Traffic lights in Richmond, Hampton and Barnes to be removed under TfL plans (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Anyone labouring under the misaprehension that these lights enhance safety would do well to look at the philosophy of the late Hans Monderman.
http://www.nickwrigh
tplanning.co.uk/hans
-monderman.htm
His traffic schemes relied on giving back personal responsibility to people by removing restrictions resulting in a great improvement in accident statistics.

@metis, that all sounds fine, but personal responsibility has a very different impact, if you'll excuse the pun, when one is driving a car or truck and when one is another type of road user.

Fail to live up to your personal responsibility in a car and you'll probably scratch your paint or have some blood to wipe off, fail when you're a pedestrian on a road where there are fewer and fewer places to stop, and you'll die or be seriously injured.

Mr. Ranger should perhaps be thinking harder about other transport users - pedestrians, cyclists, bus users, etc. - than pandering to the need to drive everywhere.

Perhaps I should add that Moderman seems to have some excellent ideas on urban planning - I suppose I'm concerned that removing traffic lights won't be a 'first step' to anything particular, except allowing more vehicles to travel with less restriction on our busy roads, making life for pretty much everyone else less pleasant.

Forgive me Lucullus, Are you suggesting that less restrictions equals more cars? How so ? This from ABD: http://www.abd.org.u
k/
rather suggests that congestion is largely engineered by councils.
"it is the authorities, not drivers, who are responsible for much of the increasing congestion we face day after day. This much is clear from traffic surveys from 1998 through to 2000, which show that traffic on major urban routes is generally CONSTANT OR FALLING. " The site is biased from a drivers point of view but their articles are normally well researched and are worth a read.

This lecture from Monderman (in several parts) http://www.urbannous
.org.uk/urbandesignl
ondon/Hans%20Monderm
an.htm
- long but well worth it. Explains the principles behind his thinking and how his designs improve the road experience for ALL users.

The point I was trying to make was that Moderman's ideas encompass a wide variety of measures, whereas all TfL is talking about is removing traffic lights.

What do you do if you're a wheelchair user? Or you have a pram? Or you're elderly? if one of these people wants to cross a road, they need to feel safe doing so, and that doesn't mean stepping out into London traffic.

Besides, DfT stats indicate that car/van/taxi modal share of transport is more or less unchanged, while overall distance travelled is climbing: http://www.dft.gov.u
k/pgr/statistics/dat
atablespublications/
tsgb/2009edition/sec
tiononemodalcomparis
ons.pdf

Will check out the lecture though - I do really like the idea of better urban planning for all users ...

Most of the traffic in this borough is caused by the school run. Many going incredibly short distances.
When schools are on holiday there is little if no traffice.
So rather than making pensioners sprint across the road - we need to tackle the real causes of congestion.

lucullus wrote:
Perhaps I should add that Moderman seems to have some excellent ideas on urban planning - I suppose I'm concerned that removing traffic lights won't be a 'first step' to anything particular, except allowing more vehicles to travel with less restriction on our busy roads, making life for pretty much everyone else less pleasant.

Absolutely!

As a pedestrian, I already find the walk to work fairly unpleasant - because of the lack of crossings.
Every day I have to take my life in my hands as I dart across busy roads, constantly nodding at and thanking drivers who have been kind enough to pause for a second or two (or just slow down a bit).

Society has become car-centric, and it's not fair. Some roads don't even have pavements on both sides because it's assumed that everyone will be driving! We need more crossings, not less - or some footbridges and subways.

Martin Cassini from FiT Roads weighs in at Conservative Home:
http://conservativeh
ome.blogs.com/thinkt
ankcentral/2010/07/m
artin-cassini-no-nee
d-to-raise-vat-there
-is-a-source-of-cuts
-to-dent-the-deficit
-and-benefit-us-all.
html
My personal thought on this is that all the 'zoning' that goes on these days causes alot of strife: Bicycle lanes, Bus lanes, loading bays etc especially when these zones inevitably intersect. It makes people terribly territorial about their space instead of driving slower and being considerate to other users.
Imagine if you were driving down a road with no markings at all - wouldn't you instinctively drive alot more cautiously and be more alert to your environment and other users rather than just concentrating on signposts and changing light signals ?

Ok Metis - where excatly will the money come from for this utopia? School budgets, hospitals etc.? There's the perfect world and then there is real life...

Lucullus and metis are right in saying that deregulation is a positive step but not enough on its own. Other essential reforms include a culture change from priority to equality, and roadway redesign to express that equality. The idea that people become monsters when they get behind the wheel is largely a myth. What has never been studied is the role of vexatious traffic controls in twisting our cooperative nature. The fatal flaw at the heart of the system – priority based on status of road rather than time of arrival – produces a “need” for lights (to break the priority streams of traffic). Instead of supporting our desire to take it in turns, the system of priority makes us act according to anti-social rights-of way that licence neglect of side roads and pedestrians. We wouldn’t dream of barging in front of a cashpoint queue. Yet on the road, that selfish conduct is accepted without question, indeed it forms the basis of the dysfunctional system by which we live and die. The unequal playing-(killing!) field contrived by traffic “experts” lobs a spanner into the works of social interaction. It turns our public realm into a war zone where we have to fight for survival, gaps and green time. Almost every traffic control measure is a vain attempt to cure the problems caused by unreconstituted traffic experts. Removing priority removes the “need” for lights, and the need for speed – enabling everyone to approach carefully and filter sociably. It also removes the “need” for the multi-billion traffic control and enforcement industry. Dismantling that behemoth would go a long way to reducing the public deficit. The sustainable savings would pay a million times over for my proposed public awareness campaign, and for streetscape improvements that would at last make Roads FiT for People. Above all, my charter for reform frees vulnerable road-users from artificial danger and fear. The biggest indictment of the current system is it puts the onus on children to beware motorists when it could and should be the other way round. To see how the sociable way is also the efficient way, see the videos at FiT Roads. Part 1 has clips of Hans Monderman and my Newsnight report. Part 2 shows a traffic lights-off trial in Portishead, near Bristol, which has gone permanent after journey times fell by over 50% with no loss of pedestrian safety (the new signal-free and congestion-free junctions are welcomed not just by drivers, but pedestrians – from schoolchildren to pensioners). Obviously at major junctions at peak times, some control might be needed, but by and large, given restoration of common law principles of equal rights and responsibilities, we are better off left to our own cooperative devices. When I put these ideas to Boris two years ago, he said they were too radical. But once you start thinking outside the box marked “priority”, they just seem sensible. Of the 6000 sets of traffic signals in London – each costing £150,000 to install and around £10,000 a year to maintain – it’s conceivable that instead of switching off 145 sets, we might think of leaving 145 sets functioning at peak times only.