The holy grail
for big city motorists is a sea of green lights stretching into the
distance. I often hear from drivers, especially in the Toronto area,
wishing they could drive even five blocks uninterrupted by red
lights. It seems there is always some major obstacle to ‘progressive
signals’, either from crushing traffic volumes or the lack of a
computer powerful enough to create a wave of green signals.
I sipped from
the magical grail last week in Washington DC. In a metropolis with
too many government agencies running a mess of never-quite-meshing
road systems, I beheld rows of emerald faerie-lights leading me
forward. How, in a city with diagonal streets everywhere, and
knuckle-sweating roundabouts, could such a thing happen? Is the
District of Columbia truly -- gulp -- the centre of the world?
Well, there
would likely have been riots if years ago the city fathers hadn’t
arranged for green waves into downtown in the morning and out at
night. You see, those diagonal avenues make for a whole lot of short
blocks – some intersections are separated by just one car-length. I
kid you not.
There I was,
beavering along 14th St., past the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing, past the Ronald Reagan federal office building, when
the real enemy of green waves surfaced: other drivers. Signal
progression is pointless and even frustrating if people don’t play
along.
Getting with
the green is impossible when there is too much traffic – like at
rush hour when you need it the most. You also can’t follow the wave
if taxis and other vehicles commit the simplest of felonies, like
blocking a lane. There go my greens up ahead … each turning to
amber, then a rotten red.
But the quest
for the sweet speed never ends, once you know it is possible.
Heading back into downtown from Crystal City, a neighbourhood of
condos over the Potomac River in the state of Virginia, I surfed a
nice wave only a few hours after peak traffic.
Yet a nagging
thought plagued me, something Toronto traffic officials have pointed
out several times – how do you time the lights so that there is a
green wave along both directions of a street? Get out your slide
rule, because you need more than a supercomputer to calculate that
one. You may need to bend space and time also.
Happily
tootling uptown through DC’s office district, I peer behind me. Sure
enough, the poor bastards going the other way were facing an ocean
of mismatched green and red – pretty choppy surf. I have sought more
signal progression, although it is elusive on diagonals like
Massachusetts Avenue, a street that crosses many circles, squares
and is home to innumerable foreign embassies.
Actually, our
own high commission is located far from “Mass Ave.” -- it is in fact
down on Pennsylvania Avenue, the same street as the White House. The
only overseas delegation allowed on “America’s Main Street”, the
Canadian Embassy is but three blocks from the Capitol building, four
from the Supreme Court.
Washington DC
has become a showcase for another advance in traffic technology: the
signal countdown. Not that local pedestrians obey the rules any more
than motorists, but many Walk/Don’t Walk lights feature a digital
readout showing how many seconds are left until the light turns.
It mesmerized
me when I was on foot, and while behind the wheel it is likewise
tempting to stare at the numbers. I’m accustomed to using the
flashing red hand to tell me if an upcoming green is stale, but
taking one’s focus off traffic in order to peer at a countdown seems
rather too risky.
Ed Drass
edrass@nationalpost.com