London Banter - View Single Post

Mike Scott · September 29th 06, 01:24 PM posted to uk.legal,uk.transport,uk.transport.london

wrote:
....
And, I would suggest, often now people have something to blame traffic
light congestion on, they may be more noticing of it than they would
have been in the past. Or simply be plain stupid, as per the piece I
read in the Evening Standard about the traffic lights at Trafalgar
Squa "Seven roads come into Trafalgar Square. You only get 30
seconds of your light being green, then you have to wait a FULL THREE
MINUTES for the light to go green again!" (do the math, as our American
cousins say).

That's an interesting conundrum, given so many roads. If the lights
change too often, a high proportion of the green phase is soaked up by
people daydreaming before they realise the lights have turned green. If
you make the green phase longer, it takes proportionately longer for
one's turn to come round again. So the more efficient process is
subjectively worse, and may even lead to people jumping the lights in
frustration.

I'm reminded about an old study on computer interaction: if people have
to wait for output to appear, it seems slow; if it comes steadily, it
seems faster. To the extent that a /slow/ system with continuous output
is preferred to a /fast/ system where you have to wait before anything
happens.

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