Q&A
Q. Removing traffic lights might work on a small scale, but it couldn't possibly work in big cities like London.
A. How do you know - has it ever been tested? Not formally, which is one of the things we're pushing for. But it has been tested informally. During power cuts when lights were out of action across the entire West End, as on 12-13 Feb 2007, congestion vanished into thin air, and people smiled. What is London if not a collection of towns and villages? If it works on a micro scale, who's to say it won't work on a macro?
Q. If "shared space" ideas are so successful in reducing accidents and congestion, why haven't they been widely adopted?
A. Could it be because established dogma is deeply ingrained, and the traffic control system supports powerful commercial interests? Every set of traffic lights costs between £150,000 and £200,000 to install. Add 10% annual maintenance costs. As Ben Hamilton-Baillie says in the Newsnight report, with 14,000 sets of lights in England, "that's a huge amount of money going into systems of questionable value."
Q. Would you get rid of all traffic lights?
A. Theoretically, yes. It's the misconceived rule of main road priority which produces unbroken streams of traffic and a "need" for lights - to break the priority streams so that others can cross. It's only on the road where we have to abandon natural civility and ignore others who were there first. Remove priority, and you remove the need for lights. You transform the current war zone where we have to fight for survival, gaps and green time into a public realm where people can act with civility and do what comes naturally - take it in turns. What could be safer or more efficient as a form of junction control? At major junctions at peak times, some controls might prove necessary. But how do we know until we've tried it? Apart from unsighted single track roads that turn corners, e.g. in the medieval Somerset town of Dunster, we are better off left to our own co-operative devices.
Q. What about the maniacs?
A. You can't legislate for maniacs, and research shows they are a tiny minority, so why straitjacket the vast majority of reasonable citizens with one-size-fits-all rules designed for the lowest common denominator or the hypothetical deviant?