Re: [Mpls] Traffic flow and traffic lights

[Dan Prozinski]

My 2 cents on the traffic lights is this... If the engineering philosophy and intention is "traffic calming" by stopping traffic at every other light, it's not necessary to time the lights so that a driver sees a yellow light change to red before his eyes and just out of reach. A better method... if that light was red on approach and about to turn green, this would improve two things while still slowing traffic: a driver could not try to beat the light and the driver would not have to wait for the full length of the light.
 

It depended upon whether the
road was city, county, state or federal.  Trouble is we mix all these
different roads in one system.  And light timing is done for roads that
cross each other, so there may be four different traffic flows being
engineered. And two may be city and the other two county or state.  I
don�t know to what degree they even try to coordinate, but even if they do,
there are engineering philosophies involved that may not mesh totally.

I think all the engineers have figured this out and are now working
together in their efforts to reach gridlock ;-)
Dan Prozinski

Cedar Riverside