This rant, unlike others, actually offers a solution. Read up on my plight and what pisses me off this time:
You can guess on any number of occasions as to just how many traffic lights you actually are stopped by on any given day doing your everyday mundane activities. Plenty; and at times, way too many. Usually when you are in a hurry, every traffic light that adorns that particular path that is required for you to reach your destination in a timeliest of manners, turns red 200 feet before you get to it, causing you to stop and wait for that 1 car to cross the intersection; meanwhile holding most of the inner city traffic hostage. I don't know about anyone else, but I am damn tired of paying for the amount of gas we use for just going to work and the like. Yes, sure I would love to have an electric car, but have you priced one of those? Buying one doesn't justify the money you would save on gas. The extra cost is absorbed by the price of the car. It's a conspiracy I tell you. It's to keep us energy dependent on the big corporations that are currently in control and will likely be for a long time to come. The distance I would drive to work would enable me to never buy gas again; unless I was going on a trip out of town (Chevy Volt at this time gets around 90 miles on a single charge). While this is awesome, they start off (in my area anyways) for the 2013 model runs on average $38,000 USD. in the 5 year auto loan, versus my current car a 2012 Honda Civic coupe,; the Volt would cost me an extra $3,399 a year to own, not counting the higher electric bill from charging the Volt every day I used it. I currently burn 2 tanks a month (about 24 gallons) for a cost yearly of a tad over $1000. So to drive a Chevy Volt, I would pay an EXTRA $2,399 per year just so I didn't have to buy gas. Batteries don't last forever and I would have to buy replacement batteries for the Volt eventually. etc etc etc. Electric? Nice! but no thanks at this point.
Everyone that owns a car, bus, van, or motorcycle already knows that gas mileage is best when cruising at a respectable speed such as 55-65mph (in most vehicles). Starting and stopping is not only the hardest part of travel on your vehicle, but also uses the most gas (petrol elsewhere). Traffic signals inhibit the best gas performance from your vehicle by causing stops and starts unnecessarily. This starting and stopping is hard on your brakes, your engine, and your wallet from the extra cost associations.
Traffic lights are necessary to avoid accidents and allow turns into lanes of traffic otherwise deemed hazardous. Bullshit. Traffic lights are there so that your car not only has to idle and burn gas doing it, but it is causing your engine and other car systems to fail prematurely. The oil companies are gaining a huge source of income simply from your car not running optimally. The car companies gain from the extra parts that will need to be replaced earlier such as brakes wearing out, rotors warping from being too thin to hold the heat etc. Vehicles are known to overheat sitting still from not getting any fresh air through their radiators to cool the engine off with; this can be extremely expensive to repair. This does not even cover car accidents from people forgetting to stop at an intersection and read-ending someone else that was stopped for that traffic signal.
Most of this can be alleviated by simply removing the traffic signals and replacing them with passways. By passways, I mean over or underpasses that essentially bypass the need for traffic signals. For instance, if you wanted to go straight at a 4-way intersection, they could build and overpass or underpass so that you can continue without having to stop or even slow down. On that note, you can simply build the whole road in the air or underground. east-west roads could go on the ground while north-south roads could be passways. When wanting to get on to one of the cross streets, there is simply a ramp that leads into the travel lanes just like on interstates.
I know, you are thinking that the cost of building these passways will be a considerable burden to the taxpayers. Not necessarily. If we take into consideration the police, road crews, towing services, fire department personnel, and ambulance personnel that are required every time there is an auto accident, the passways would pay for themselves in short order and be a money saver int the long run. While I have no concrete numbers to shove down your throat, doesn't matter. It makes sense. We save money from gas and car repairs, government saves money from personnel and equipment costs that are no longer needed and can be cut back.
How do we build these passways in already built cities? They do not have the room available to put in turn lanes and the like. Look at other cities up north in the U.S. They have built roads above roads and roads underground. Why not now? In the intersections that are there now, you could have a mini cloverleaf off/on ramp system using that real estate for getting on and off the passways.
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