Hobbled Signals

Traffic engineers used to pride themselves on improving traffic flows with coordinated signals. Randall O’Toole, an expert on sprawl and city planning issues teaching at Berkeley U was visiting the east coast recently and noted a sign on the Mystic Parkway in Medford MA in the Boston area which read: “SIGNALS TIMED TO REQUIRE FREQUENT STOPS.” Small letters in the bottom right corner read “MDC.” which stands for Boston’s Metropolitan District Commission, which manages the area’s parks. It is probably being hailed as an innovative ‘alternative transp’ project to and an effort at ‘traffic calming.’ It seems unlikely to calm the motorists. (Randal O’Toole, Thoreau Institute rot@ti.org www.ti.org)