Traffic Light Sequencing

[ainsworth74]

What about Roundabouts with Traffic Lights

.....

Do we really need traffic lights on a roundabout or island as some people call them.

Yes on some I think we do but on many where we do have them they could easily be used as part time traffic lights. There are four near me that have traffic lights and all four need them during most of the day but overnight? No need whatsoever.

 

[me123]

Do we really need traffic lights on a roundabout or island as some people call them.

Interesting that that roundabout seemed to work better without lights, I got stuck in them in a few days ago and it was horrendous! Coming from the A89 to that roundabout, the lights only let a few cars through at a time (obviously to keep traffic from piling up on the M9, but infuriating nonetheless!)

There are times when they work well, though. I think the Raith Interchange would be (have been? I don't know what the works there are like) even worse without traffic lights. It's far too complicated a junction, with far too much traffic. I'm sure the traffic on the Southbound A725 would tail back even further in the morning, and the M74 would almost certainly have a queue back to the M73 in the evening rush.

There's a roundabout in Livingston that generally works very well with traffic lights, although I've seen a few people going through reds when it's very quiet. On the whole, once you're on the roundabout you won't have to stop before you leave again .

I think it's also hard to argue that Sheriffhall would be better without traffic lights. The volumes (and speeds) of traffic on the bypass would mean that it would be almost impossible to join the roundabout from the side roads, and it would cause huge local congestion. I think the lights here, which are a pain, probably do the best job that traffic lights possibly can do here. Of course, the real solution is a flyover for the Bypass, but I digress.
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Yes on some I think we do but on many where we do have them they could easily be used as part time traffic lights. There are four near me that have traffic lights and all four need them during most of the day but overnight? No need whatsoever.

There's loads of part-time ones in Livingston, and also at the Whistleberry Toll (which is, conveniently, another major interchange situated 100 yards from the Raith Interchange... great planning) that work well. I think there's plenty of instances where part time lights could be used at roundabouts and similar junctions. The one I've mentioned in Livingston where people regularly ignore red lights when it's quiet would be a perfect example!

 

[Butts]

Yes on some I think we do but on many where we do have them they could easily be used as part time traffic lights. There are four near me that have traffic lights and all four need them during most of the day but overnight? No need whatsoever.

Indeed, and why do planners think it's a great wheeze to have a Pedestrian Crossing in close proximity to a roundabout where it can cause traffic to block the whole shebang when it activates and goes Red at the wrong time

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Indeed, and why do planners think it's a great wheeze to have a Pedestrian Crossing in close proximity to a roundabout where it can cause traffic to block the whole shebang when it activates and goes Red at the wrong time

Like this one?

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.3...4!1sw7AFkoprY30UvR2rBTN2yw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Heading north, if the crossing is activated the roundabout gets clogged up within seconds. ( I have rarely seen the location with traffic as light as it is in the streetview image, even off peak ).

Heading south, drivers often miss the crossing lights because they are concentrating on the roundabout. Notice the skid marks on the left hand lane in the Streetview image!

 

[me123]

Indeed, and why do planners think it's a great wheeze to have a Pedestrian Crossing in close proximity to a roundabout where it can cause traffic to block the whole shebang when it activates and goes Red at the wrong time

I'd argue that every single traffic problem in Coatbridge can be attributed to this, and in fact many problems in Aberdeen too. Especially this junction in Coatbridge, where the A89 meets the euphemistically named Sunnyside Road, a side road from Summerlee and a one way street to the derelict excuse of a town centre. I've regularly seen it genuinely gridlocked because no-one can move on the roundabout. Because all the exits have red signals for pedestrian crossings. Of course, as if to make me look silly, Google have caught it at a very civilised time!

Surely if there are necessary, they should be synchronised to avoid instances like this?

Here's another one of North Lanarkshire Council's planning disasters. The traffic lights at the junction are definitely needed, and hugely improved the flow of traffic coming from Rochsolloch Road. But why on earth did they keep all the blood pedestrian crossings? There's now four in the space of about a quarter mile

 

[edwin_m]

Pedestrian crossings near roundabouts may be necessary because there are pedestrians trying to cross the road in the vicinity!

It's not particularly disruptive to provide a pedestrian crossing on the entry to a roundabout but the exit is more difficult as there is a risk of traffic tailing back onto the roundabout itself. Unfortunately this is where there is particular danger to pedestrians because vehicles often come off at high speed without indicating. Short of signalising the whole roundabout there isn't really a solution other than to set the crossing well back from the roundabout itself which increases walking distance, or providing a bridge/subway which people won't want to use any many may ignore unless it's backed up by large quantities of guardrailing.

The success of roundabouts seems to depend on how even the traffic flows are on each leg. For example it may be difficult to enter a busy roundabout from a lightly-used leg because the traffic from the right is continuous except when stopped by a (rare) vehicle going into the leg you are trying to get out of. This is one situation where signalising the roundabout may help.

 

[Busaholic]

Penzance has one set of traffic lights,which are staggered, with three phases. At night the lights remain green for the main road until a vehicle on one of the two other roads approaches the lights, at which point the lights change. On occasion, the lights on the main road turn red, then within about three seconds go to red and amber again. It does have a knock-on effect though: the side road lights could do with a light for pedestrians so they know when it's safe to cross, and I'm pretty sure the reason they don't is because of the variability of the sequence.
Bit of personal experience from the 1950s and 1960s when I was a kid - for our annual holiday in Wales my father would insist in those pre-motorway days of leaving our S.E. London home in the car about 3.30 a.m. to 'avoid the traffic.' I was always wide awake and remember quite a few occasions when we got to traffic lights and they would not change to green. Sometimes it took a reversal over the rumble strip to activate the green and, on one occasion, after two such reversals and a wait of what seemed like fifteen minutes my father proceeded with extreme caution over the red, so contrary to his nature!
I believe it was Slough, or 'Slough Safety Town' as it styled itself, which first co-ordinated traffic lights so that at 30 mph if you hit a 'green' and continued at that speed in a straight line you should meet all the other lights at green too: as our journey used to go via Slough my father was able to test this theory and found it worked.

 

[LowLevel]

I hate traffic lights in the early hours and in some locations at busy times with a passion.

One near me is a main A road. In the early hours the lights default to red for the main road, and green for a side road leading to an industrial estate at the first of the two sets of junctions and the road from the railway station which is closed from the second. Every single time I drive through I brought to a stand and have to wait. Then watch in my rear view mirror as the lights drop back to red behind me just as the next motorist appears and gets stopped as well.

The lights also change so that they go green to let a car through, then the second set 20m further on go green. Then go red in a bit of a stagger based on the sensors.

This means in practice that if you're behind a learner or some old git who should hurry up and shuffle off this mortal coil or at least hand in his licence they get a green light, it turns to red after you but they take so long to pull away that they get a yellow at the second set and you get stopped at a red and trapped between the lights because the second set is on a timer based on the first rather than an 'AND' timer/sensor combo.

In peak times the light sequencing is such that it lets traffic build up between the two sets of lights waiting for the green and then stops people from pulling out of the side roads unless they block the junction waiting as by the time the traffic clears once it gets a green light their own light goes red and they never get chance to pull out.

I would like to meet the person who designed and maintained it and do them an injury.

 

[AM9]

I hate traffic lights in the early hours and in some locations at busy times with a passion.

One near me is a main A road. In the early hours the lights default to red for the main road, and green for a side road leading to an industrial estate at the first of the two sets of junctions and the road from the railway station which is closed from the second. Every single time I drive through I brought to a stand and have to wait. Then watch in my rear view mirror as the lights drop back to red behind me just as the next motorist appears and gets stopped as well.

The lights also change so that they go green to let a car through, then the second set 20m further on go green. Then go red in a bit of a stagger based on the sensors.

This means in practice that if you're behind a learner or some old git who should hurry up and shuffle off this mortal coil or at least hand in his licence they get a green light, it turns to red after you but they take so long to pull away that they get a yellow at the second set and you get stopped at a red and trapped between the lights because the second set is on a timer based on the first rather than an 'AND' timer/sensor combo.

In peak times the light sequencing is such that it lets traffic build up between the two sets of lights waiting for the green and then stops people from pulling out of the side roads unless they block the junction waiting as by the time the traffic clears once it gets a green light their own light goes red and they never get chance to pull out.

I would like to meet the person who designed and maintained it and do them an injury.

That post reads like it was composed by somebody who shouldn't be trusted with a potentially lethal machine like a car.
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I'd argue that every single traffic problem in Coatbridge can be attributed to this, and in fact many problems in Aberdeen too. Especially this junction in Coatbridge, where the A89 meets the euphemistically named Sunnyside Road, a side road from Summerlee and a one way street to the derelict excuse of a town centre. I've regularly seen it genuinely gridlocked because no-one can move on the roundabout. Because all the exits have red signals for pedestrian crossings. Of course, as if to make me look silly, Google have caught it at a very civilised time!

Surely if there are necessary, they should be synchronised to avoid instances like this?

Here's another one of North Lanarkshire Council's planning disasters. The traffic lights at the junction are definitely needed, and hugely improved the flow of traffic coming from Rochsolloch Road. But why on earth did they keep all the blood pedestrian crossings? There's now four in the space of about a quarter mile

Traffic management is installed for all road users, not just drivers in a hurry.

 

[LowLevel]

It's composed by someone using a touch screen mobile phone with fat fingers and auto-correct

I was being slightly facetious about my fellow motorists however the point about the light sequencing causing traffic problems at rush hour and unnecessary delays in the early hours of the morning stands well enough. I do find it rather hard to describe the issue in an articulate manner in long form text though

Funnily enough I have an unblemished record as a motorist and also as a railway guard in charge of a train load of passengers

That unblemished record doesn't necessarily carry forward to my postings on internet forums (though I think my most recent 'infraction points' have lapsed!!!). It is a bit ranty now I read back over it

 

[AM9]

It's composed by someone using a touch screen mobile phone with fat fingers and auto-correct

I was being slightly facetious about my fellow motorists however the point about the light sequencing causing traffic problems at rush hour and unnecessary delays in the early hours of the morning stands well enough. I do find it rather hard to describe the issue in an articulate manner in long form text though

Funnily enough I have an unblemished record as a motorist and also as a railway guard in charge of a train load of passengers

That unblemished record doesn't necessarily carry forward to my postings on internet forums (though I think my most recent 'infraction points' have lapsed!!!). It is a bit ranty now I read back over it

Thanks for adding the smileys.

 

[90019]

Indeed, and why do planners think it's a great wheeze to have a Pedestrian Crossing in close proximity to a roundabout where it can cause traffic to block the whole shebang when it activates and goes Red at the wrong time

I'd like to know who thought that this is a good idea for a junction in a busy city centre.
For those who can't see it, it's the junction of George Street and Frederick Street in Edinburgh, a roundabout with zebra crossings on every entrance and exit.
Because George Street has lots of shops, in the summer and at some other times there's a near constant flow of pedestrians across Frederick Street, and people going across the roundabout get stopped trying to come off it which blocks anyone coming on. My current record for getting from the junction across Queen Street onto the roundabout (a whole 300m) is just over 15 minutes.

 

[GB]

I'd like to know who thought that this is a good idea for a junction in a busy city centre.
For those who can't see it, it's the junction of George Street and Frederick Street in Edinburgh, a roundabout with zebra crossings on every entrance and exit.
Because George Street has lots of shops, in the summer and at some other times there's a near constant flow of pedestrians across Frederick Street, and people going across the roundabout get stopped trying to come off it which blocks anyone coming on. My current record for getting from the junction across Queen Street onto the roundabout (a whole 300m) is just over 15 minutes.

Zebra crossings after and before round-abouts are a common site where I am.

As for lights going red in the early hours of the morning, it wouldn't surprise me if it is done intentionally to combat speeding/racing etc.

 

[me123]

Traffic management is installed for all road users, not just drivers in a hurry.

Yes, absolutely. I have no problem whatsoever with pedestrian crossings. But when the traffic management is completely inept, it causes problems for all road users.

To take my two examples, in one of them there are an unnecessary number of pedestrian crossings in a short space of time. The problem here is that traffic is now regularly backed up onto a roundabout, causing traffic problems for the other three tributaries to that roundabout. The lights are both within about 150 yards of existing pederstrian crossings. The new lights for the junction (which are absolutely necessary) also provide crossing opportunities for pedestrians, and I would argue that the two existing pedestrian crossings are no longer required. Pedestrians would still have opportunities to cross the road, and the traffic would flow much better.

In my other, the traffic lights going onto the roundabout regularly cause gridlock and should have been reconsidered. Two sets could be easily moved away from the roundabout without causing major problems for pedestrians. IN fact, I think one of these could be a good place for an underpass. On the third, you could remove the crossing and move it further down to a junction where a set of traffic lights would work quite well. There's also plenty of scope to widen the approaches to the roundabout to provide two lanes of cars, again reducing congestion.

I would suggest that, if these changes were made to my two scenarios, pedestrians would not be inconvenienced and the road traffic would flow much better.

And, BTW, in both situations I regularly used the road, both as a driver and a pedestrian!

Pedestrian crossings near roundabouts may be necessary because there are pedestrians trying to cross the road in the vicinity!

Really? :roll: Pedestrians have the capacity to walk further down the road, and a crossing could be provided in an appropriate place. If lights were to be placed further away from roundabouts, they would serve pedestrians often just as well, whilst not causing the same problems for traffic as traffic leaving a roundabout has a space in which to queue without necessarily blocking the entire junction!

It's not particularly disruptive to provide a pedestrian crossing on the entry to a roundabout but the exit is more difficult as there is a risk of traffic tailing back onto the roundabout itself.

The problem is, more often than not, the entrance and exit to the roundabout are the same! You can take all you want about controlling flow of traffic onto the roundabout, but when traffic cannot leave the roundabout the junction grinds to a halt. It's much better when you can separate the two with an island, but when you're leaving a roundabout you ideally should have space for traffic with a red light to queue not blocking the junction.
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For those who can't see it, it's the junction of George Street and Frederick Street in Edinburgh, a roundabout with zebra crossings on every entrance and exit.

That junction's crazy. Although I used to regularly walk through a junction in Aberdeen with zebra crossings at all entrances to a roundabout, and it worked. However, the traffic flow (of pedestrians and motorists) was much lower than that one in Edinburgh! For a low-volume solution, zebra crossings actually work quite well at roundabouts. You have less dwell time when pedestrians are crossing so there shouldn't regularly be build up of traffic. But I stress, it only works in low volume situations!

 

[Butts]

I'd like to know who thought that this is a good idea for a junction in a busy city centre.
For those who can't see it, it's the junction of George Street and Frederick Street in Edinburgh, a roundabout with zebra crossings on every entrance and exit.
Because George Street has lots of shops, in the summer and at some other times there's a near constant flow of pedestrians across Frederick Street, and people going across the roundabout get stopped trying to come off it which blocks anyone coming on. My current record for getting from the junction across Queen Street onto the roundabout (a whole 300m) is just over 15 minutes.

Tell me about it - that whole area is a nightmare. At night the shoppers are replaced by drinkers and diners veering all over the place. Also parts of it are shut off at the drop of a hat when anything is on in the City.

Edinburgh in general is a nightmare with all the changes and restrictions that have appeared over the last few years. Wait till the 20mph limit arrives - coming soon :roll:

 

[edwin_m]

Yes, absolutely. I have no problem whatsoever with pedestrian crossings. But when the traffic management is completely inept, it causes problems for all road users.

To take my two examples, in one of them there are an unnecessary number of pedestrian crossings in a short space of time. The problem here is that traffic is now regularly backed up onto a roundabout, causing traffic problems for the other three tributaries to that roundabout. The lights are both within about 150 yards of existing pederstrian crossings. The new lights for the junction (which are absolutely necessary) also provide crossing opportunities for pedestrians, and I would argue that the two existing pedestrian crossings are no longer required. Pedestrians would still have opportunities to cross the road, and the traffic would flow much better.

Pedestrians are people too, and rather than sitting in a comfy car they are exposed to the elements as well as fumes, splashing, dazzling from passing traffic and the occasional risk of a vehicle going onto the pavement.

150 yards to a crossing and back on the other side is about 3min extra walking time plus however long it takes to wait for cross the crossing itself - and more so for the infirm. In this situation if the "desire line" is to cross near the roundabout then a substantial minority will do so, including leaping over guard rail if provided.

The problem is, more often than not, the entrance and exit to the roundabout are the same! You can take all you want about controlling flow of traffic onto the roundabout, but when traffic cannot leave the roundabout the junction grinds to a halt. It's much better when you can separate the two with an island, but when you're leaving a roundabout you ideally should have space for traffic with a red light to queue not blocking the junction.

That is exactly why pedestrian crossings anywhere near a roundabout are difficult. I imagine however that if a fully signalled roundabout wouldn't let any vehicles on if there was a risk of an exit becoming blocked.

Roundabouts and subways were fashionable in the 60s and 70s when policy favoured the car and made the pedestrian very much a second-class citizen. However there is now a trend towards replacing them with signals in urban areas.

 

[90019]

Edinburgh in general is a nightmare with all the changes and restrictions that have appeared over the last few years. Wait till the 20mph limit arrives - coming soon :roll:

I predict that I'll be getting paid more due to overtime from late running, since we won't be able to make up time anymore.

 

[me123]

150 yards to a crossing and back on the other side is about 3min extra walking time plus however long it takes to wait for cross the crossing itself - and more so for the infirm. In this situation if the "desire line" is to cross near the roundabout then a substantial minority will do so, including leaping over guard rail if provided.

Given that, in these situations, the vast majority of people crossing will continue to walk the extra 150 yards (and plenty more too!) when they're on the other side of the road, I really don't see how they are even remotely disenfranchised. In one of the cases, I've just measured the distance between two crossings on Google Maps and it's just 200 feet. Surely one of these can be removed with no adverse impact on pedestrians?!?

You simply cannot have pedestrian crossings at every single place where someone may want to cross the road. It is simply not practical. It's all about compromise. In the ideal situation for the driver, there would be no pedestrians and traffic would flow freely, like on a motorway. For the pedestrian, the ideal would be no cars whatsoever and complete pedestrianisation of their routes. The reality is that the two groups share the public highway and have to make compromises, which is why we have crossings and junctions. Of course, compromise is made in both directions. Traffic is routinely stopped to allow crossings at locations where it is practical to do so. In a similar vein, it is only reasonable that pedestrian crossings are in appropriate places. If that means a compromise for pedestrians, then so be it.

In the situations I have highlighted, there is generally no need for the crossings to be so close to the roundabout. There are alternate locations that would work better. They would not cause traffic problems to the same extent, and would have little impact on pedestrians. In the other, there is simply no need to have four sets of traffic lights to allow crossings in the space of just 0.2 miles.

 

[Butts]

I predict that I'll be getting paid more due to overtime from late running, since we won't be able to make up time anymore.

Indeed, those pesky roadworks on Leith Street have reappeared after a Christmas hiatus.

I think there is to much emphasis on Pedestrians and Cyclists at the cost of Motorists in Edinburgh and I'm sure many other Towns and Cities.

I wonder if there any super smart traffic management systems anywhere else in the world that we could learn from ?

 

[me123]

I think there is to much emphasis on Pedestrians and Cyclists at the cost of Motorists in Edinburgh and I'm sure many other Towns and Cities.

I don't know if I'd agree that there's "too much" emphasis on pedestrians. Certainly, Edinburgh is a busy place for pedestrians. However, it's certainly a nightmare to drive through. I've only driven through Edinburgh a few times, and I do tend to avoid it. It's busy, it's not particularly easy for me (I don't know the city's roads very well at all) and it's much more stressful than parking and catching a bus IMO. I think I'll actually quite like the 20mph speed limit - if only because it means I might actually stand a chance of working out what's happening!

 

[Butts]

I don't know if I'd agree that there's "too much" emphasis on pedestrians. Certainly, Edinburgh is a busy place for pedestrians. However, it's certainly a nightmare to drive through. I've only driven through Edinburgh a few times, and I do tend to avoid it. It's busy, it's not particularly easy for me (I don't know the city's roads very well at all) and it's much more stressful than parking and catching a bus IMO. I think I'll actually quite like the 20mph speed limit - if only because it means I might actually stand a chance of working out what's happening!

Your "Manor" is not much better - Livingston may not have so many Traffic Lights but it has plenty of Roundabouts and "Roads to Nowhere" - Almondvale is a Nightmare !!!

With regard to Edinburgh perhaps it should be "all or nothing" make cars welcome or ban them from the City Centre.

 

[me123]

I've got used to Livi in the short time I've been here. I genuinely don't mind driving around here. On the whole, there's little congestion and the traffic flows quite well. Some of the junctions are a bit more complicated than they need to be, but I don't find it too bad. If you don't know Livi, though, you're pretty snookered! In the first few weeks here, I got lost dozens of times!

The thing I don't like about Edinburgh is that there's more traffic and people are very confident about where they're going, whereas I'm not. I'm much more confident in Glasgow where I generally know what I'm doing! Livingston generally has more space than a larger city, so you'll probably get lost but I don't think you're too likely to make a bad mistake on the road.

 

[AM9]

Your "Manor" is not much better - Livingston may not have so many Traffic Lights but it has plenty of Roundabouts and "Roads to Nowhere" - Almondvale is a Nightmare !!!

With regard to Edinburgh perhaps it should be "all or nothing" make cars welcome or ban them from the City Centre.

Absolute bans are too controversial politically and for a few, do impose real restictions on local mobility. Giving preference to pedestrians, particularly where there are many shops, reataurants and even bars, has a number of benefits across society:

1) eventually, those motorists that don't need to be driving through the centre of cities and towns get the message and change their habits
2) as a result of 1) above, the street environment improves in terms of pollution and human safety
3) more visitors visit the area as pedestrians and public transport improves thereby increasing the efficiency of the local road systems​

So if anybody still insists using private transport in those areas, they can, but it becomes a secondary route, where delays can be expected. I would not be surprised if many towns/cities have unwritten policies of motor traffic reduction by using traffic control as a disincentive to drivers. The only people who openly complain are shopkeepers who (possibly wrongly) think that congested polluted streets are good for their own business.
The above has been true in London for decades and there is no reason why it won't be the same in other important centres.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Really? :roll: Pedestrians have the capacity to walk further down the road, and a crossing could be provided in an appropriate place. If lights were to be placed further away from roundabouts, they would serve pedestrians often just as well, whilst not causing the same problems for traffic as traffic leaving a roundabout has a space in which to queue without necessarily blocking the entire junction!

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Roundabouts (and other road junctions) tend to be important crossing points for pedestrians, because at any junction with more than 3 exits, the vast majority of possible pedestrian journeys will require crossing at least one road at the junction. Putting a crossing away from a roundabout will mean those pedestrians who need to cross that road in order to access a different road away from the roundabout will need to walk along the road to the crossing and then walk back to the roundabout again. Not particularly fair to the pedestrians, likely to cause some to just jump over any barriers etc. to cross at the roundabout anyway, and seems rather reminiscent of the bad old days of the 60s, 70s and 80s where road design often appeared to be based on the premise that pedestrians didn't matter.

Having said that, I'm not familiar with the particular roundabouts you're discussing. Maybe there are some special circumstances at those?

 

[tsr]

Recently, my hometown has had the one-way system converted to two-way traffic flow (a good thing, as the one-way system was pretty inefficient and always got in a muddle the moment anything went wrong, whereas now there are easy backup routes for all directions). However, somebody has decided to make the pedestrian crossings of the type which only allow pedestrians to cross when there is absolutely no traffic whatsoever for a minimum of 100-150 yards either side. This includes very slow moving traffic. As far as I can tell, this is to ensure that the lights do not change to red in front of oncoming traffic, but that is basically exactly what they're supposed to do - and what you're supposed to expect when you drive up to a pedestrian crossing with people waiting beside it, with reasonable notice. I'm not talking about sensors preventing them going to red when a car is a couple of feet away; it's much worse, to the point that pedestrians now either have to chance it and cross by themselves if there's anything more than a couple of cars in the whole town centre, or not bother with the crossings anyway if it's quiet.

The previous system was much more efficient: realising that the maximum feasible speed in the town centre was 25-30mph during hours when the crossings were needed, it would put the lights to red or add a pedestrian phase as priority whenever someone pushed a button, only waiting if a vehicle was within about 10 yards of the crossing. This meant that people didn't run around in the traffic as much, because they knew they wouldn't have to wait 5 minutes to cross a two-lane road.

Rant over, but as you can see, the same sort of stuff applies to pedestrians too. (I speak as a pedestrian, cyclist and driver of a rare heritage vehicle with slightly odd brakes.)

 

[devon_metro]

I predict that I'll be getting paid more due to overtime from late running, since we won't be able to make up time anymore.

There isn't much point doing more than 20mph on most of Edinburgh's roads. You'll only end up with a flat tyre or damaged suspension due to the appalling state of the roads. I've never known a city with so many potholes, sinking drains, uneven carriageways etc, etc. Really is extremely dangerous, particularly for cyclists.

 

[90019]

There isn't much point doing more than 20mph on most of Edinburgh's roads. You'll only end up with a flat tyre or damaged suspension due to the appalling state of the roads. I've never known a city with so many potholes, sinking drains, uneven carriageways etc, etc. Really is extremely dangerous, particularly for cyclists.

After a while you learn the best path to take to avoid the worst potholes, though there are a few that I deliberately drive through to make them worse so they'll get repaired sooner.
There are some places, like the junction of Frederick Street and Queen Street heading north, where you have to use the ferry lift in some of the buses otherwise they'll scrape off the road surface.
There's some quite impressive gouges out of bits of road in places where the buses scrape, and the single deck hybrids aren't allowed to be used on the 24 (unless there's absolutely nothing else available) because they were all getting damaged where the back end was hitting the road at certain junctions.

 

[Trainfan344]

A roundabout which has benefited from traffic lights is the Copdock Interchange in Ipswich, Suffolk. Before the lights were put in a few years ago, the A12 used to regularly queue back for miles travelling North. I find the whole roundabout flows much better now. https://goo.gl/maps/k8AiHXfDTnp

 

[james60059]

I know when I drive home from work at 3am, the traffic lights I have to negotiate especially the Long Shoot and A5 Junction outside Nuneaton the lights go green when you approach them - assuming there's nothing on the A5 that has already triggered them to go green for the A5. Obviously, under normal daytime conditions they are on a sequence