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Ripping out traffic lights not answer to congestion

Arguments to rip out eight in 10 traffic lights in a bid to cut traffic jams are too 'simplistic view', a traffic control chief has warned.

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Research by the Institute of Economic Affairs found that a two-minute delay to every car journey made in a year equates to a loss to the economy of around £16 billion.

And report authors say car journeys would be much quicker if instead of sluggish queues at traffic lights, drivers deployed 'voluntary co-operation' to negotiate regulation-free roads.

However Bob Willis, urban traffic control manager at Wolverhampton council, has said the authority cannot see anywhere on its network where traffic lights could just be switched off.

After a 2009 trial switching off lights at the notorious Cabstand Junction, in Portishead, near Bristol, traffic jams eased and the lights were removed – an approach the researchers want to see across the country.

But Mr Willis said: "We evaluated and looked at our traffic signals when this first appeared two or three years ago and the conclusion we came to was we couldn't see anywhere on our network where we could just switch off traffic lights. You can always switch them off, but you have got to replace them.

"Every time we do a scheme in the city we evaluate the best solution. We haven't put in a lot of new signals over the period, roughly two or three new sets per year – generally with pedestrian crossings where people can cross the road."

And he added the implications of removing vast swathes of traffic lights were unknown.

"Where they have taken them out there has been a lot of criticism from disability groups saying it is far more unsafe for those people to cross the road

"It is about having a balance, we might in the future see that technology or the scheme we are using allows us to take away a certain set of traffic lights, but by the same token it doesn't mean to say we are just going to go around switching off all of our traffic lights."

The report was entitled 'Seeing Red: Traffic Controls And The Economy'.

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