Roundabouts Traffic Lights

Do you remember the last time they turn on the traffic lights at certain roundabouts in B.S.B? Do you remember the amount of traffic (and havoc) it created? Do you remember the time you stucked in the jam? Do you remember how late you reach home that day? Do you remember?

If you are one of them, you are just another victim of their testing stage. I remember they turned it on for a day or two and everyone started complaining. Obviously it didn't work. The traffic got worst.

I was having tea in a restaurant and talked about it to a friend which I haven't met for some time. He told me he works as an officer in JKR. So I thought it would be good I share with him what I experience/heard about this traffic lights in roundabouts, and the public's response. After complaining about all sorts of things on those traffic lights, and I even told him how my ex-boss get really pissed with it... he told me he is the officer in charge of this project. Sighs...

Anyway, he told me that they will turn on the traffic lights again. (Brace yourself.) But unsure when. They will need to make a careful study on the traffic before turning on again. I believe this is all about timing of the traffic signals. Once you get it right, I think this will work. Other countries have done it, and it works. I am sure they do use some kind of computer simulation to simulate the traffic flow. If you notice on certain busy roads, there are small cables placed on the road, and runs at right angle to the roads. That is actually a traffic counter. This statistics is used by JKR and Shell (as I was told). I am not sure why Shell needed this, but I think it could be for fuel consumption studies, etc.

Apart from all these, there are ways to control the traffic lights. While working in a private sector company in the past, I remember making some research on monitoring traffic lights remotely using SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition). The name says it all. It retrieves live data and can control the traffic lights from a remote area. Apart from that certain countries uses SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique) which is an adaptive system that responds automatically to fluctuations in traffic flow through the use of on-street detectors. There are a few more common systems which certain countries uses accordingly to their traffic flow. So if you have a proposal, with a serious intention of course, please do so to the JKR department. They are most welcome for it.