With talk of global warming, increasing pollution levels and extreme weather events mentioned on an almost daily basis on the news, why are we being  controlled in such an inefficient way that surely must contribute to these factors, every time we jump in any vehicle, as a driver or a passenger.

Traffic mismanagement seems to be rife in some areas more than others, but generally it can be said that unnecessary control over the motorist removes responsibility of drivers to the point where frustration sets in, or another route along a rural area is in order to make a regular journey bearable.

Are you wondering every morning on the way to work why you are taking longer and longer to get to your workplace?

Are you sat in an unnecessarily long line of traffic for no explicable reason?

Are you starting to use more fuel without an increase on fuel taxes?

Do you find yourself leaving earlier or taking a longer route to work?

Are other work members becoming increasingly later to their arrival for work?

Why are people becoming more and more frustrated on their journey to work..

Well, just perhaps the local council just don't want you to get there on time. Perhaps they want you to cycle, share a car with ‘sweaty Bettie’ or even walk, with a risk of being mugged.

Perhaps they want you to use public transport, so you can arrive one and a half hours early (or late).

So what can be done about it? One group managed to get the traffic lights re-programmed after they almost caused the town to close down after visitors avoided the whole area due to jams into neighbouring towns and cities, so not all hope is lost.

I would ask everyone to note down how much time is spent wasted, while waiting at red lights when it would be normally safe to go if the lights were not functioning, but I think the results would be quite a shock to everyone! If all these small amounts of time were added up for every motorist and corrected via correct phasing or use of sensors (like Sweden for instance) we would probably be the world leader in pollution reduction. Incidentally, when the lights stop working around Salisbury, all the traffic seems to flow surprisingly well!

I calculated the amount of CO₂ around my home town of Salisbury in Wiltshire and found that there would be 43 excess tonnes of CO₂ produced by the traffic jams around the ring road every HOUR while the incorrectly phased traffic lights were doing their best to disrupt traffic flow, when normally there should be 5 Tonnes produced by normal flowing traffic without any unnecessary delays.

(This was based on 2000 vehicles that would normally travel 50 miles each, dividing equally between petrol and diesel fueled medium sized cars with an online CO₂ calculator.)

This obvious problem could easily be corrected by monitoring the traffic flows around the roundabouts and correctly phasing the traffic lights to the demand of traffic, as Salisbury District Council claim it would be more costly to turn the traffic light system on and off at certain times of the day. A source told me that the lights were second-hand upon purchase and to reprogram them would be more costly than a new system all together!

(See: www.seered.co.uk) The group that managed to get something done! There are also some other interesting articles on this site about mismanagement on local governments behalf.

Another interesting Dutch solution review and a few others can be found here: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/2006/11/09/putting-a-stop-to-traffic-signals/

Rip them out! An interesting article with a few varied comments: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml=/motoring/2006/10/14/mflights14.xml

Here is an online CO₂ Calculator to estimate your journeys production of CO₂ on a mile by mile basis: http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/carboncalc/html/

Although not related, this website shows you the damamge being caused by power line technolgy (PLT), interfering with short wave users all over the world. The website can be found here: http://www.mikeandsniffy.co.uk/UKQRM/