Yesterday I was in the county town of Taunton. Like many towns and cities, its historic centre has charm, but beyond that, the traffic system has soured whatever pleasure the built environment might once have generated. From yellow lines and parking meters to bollards and cheap, nasty railings – so often bent – to speed cameras and those weapons of mass distraction, danger and delay – traffic lights – the entire puerile paraphernalia of traffic control defaces streetscapes as it puts us at odds with each other, fails to keep us safe, and maximises pollution.
Years ago I tried to persuade a senior person in Taunton’s traffic department to agree to a lights-off trial, to show that when left to our own cooperative devices, we get on far better than when we’re forced under the current anti-social system to submit to the coercive control of standard traffic management. Initially, she seemed to show interest, but she grew increasingly resistant, and ended up asking me to stop badgering her.
So she and her myopic crew continue to despoil a county town through the mean-spirited stranglehold of traffic mismanagement.
And by refusing the trials that could prove my case for rethinking the system, the good ship of traffic mismanagement sails on unquestioned, costing the earth, in both senses, and causing untold injustice and harm.
It shouldn’t be up to me to prove the case against the system of priority and traffic lights; it should be for the authorities to prove the case for. It’s something they never do, and given the enlightened alternatives, never could. How are they getting away with it? Why do MPs let them get away with it?
