Warning: This is probably the most boring video you’ll ever see on YouTube–the kind of thing where, when you’re finished, you’ll say “Well, there’s 6 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back”–and I posted it for that very reason. This is what happens to me and many other fellow Somervillians who drive Highland Ave. EVERY SINGLE DAY. This is something I’ve been bitching about for over ten years. It shows what a set of poorly-timed streetlights looks like and the adverse and wasteful effect it has on traffic. I deal with this nearly every day on my commute through my home town of Somerville, Massachusetts to neighboring East Cambridge, and it is both extremely annoying and quite fixable. The street which crosses here is School Street which is a one way (southbound) “Rangeway” across Somerville. Highland Ave., which I am on, is the middle of three east-west main drags that runs much of the length of this city of nearly 80,000 people. The lights are timed such that traffic on Highland must wait–at certain times of the day–as long as a full two minutes. When the light turns green, it remains so for 10-15 seconds before reverting to red. The amount of traffic at this time in the morning speaks for itself. This was actually a relatively quiet morning on Highland Ave. I have seen as many as 8-10 vehicles sitting and waiting at this light while NO ONE was crossing at the rangeway. This is a complete waste of fuel and contributes unnecessarily to greenhouse gases and carbon footprints and all that other “Green” blather that City officials purport to care about. Re-setting the timing for these lights would require MAYBE ten minutes of effort. A deluxe system, which might cost $50,000 or so, would have radar or laser sensors that would see traffic coming and operate the lights accordingly with logic that overrides this if the traffic density on either of the roadways became lopsided. This would also sequence the lights along Highland Ave. to facilitate some moderate desired speed that would condition drivers to not go too fast or jack-rabbit from stops by dropping the lights green in front of them as they advanced, as long as they were doing the desired moderate speed. This is called passive/active traffic calming, and it’s done in many places. A relatively simple fix that yields tremendous long-term benefits. Matters not though, since I’m the only person who seems to give a damn about any of this.
Post time: Jun-14-2017