Is it just me, or has anyone else out there noticed the absolute cruel way with which our city lights have been timed?
I am one of those fortunate ones who lives on one end of the city and works on the complete opposite end ... nearly as far apart as you can get; and man, I got to say the worst part of any given day is by far that drive back and forth.
I am absolutely convinced that the city lights are visited nightly by an evil drunken leprechaun to ensure that they remain perfectly out of synch with each other. You can hope against hope that you might get through more than one at a time, but unless you’re in the downtown core, the chances of success are pretty low.
As you sit at your red light, staring at the next light that is still green the whole time you sit there — and then your light turns green and you’re away, only to watch that next light a block away turn yellow when your about halfway there and then red in perfect time for your arrival. There you will then sit, staring at the next light a block away that is still green the whole time you sit there and this process starts to seem really familiar as you make your way across the city one block at a time.
This is not a secondary street without much for traffic; this is any main thoroughfare in the city — Gaetz Avenue, Taylor Drive, 40th Avenue, 30th Avenue, 32nd Street, 67th Street.
Weekends are particularly bad. When your light turns green, but you can’t sometimes go because the entire block in front of you is backed up right to your intersection and so there everybody momentarily sits.
Years ago, drivers were so frustrated by this phenomenon that many started cutting through the Pines to circumvent four or five lights on Gaetz Avenue. The city’s answer to this was to block these routes with barricades to stop the practice.
This alleviated the symptoms but did nothing to correct the problem of intense driver frustration due to the timing of the lights being completed by an apparent mad man.
The problem seems to compound itself with the Engineering Department’s apparent obsession with making sure every intersection in the city has a traffic light and not one single one of these will ever be timed to the next, even when they are only 50 or 60 yards apart.
If they are timed this way to slow down traffic flow and reduce the occurrence of speeding, perhaps they would consider re-timing the lights a little bit ... just tweaking them so that you can sometimes get through say ... two, before catching a red; and then getting the city’s prized photo radar cash cow out there to catch the impulsive ones who want to take advantage of two or three green lights in a row by speeding through them.
It’s just a thought, but if that is the reason the lights are timed in such an evil fashion, perhaps the lure of photo radar revenue will be enough to persuade the city to take a look at the issue and if its not that ... then what?
Because I know my car’s gas consumption would likely improve around 20 per cent if I didn’t have to stop and wait for about two minutes at every single light, or almost every single block, depending what street you are on.
Duke Hanson
Red Deer