On 23 Nov, 18:17, (Neil Williams)
wrote:

On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:25:56 -0000, "Q" ..@.. wrote:
The Microwave sources on the tops of the lights, and now little boxes with
aerials are linked back into the local control unit, when a vaild coded
signal is recieved it triggers a cycle in favour of the lamp recieving the
signal.

Does it trigger it immediately, or just on the next change? *The
European variety seem to trigger it immediately (i.e. as a bus
approaches all others go straight to red), which gives a nice feeling
to the bus passengers of real priority.


I'd like to reply to your substantive post point-by-point if I get the
time (as well as reading through the other replies), but I'm going to
wade in here in the meantime...

From this and other comments you've made about bus priority in the
past it almost seems as though you consider the issue of each
individual bus in isolation. In central London it's highly likely that
there will be numerous other buses carrying numerous other passengers
which also need to negotiate traffic signal controlled junctions, the
difference being that they'll be approaching from other angles. Factor
in the need to keep traffic moving through the complex web of road
junctions in central London and all the interconnected traffic signal
phasing - all of which is a fine balance, but of course can only ever
be a compromise - and then perhaps the notion of individual traffic
signals being held on green for a substantial time for a bus (or going
green significantly earlier etc etc) starts to look like one that
doesn't result in the best overall outcome.

(I'm tempted to say butterflies and tornados, though of course weekday
daytime traffic in London is something of a storm already - the
question is how well that storm gets handled, and I dare say it could
be dealt with far far worse than it is, though that's not to say it
couldn't be improved.)