It’s a good thing to have more green lights, because emissions drop a lot. A few cities in my area spent a lot of money in the 1970s to do that. But the problem is that they sync at 30, and also at higher speeds.

Fix road design so that people don’t speed. A six lane stroad signals a limit considerably higher than 40kph, no matter what you do with the stoplights.

The main street for all the businesses in a nearby city is set up so you can hit all green lights going down the road from 2pm-~6pm, however if you get caught at a SINGLE light, you're going to hit reds all the way down.

So it's become "oh that light is about to change better engage T U R B O M O D E and speed 20mph over the limit to beat this light and stay with the greens" which turns out very predictably at least once a month.

Last week a car rolled twice while speeding up to beat the light and clipped an ambulance coming from another street.

If you read the article it's very obviously advocating for fewer green lights. I've no idea what this headline is on about

Anything except public transportation

Wait, you mean the thing where people who do the speed limit have to stop at 3 straight reds while people doing 15 over are able to squeeze through all of them is the result of an intentional choice? It irritates the hell out of me how often that kind of thing happens in my town, but I always thought it was just some kind of oversight or inefficiency on the part of the engineers who set up the timing cycles, given how how clearly and directly it incentivizes speeding...

If driving the speed limit is the most efficient way to get where you're trying to go, people will tend to drive the speed limit. Seems like that should be pretty obvious, imo.

There’s one street in a major metro near me that has been timed this way for decades and it’s incredibly noticeable because it is a dead straight thoroughfare through a few dozen small blocks of housing. You can see the next 3-5 lights lined up ahead of you at all times. You absolutely learn to pace yourself so you aren’t stopping/starting constantly, looking like an idiot when you get to the next light too fast and have to stop and then watch slow cruising cars whip past you when the light turns green. It’s like a game. I think about nothing else when I’m on that street. Not even remotely new, and it definitely works. But you have to pick which big street gets this treatment and then all streets intersecting with it have to work around that.

While I don't speed, I do feel annoyed with certain lights - the kind that only allow one and a half cars before turning yellow. Personally, I would feel less irritated if at least four cars were given a green before the turning begins.

Almost all commenters find some problem with this, but I have seen this work on my own dad who unfortunately prefers going 10kph over the speed limit most of the time. Either the traffic lights are timed in sequence or sensors are placed so that with low traffic, lights stay red until a car approaches and the light is timed with the location of the sensor for going the speed limit. The last one also allows pedestrian and bike lights to stay green when there isn't any car traffic.

...or what if we actually punish people who pilot their two-ton death machines irresponsibly?

Did a speeding driver write this?

America will do anything but use roundabouts and they already do anything but public transport when given a logistical traffic problem a toddler could solve.

I've seen lights with sensors several blocks back that will turn red if you're going too fast.

But if you drive double the speed limit...

Another solution is to go back to actually enforcing it in a meaningful way.

Also you can’t get all lights everywhere synced up that way, and it would only work in places that have a significant number of lights. Places that have 3 on Main Street are still going to have problems.

How about just magnetic sensors near intersections that count how many cars are approaching and do some math to decide what would be the most efficient. If no cars coming in the cross streets then dont turn the light red in the opposite direction.

Nothing angers drivers more than sitting through a full cycle and nobody used the green.

This can be solved with sensors and math.

No fucking AI in my traffic lights!

What? Why is the world allergic to roundabouts?

The best way to stop drivers from speeding is to take their licence if the caught speeding

While I like the idea, (timing the lights so going the speed limit keeps you going with no stops), this doesn't solve speeding at all. You will always have people who will drive 30 over the limit. You'll still meet them as the next light turns green. Or they'll start running more reds. Which is already becoming more of a problem.

Eh. Maybe reduce a few, but not stop.

Some people like being at the back of whatever pack of cars are in front of them, so they speed up to tailgate.

I’ll argue that don’t giving RAM or Ford truck to man-child could do more good than augmenting the number of green light

As a bicycle, I'm all about it. Imagine lights timed to a 20-25mph speed limit? tits.

Obv, physical traffic calming are required as well and I'm all for timing the lights to a less dangerous speed limit.

If anybody reads the article, this initiative seems to be results driven. They say that they've used this "rest on red" strategy where they punish speeders by giving them more red lights, and that I think it was in Albuquerque where they successfully reduced the average driving speed from 39 to 30 on a road using this strategy.

I'm a habitual speeder, but if I know the lights will all be green if I go the speed limit, I'm going the speed limit. In Germany this is called the Green Wave. Saves a lot of gas too.

The problem is, they want the revenue from speeding tickets.

Damn, I thought it'd be speed sensitive quick-deploy bollards.

i feel like if this works your road design is fucked to begin with, you shouldn't have enough signals and intersections for the timing between lights to matter.

There's a residential stroad near me that does this without advertising it. It's a neat trick if you know about it, but a solid majority of the folks I see on that street just haul ass from red light to red light (and I catch up to them right when it turns green again).

I'm not too optimistic about traffic calming coming up in this road's future. Maybe it'll get speed cameras.

The "flow of green" thing doesn't work for a couple reasons. One, imagine one driver doing the speed limit catching every green light. Now imagine, 2 blocks back, there's another car doing the speed limit, but they're catching reds because they're behind the target car. So they are now incentivised to speed to catch up to the car that is reaping the benefit, so they too, can reap the benefit.

But then you get local businesses saying that if someone never has to stop, what they pay extra to be on a corner and run advertisements on billboards or other signage isn't paying off because people aren't being stopped there. They might as well pay less to not be on the corner. By letting traffic flow free, people are getting more miles out of their tyres and brake pads, so your auto body shops are losing money, too. On top of that, ICE engines use more gas when they have to stop and start, which is why most people can go, at most, 1-2 lights before stopping, because your local city government doesn't think you're paying enough for petrol.