New Clause 5 — Traffic Lights

Part of Traffic Management Bill – in the House of Commons at 5:00 pm on 16 March 2004.

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Photo of John Redwood John Redwood Conservative, Wokingham 5:00, 16 March 2004

I rise to support new clause 5, tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends, and to speak to my parallel new clause 8. I shall highlight the differences between them, but there are also many similarities. Both are designed to get traffic flowing more freely again.

As my right hon. Friend Mr. Knight has ably pointed out, the position in London is particularly chronic. There has been a deliberate attempt by the highways authorities to block and slow the traffic. We have seen reduced green phases and increased red phases at many sets of traffic lights, and the introduction of a large number of additional traffic lights, some of which are unnecessary or undesirable. In the centre of London, we now also have traffic lights with the new feature of an all-red phase, which means that traffic coming to the junction from each direction has to sit there looking at all the other stationary traffic. Let us imagine the cost of that in terms of fumes, frustration, pollution and inconvenience. There are often no pedestrians wishing to cross those roads at the time of the all-red phase.

I am mainly a pedestrian in central London. I bring my car in on a Monday morning, and I leave it here until my duties are finished. I do not try to drive round the centre of London in my car. I normally walk, because I find that that is the quickest mode of travel, now that the traffic system has been wrecked and the underground functions so badly. So I look at this situation from a pedestrian's point of view, but I cannot say, as a pedestrian, that I want all-red phases. I often do not want to wait for the red phase at all, and I would not do so if it were safe for me to cross. It is perfectly reasonable for pedestrians at busy junctions to have to row in with the traffic light system, just as vehicles do, so that the pedestrians cross the road during the red phase. If they wished to cross again in a further direction, which is unusual, they would also have to wait for a red phase there, so that it would be safe to cross.

The new clauses are designed to deal with the inconvenience created by the prevalence of red phases over green phases, and particularly to tackle the new injustice of the all-red phase, which does not help or amuse me as a pedestrian and which is extremely frustrating to all those who need or have to drive around London. It is particularly frustrating to all those carrying out their trade, using a van, milk float or other commercial vehicle. They have to use their vehicles because the tools and stock of their trade are inside them. Those people now have to sit at traffic lights for a great deal of the day, which increases prices, reduces efficiency, annoys people who live near the road blocks, and increases the amount of pollution.

New clause 5 proposes that

"all traffic lights operate on a traffic sensitive basis during non-rush hour periods".

If properly implemented, that measure would make an immediate improvement. We all have experience of travelling round busy towns and cities in the evening or the early morning, and of having to sit at red traffic lights when there is nothing moving in the other direction. Proper traffic sensors on the lights would remove the inconvenience, the congestion, the pollution, the delays, and the extra noise and fumes for people living nearby.

The second part of the new clause proposes that

"traffic lights are set to achieve the most expeditious flow of traffic and pedestrians at all times they are operational".

That addresses directly the question of whether there should be all-red phases. The answer is that there should not, and that there should be a sensible balance between the needs of the different road users and roads coming into the junction. We need to balance the needs of pedestrians and vehicles, and to make a decision as to which is the major road and which is the minor, giving sensible priority in most cases to the major road.

The third part of new clause 5—which differs markedly from my proposal in new clause 8—proposes that, unless there are good reasons for not doing so,

"traffic lights at junctions with low traffic volumes operate in amber warning mode in all directions during non-rush hour periods."

I could live with that proposal. Traffic sensors changing the lights from red to green or green to red, as appropriate, in response to traffic demand would be even safer and easier, so I would favour that option. However, if my right hon. and hon. Friends want to press new clause 5 to a vote, I should be happy to support it, because the intention is good. People would, however, have to be a bit more careful, because there could be traffic approaching a junction on amber from both directions. We would also need a sensible definition of low volume, so that the opportunities for conflict were reduced. 5.15 pm

That brings me to my new clause 8, which contains the provisions

"that all traffic lights should operate on a traffic sensitive basis" and that all traffic lights should be

"set to achieve the most expeditious flow of traffic and pedestrians".

The other feature of my new clause, instead of the amber flashing mode, is that

"traffic lights give longer green phases to main roads than to side roads and give continuous green phases to main roads during quiet times of the day and night, save where the traffic sensors recognise traffic on approaching side roads."

I submit that that is a safer variant than the amber flashing lights.

In most cities and towns, there is a clear main road—the A-road, the trunk road or the main route that goes through the principal settlement or links the connected settlements that form a great city—and a series of side roads intersect with the main route. Where that is clear, surely the highways authority should programme the traffic lights to give priority off-peak, all the time, to the busier main road, with the proviso that there should be a traffic sensor so that people are not stranded on the intersecting side roads for ever. In many cases, they would get early change to green if the traffic flows permitted that on the main route. That would be much fairer: it would reduce frustration as well as the need to burn so much petrol, change down and come to a halt, often with the engine running, while people wait for what seems like a long time late at night for the lights to change.

There we have it. There are two parallel proposals on the table. One, influenced more by the United States, involves the amber flashing light; the other is influenced more by the British tradition of using the technology of traffic sensors. The Minister may argue that there would be a cost involved in installing traffic sensors in traffic lights. I quite agree, but it would be modest compared to the huge sums spent on obstacles and blocks to traffic in recent years. Most road users would think it was money well spent.

I recommend that it be assumed that, over a reasonable period, that cost would get us up to modern traffic management standards. The savings in terms of less congestion, less fuel burned, less frustration, less delay and less cost to business would be considerable.

The Minister may also say that he favours local autonomy in that respect as in others. I would find that easier to believe if we did not have before us this Bill in this shape. The Bill is about establishing national standards of traffic management and investigating how well local authorities do. It is about, in extreme cases, moving in and taking over traffic management duties if the local authority has failed.

I am offering the Minister a way to ensure that local authorities, in more cases than not, succeed in improving traffic flows and busting congestion so that he does not have to make a heavy-handed intervention, which he will be entitled to do if the Bill is passed. So, far from my proposals being an additional blow to local autonomy, they could be a buttress to sensible local autonomy, which would mean that fewer local authorities got into the danger zone on their traffic management practices and had to face the extreme intervention of the whole system being taken out of their hands to be run by somebody else.

The Government and local authorities seem to be interested in the use of technology to advise, warn, marshal and control traffic. I am recommending an old and well-established technology that would do the job at a relatively modest price and relatively simply. I have been trying to persuade my local authority, which is keen to get traffic moving and bust congestion, to change the phasing of lights. It has been obliging in many cases and is conducting an exercise at the moment, junction by junction.

The authority is discovering that it can improve the capacity of leading congested junctions in the district quite substantially, simply by changing the phasing and timing of lights. If traffic sensors are added, the effect is even better—particularly off-peak when there is no need to hold up the traffic on principal routes. I recommend that the Government adopt a scheme along the lines of new clause 8 and have pleasure in supporting my right hon. and hon. Friends in new clause 5.