© 2008 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
Some government issues are complicated. This is not. I listened with disbelief last week when a national politician said that proper tire pressure is a real good way to deal with the fuel crisis. He did not mention what really would help.
Differences in tire inflation vary mileage by as much as 3 percent. If you normally get 30 miles per gallon, the gain or loss is about 1 mpg. Correct tire inflation is more a safety issue about trying to insure proper vehicle handling and maximizing tire wear.
But there is something the government does that robs me of half of my mileage. It does not time traffic lights to minimize drivers having to repeatedly stop. This needlessly erodes my gas mileage.
My 1998 Mercury Gran Marquis is a big car. When I drive reasonably at about 60 mph instead of 75 mph on the freeway, I get about 30 mpg rather than 23 mpg. I get even better mileage when I do not use my air conditioner in the colder months. These behaviors are under my control.
Since I am not “fuelish” I get good gas mileage. Contrast that to the putrid 16 mpg I get in city driving. I do not jackrabbit start and I drive smoothly more for the safety aspects, but it does produce the best mileage. Unfortunately, despite my good driving habits I only get 16 mpg.
What makes the difference? Loss of mileage in city driving is caused by the number of times I go from 35 mph to zero and back to 35 again. Even more so, it is the amount of time I sit idling while waiting for the red light to change.
Every time I stop unnecessarily and idle needlessly it is money out of my pocket and a valuable resource wasted. Do not blame me, I am not wasting fuel; the traffic engineers are wasting it by their design of the traffic-control lights. Some stops are necessary in a city, but we are losing resources when traffic engineers do not scientifically adjust the traffic lights.
National, state and local initiatives needed
Every time I mention timing lights, government workers tell me that it is just too blasted complicated to time the traffic lights. Really? Is it more complicated than sending men to the moon? To me it seems just an elaborate physics problem that can be done on a computer. We can have computers plug and chug the numbers, then design and control the system. But it would seem no one in the government cares to do so. I have been talking and writing columns about this for many years.
We need national, state and local initiatives to reduce unnecessary stopping and idling tied to traffic lights. Further, we need a standard for how much time and energy loss due to stopping in a city is appropriate because cities are crowded. Then we need to establish when the traffic lights are taking too many resources from the drivers.
Every light does not have to be green every time I come to it. But the major streets of a town should never be “go a block and stop, go a block and stop.” Each driver pays a price for the way traffic lights operate now. When you total all of the cars in a town, it is a huge waste.
This is not rocket science; it can be done if government has the will. Global positioning technology makes it an exact science. The easiest place to develop the technology may be computer-game makers.
Calming road rage
While not wasting our fuel resources is important, along with not making driving cost more than it must, there is one more component that’s even more important. Think about the human reaction to frustration.
Drivers know that it is within the power of their government to time the lights, but it instead makes them accelerate and stop, wait wait, accelerate and stop, wait wait. This might be a part of road rage.
Stop and go is expected on the side roads. However, on the main drag of a town, it is a major drag to stop so often. The irritation is additive. If it just happens a couple of times, no big deal, but if it is every day in every journey, that really bothers the drivers. Most of our own safety on the road is discretionary by other drivers, wither they will let us in traffic flow, pull out right in front of us, crowd us in our lane, etc. We want drivers who are not made angry.
Calming drivers is a worthy goal — as worthy as not using our fuel “fuelishly” with too many stops and all of that idling of vehicles for no reason other than the traffic engineers just cannot get it together. Additionally, good timing slows the traffic because drivers know that if the speed is set to 33, they will go the speed that allows them to not stop and go.
Will this solve all of our problems? Not all, but it is a start. The truth is it will not make us energy independent, but it is a move in the right direction.
Starting with the president and the members of Congress, we must speak to our leaders using language they understand. They do not see this problem because they ride in limos and fly at our expense. We have to get them to take traffic-light timing seriously.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.