Traffic light failure in Ealing, London, sparks trial of traffic-light-free junctions
For six months, lights at up to seven junctions in Ealing will be concealed by bags and drivers will be left to negotiate their way across by establishing eye contact with pedestrians and other motorists.
Ealing found evidence to support a theory that traffic flow improves without lights – the lights failed one day at a busy junction and traffic flowed better than before. Councillors have approved a report which recommended that they 'experimentally remove signals since experience of signal failure showed that junction worked well'.
Quoted in The Times, David Millican, a Conservative councillor and Ealing’s Cabinet member for transport, said: 'We want to end the situation where no one is moving and time and space are being wasted. We respect walking and cycling but we also have to respect that people want to get around in their cars.'
Mr Millican said that pedestrian crossings would be relocated away from some junctions. Some lights would be replaced by 'give way' signs and others by temporary mini-roundabouts painted on the road.
Ben Hamilton Baillie, a transport consultant who has studied schemes on the Continent where lights have been removed, said that traffic flow and safety tended to improve.
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