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[pat]

Came out of work this morning & headed onto the London bound M3 at jct 4a only to discover that overnight they've installed a set of traffic lights halfway down the slip road!   

They're deffo not temporary ones as they're hoofing great big things & I noticed they've also put a set on the slip road joining at J3 as well so assume J4 is also being done.

They're not operational at the moment, but obviously will be soon, so why ?

I presume it's someones anti-congestion brainwave, but how's it supposed to work ?  There'll still be the same amount of traffic joining the motorway & it's not like they're putting a corresponding set on the motorway itself in order to stop it in order to allow the joining traffic on, so other than waste our hard earned pennies & back up traffic to cause congestion in the surrounding roads, what's it supposed to achieve?   

[mr_pr]

They have sets of these t'up north on the m6 and they are weird. A peak traffic periods they seem to cycle through red, amber,green. By this i mean they stay Red for maybe 3-5 secs, then stay green for 3-5secs then red and so on...

I don't see how they help. Instead of allowing smooth flow onto the motorway they cause a wave effect on the slip road which manifests as a wave on the motorway. These waves are the exact reason traffic 'jams' cause more traffic jams and are the thinking behind variable speed limits.

Blood stupid if you ask me.

[truescot]

they are supposed cycle thru the red amber and green just to give a bit of space between the vehicles when they are entering the motorway, it allows people adequate distance to accelerate up to motorway speed without having to worry about the person in front of them not being so quick and therefore allows a smoother introduction of traffic onto the motorway also stopping existing motorway traffic from having to slow down because a couple of the cars hav not managed to get up to speed b4 joining, it also helps prevent the concertina effect at entrances.  At least thats the theory anyway, i rekon they would be better off just banning lorries at peak times.

I was heading down the A1 from edinburgh to newcastle after new year, most of the way its single carrageway and you have dual carriageway bits to allow the cars to overtake old people in micras, lorries etc. the problem for us is that there where 2 lorris a few cars ahead of us and every time the road became a dual carriageway they would overtake each other (only sometimes successfully) using up the whole dual carriageway and not lettign anyone past till it went back to 1 lane again.

Sorry for hijacking this thread with a rant about Lorry drivers but lets face it they are bastards.

[zx10_bez]

they have em on the M6 slip road near birmingham, when they cycle onto red at busy times it allows the cars on the slip road to spread out and join the carrage way, work alright from what i've seen, supposed to stop over crowding when joining the motorway like some junctions suffer from.

[r1ninja]

Doesn't stop twats heading straight  to the outside lane from the sliproad

[zx10_bez]

u been following me

[zxyogi]

Came out of work this morning & headed onto the London bound M3 at jct 4a only to discover that overnight they've installed a set of traffic lights halfway down the slip road!   

They're deffo not temporary ones as they're hoofing great big things & I noticed they've also put a set on the slip road joining at J3 as well so assume J4 is also being done.

They're not operational at the moment, but obviously will be soon, so why ?

I presume it's someones anti-congestion brainwave, but how's it supposed to work ?  There'll still be the same amount of traffic joining the motorway & it's not like they're putting a corresponding set on the motorway itself in order to stop it in order to allow the joining traffic on, so other than waste our hard earned pennies & back up traffic to cause congestion in the surrounding roads, what's it supposed to achieve?   

Yeah i noticed that this morning Pat!!
Personally i think its gonna cause chaos around J4a,its bad enough in the mornings as it is and thats the main reason i get to work 45mins early every day to avoid the traffic on the M3.

[pat]