely denuded of all motor vehicles. How can this be, I ask myself? But. so far, I have been unable to offer any possible explanation other than, as I said, this country is run by lunatics.

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