I’ve been sat in a Que of traffic now for 30 mins for a set of lights. They let 2/3 cars through at a time, where as the other direction is often at green with no traffic!

Who do I complain to?

Council Highways dept if it’s not major roads. Highways Agency (or whatever they’re called) If it’s a major road. Start with the Council Highways dept first, they will tell you who is responsible for that particular road/junction.

Local council highways department usually.

What a waste of time that would be!

Near me, the council put in a bridge and decided that a new set of lights were required to allow traffic in and out of the resulting service road. So now we queue up for ages, sometimes the area gets gridlocked, all for the odd car which might emerge from one of three premises!

A while ago, they switched thes lights off and all the problems went away, no jams, no accidents and free flowing trafic – YAY! They were off for ages and we assumed that the council had realised they had wasted our money on this very expensive scheme.

You only need traffic lights when traffic volumes are high. The rest of the time, it’s better to leave motorists to use their judgement based on the rules of the road. “Numpty” at the highways department doesn’t understand this however.

A few weeks ago, on went the lights again! The jams are back, pollution is up and drivers face wasted time and fuel again.

Which halfwit in the council is responsible? I dunno, but we SO need smaller governement! Not only is this traffic scheme a waste of money, but the people who were responsible for putting it in!

If you stop about 15 foot behind the light in question clear of the induction loop, it sends a fault report to the cpu,(grey box), and changes the lights try it, seriously p***es off the drivers behind you though for some reason.They seem to think tooting and waving makes them change quicker.

I’d have jumped it long before waiting half an hour! OMG RLJ!!!!

If you don’t drive across the induction loop, how are the lights going to know to change? They’ll just default to a timer.

Daily Mail and/or Jeremy Vine? 😉

You only need traffic lights when traffic volumes are high.

This is incorrect, there are other times where traffic lights make sense, maybe not in this case…

there are other times where traffic lights make sense

Such as?

there are other times where traffic lights make sense

Yeah like on the Avon ring road between 23.00 and 05.00 each night with all the traffic lights working on all the roundabouts controlling the traffic that isn’t there. 🙄

The traffic lights are here on the roundabout and its the A6102 that que’s up.

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=439788&y=390468&z=110&sv=439788,390468&st=4&ar=y&mapp=map.srf&searchp=ids.srf&dn=563&ax=439788&ay=390468&lm=0

I appreciate its a major junction of the M1 and therefore they have to keep the traffic flowing off the motorway. However routinely you can be stuck at the lights with no que of traffic at all on the M1 slip way exit, or infact any traffic on the roundabout itself.

I thought traffic lights were reasonably ‘intelligent’ these days and could judge traffic flows, or do they still just work off the pressure pad close to the traffic light itself and some numpty sat in a control centre?

Oooh, the Meadowhall junction! I would have thought you are used to queuing around that area, particularly has we head towards Christmas! 😉

“

I thought traffic lights were reasonably ‘intelligent’ these days and could judge traffic flows, or do they still just work off the pressure pad close to the traffic light itself and some numpty sat in a control centre?”

I *think* there is an ongoing upgrade process, so some with have more sensors e.t.c and be more cleverer intit.

Such as?

Blind junctions.

Long single lane sections of road.