The Scrapbook’s commute is probably no worse than that of many of our readers who live in urban areas, which is to say that it’s almost never pleasant and is also highly unpredictable. President Obama’s appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 4, for example, added a good 30 minutes to our morning drive, thanks to the -Secret Service-imposed street closings that allowed his highness’s motorcade to make its way unimpeded from the White House to the Washington Hilton and home again. (We’re afraid we may have had a profane thought or two about the breakfast as we were mired in the gridlock.)
The twice-daily drive has been made somewhat more bearable in recent years by the advent of podcasting, not to mention the indispensable Waze app, which is always on the lookout for an alternative route—one that will redirect the traveler out of the ninth circle of hell and into, say, the third or fourth.
Aware of The Scrapbook’s obsessive interest in the travails of commuting, our friends are kind enough to share articles on the latest research, one of which caught our eye this week. It was a report in the London Times urging the removal of “four out of every five traffic lights.”
Research by the Institute of Economic Affairs, the paper reports, finds that “a huge number of traffic lights, speed bumps, and cycle lanes have brought roads to a grinding halt.” The institute estimates that “delays of two minutes to the average journey cost the [U.K.] economy ¢16 billion a year.” We note, hopefully, that one of the report’s authors urges Greens to get on board the traffic-easing recommendations, noting that “all these traffic controls . . . actually increase pollution by delaying traffic and making car engines run less efficiently.”
The Scrapbook has not examined the research in-depth and so cannot unreservedly advocate the removal of 80 percent of all traffic lights. But we are intrigued enough to believe that an experimental trial may be in order to gather more data. Specifically, we intend to agitate for the removal of traffic lights along our own commute (the other lights can stay for now). We’ll report back on the results if we are successful.
