Sunday 5 December 2010

Roundabout work #2: 08:17

Once the mercedes that blocked vehicles getting off the roundabout had cleared it, vehicles wanting to get onto St Michael's Hill could pull out, and here see the correct tactic: stop cars getting onto the roundabout. It's the only way to reduce demand, and so ensure the junction clears.

Which vehicle do we see here? Yes, its YA55VDY, the cult van of Bristol Traffic

Notice how the vehicle following this car is also in the mini-roundabout, but it hangs back to actually allow pedestrians to cross at the traffic island. Of course, this will prevent vehicles turning right to pull out, which is a bit selfish, but it does allow the roundabout to clear by reducing vehicle ingress rates to match that of egress rates.

The key point here is that it shows that those fellow-motorist-activist groups who advocate removing traffic lights are either missing the point or hiding the truth. On a junction without lights -like this one- the only way to get through is to be aggressive: drive the big vehicles, the 4x4, or even better, the battered big-vehicle, such as the white van. Now we, as white-van drivers, are happy with this, but we think the harsh truth should be discussed in the open, not discovered once they remove lights from the city centre: whoever values their vehicle least wins.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Commenters MUST NOT post spam, MUST NOT post requests for cross linking and MUST NOT post up requests for paid links. Such attempts SHALL result in one or more postings in which we MAY be rude or we MAY make fun of you and MAY include your public email address. Furthermore, we MAY report you to google for attempts at paid linking, who SHALL then punish your site.

Comments are closed after two days -after that they are moderated. You MUST be logged in to post.

This statement follows RFC2119 rules regarding the use of MUST, MUST NOT, MAY, and SHALL and MUST be treated as normative.