Date published: 2006/06/03
The BBC says:
Drivers should be able to turn left at red lights in a bid to ease congestion, the Conservatives have proposed.
The Tories' economic competitiveness policy group has put forward the idea as part of a 10-point transport plan.
Other schemes include new carriageways and underpasses, removing "dangerous" cycle paths and widening junctions and lanes around large roundabouts.
The Tories stress the proposals by the group, one of several set up by leader David Cameron, are not party policy.
The traffic light idea is based on practice in some states in the US where motorists are allowed to turn right at red signals.
The group also suggests rephasing traffic lights to give priority to main roads, putting cycle lanes on pavements where there is room, letting taxis and motorbikes use bus lanes, providing more pedestrian footbridges and underpasses, and reviewing speed limits.
...
But Andrew Evans, professor of Transport Risk Management at Imperial College, said he had reservations about the ideas."I would expect that the system as a whole would be somewhat less safe for pedestrians and cyclists," he said.
"But I think more generally it would make the environment for pedestrians a lot less friendly than it is now, and that's not what we wish to encourage.
"We wish to encourage more pedestrian activity, particularly for short journeys, rather than cars."
Pretty much all the transport planners in the UK hate cars, which is a sad state of affairs given that most journeys in the UK are made by car. In the world of business if you hated your number one customer you would not survive very long, but of course these people are paid for by the taxpayer so do not have to care what their customers think.
Left turn on red makes some sense, but of course it is not going to solve the general problem of congestion by itself. To pacify the car haters, one could easily decide that only turns where safety is not seriously compromised (however the car haters wish to define that) would be allowed on red. People do make most short journeys by foot, and people do not make longer journeys by foot or bicycle because a car is just much more convenient. It has very little to do with safety (in certain cases it might have to do with perceived safety, since the media has drilled it into people that the world is a dangerous place, and the car haters happily latch onto that).
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