"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 13:27:40 GMT, "mookie89"
wrote:

Interestingly enough, in a fast growing northern suburb of Indianapolis,
traffic circles are becoming quite common in new road construction.
Drivers
seem a little tentative, not understanding proper traffic circle
protocol,
but hopefully this will ease out and we Americans can take a lesson from
our
British ancestors and keep the traffic flowing instead of sitting at a
red
light wasting gasoline while absolutely no one is using the cross street.

Do they not use induction loops in the US? Most major traffic-light
intersections in the UK are fitted with these, which mean that if the
direction on green is not being used, the lights can be automatically
changed as a car approaches on the other one, meaning the car will
probably only need to slow down briefly if at all.

Where you have roundabouts with unbalanced flows, it's also common for
traffic lights to be used on the roundabout to regulate traffic flow.
A roundabout only really works if the traffic flow is reasonably
balanced. This is causing problems at certain roundabouts in Milton
Keynes, which are likely to gain traffic lights and/or speed limit
reductions to try to resolve the problem.

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To e-mail use neil at the above domain

Inductions loops, yes. But.....
Here in Illinois, IDOT (Illinois Department of Transportation) may set the
control device(s) for peak/non-peak hours. So even though there is a loop,
it may take up to two minutes to cycle through depending upon what time of
day it is. Two minutes, 120 seconds, when no one is on the cross street is,
as you know, an eternity. Another irritant is pedestrian crosswalk
lighting. My experience in the UK has been that I push the button, the
light will change at some point, then almost immediately the system begins
bleeping and the light changes again meaning there is time for a few people
to cross and traffic once again proceeds. Here in the USA, it seems that
pedestrian lights are timed assuming the slowest person on earth is
crossing. Many times one person crosses, the light continues up to 30 full
seconds and then cycles again. Again, the time seems an eternity. All this
tends to have people jumping the light or worse yet, attempting to beat the
light before it changes red thereby endangering the pedestrian. I am not
complaining per se as some sort of traffic/pedestrian control is necessary.
The point of delicate balance, though, seems elusive.

Rich