On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:04:35 -0700, Tom Sixkiller wrote:


"Big John" wrote in message
...
Tom

Come to Houston. New Mayor just synchronized part of the down town
lights and is working on the rest and he's even a Democrat )

Synchronizing them to do what? :~)


The synchronization is with the other lights down a given straight line
path.

It's my understanding that, when traveling in a single direction, the
lights are purposely timed to minimize the number of interestions you can
transverse at any given green light cycle. The idea is that it prevents
people from speeding through these heavily traveled routes and requires
the drivers to pay more attention to traffic and signals around them. I
believe it also reduced the number of red light speeders. Last I heard,
doing so resulted in fewer accidents at the expense of greater travel time
and more frequent stops.

Reversing this by synchronising many green lights in a row may cause the
accident rates to rise.

How factual this is, I don't know. I just remember reading about this
some number of years ago.