London Lunacy part 2

Part 2 in my possibly ongoing series about the stupidity that exists in London's City Hall deals with Traffic. Specifically, Traffic Lights.

First, there does not appear to be any central control or coordination of traffic lights. For a City that thinks its big and will soon be quite large, this is a gaping hole in the City's Infrastructure.

Secondly, while I admittedly do a lot more walking, particularly at odd hours, like 3am, I'm appalled by London's system of traffic lights and a significant lack of sidewalks. How does any property get developed in this City ever without the landowner being required to put down sidewalks. If not the developer, then the City should use the powers of The Ontario Planning Act to at least get the funding for sidewalks. Perhaps this has already changed and I'm crying over spilled milk that's already been cleaned up but the absolute dearth of sidewalks in South London makes me suspicious.

Its not that there aren't patches of sidewalk - there are. Unfortunately, these patches are the orphans of infrastructure, connecting to nothing at all. Its bad enough that any neighbourhood constructed in the 1980s turns its back on main roads but when they're next to older sidewalks, its also sad. One wants to hug the sidewalk to make it feel less isolated from anyone who might be inclined to use it from time to time. Late at night the pedestrian plays a sort of blind Russian Roulette or walks head on into oncoming traffic, depending on the desire to cross an 80K road to determine whether there is actually a wide and tame enough soft shoulder to walk.

You might ask 'who walks on an 80K roadway?' I do. A couple of other intrepid souls do. But without sidewalks, what could one be expected to do? I'm fairly cavalier sometimes towards my own safety. But for the safety conscious, a soft shoulder just doesn't encourage use of the most natural form of transportation. Don't the local Starbucks and Horton's wish to attract more traffic, perhaps from the neighbourhoods adjacent to the Power Centre? What hopes do pedestrians have for a peaceful, safe co-existence with cars without a thin strip of concrete to walk on? How complex is this notion? I tend to assume London's transportation Planners skipped all classes related to sustainability, safety and pedestrian-related infrastructure.

Sidewalks in this setting also serve more than just pedestrian needs. The cyclist faces a choice of soft shoulder (fine on a Mountain Bike but who commutes on knobby tires?) or riding on the same 80K road as cars going upwards of 100K! So the notion that no one walking doesn't support the infrastructure is clearly faulty - both needs can be served with proper signage and respect between sidewalk users.

Anyone who has paid for gas in the last 2 years, save for the post-crash period when oil prices dipped drastically, knows that the new trans fat of driving is idling. While London's Council passes expensive-to-enforce By-Laws against this atrocious act, they neglect to act to reduce it themselves. As I also occasionally drive late at night, I wish I had a nickel for all the minutes I've been forced to wait up to 2 minutes for a four-way Light to change in my favour! There's an easy fix to this and in case London fears being compared to St. Thomas, a great example exists in Canada's second largest City, Vancouver. There, traffic planners realize that there's no point requiring drivers to wait while nothing passes them perpendicularly.

Anyone who's driven in Vancouver at night knows that a flashing yellow in one direction means caution while a flashing green in the other direction assigns right-of-way. Hell, anyone anywhere knows that's the rule when there's a power outage. In fact, a majority of London's traffic lights could be fully powered-down overnight. But if that's too scary for the control freaks that have diplomas in Traffic 'engineering', then I'd settle for the flashing option.

And this solution would address where cars and pedestrians meet (one hopes metaphorically only.) At some of the major crossroads, light cycles are barely long enough for 2 or 3 cars to get through. So the pedestrian has enough time to get halfway across one half of a 4 or 6 lane roadway. Now, I do recognize the unique nature of my late night walks. Not every insomniac or ass-itcher goes on 90 minute walks to look at infrastructure and new cars. But if the Traffic Planner is concerned enough about the safety of vehicles to leave lights on that often cycle for no one, then shouldn't they be as concerned about the occasional walker? There are no crosswalks. There are no 'helping hands' to get one safely from one side to the other. A wrong step or a drunken hike can result in certain death where the predominant road has a limit of 80k and a bend.

So here's a new challenge for London. Try it out somewhere. Let's see what happens at Waterloo or Colborne and Oxford at 3am on a Wednesday night. Surely control boxes have such settings - since these lights in the suburbs have a 5-second cycle function that doesn't exist during the daylight hours?

Next post: the long-winding, short-sighted new sidewalk or Walking into a drainage ditch of death!