[Vision2020] Numerical studies should precede signal decisions

[Kenneth Marcy]

"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and 
express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot 
measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a 
meagre and unsatisfactory kind."

-- Lord Kelvin (William Thomson, 1st Baron) (1824-1907) English physicist and 
mathematician. In: Popular Lectures and Addresses, London, 1889, v. I, p. 73. 
See also: Life of Lord Kelvin, by S. P. Thompson, 1910, V. 2, p. 792.

With respect to the various discussions of whether or not to install traffic 
signs or traffic lights, numerical studies of traffic counts, traffic timing, 
and traffic throughput should be conducted before particular instances are 
decided.

For example, at the intersection at Sixth and Line, with student housing on 
the northwest corner, the steam plant on the northeast corner, the 
Engineering block on the southeast corner, and the Natural Resources building 
on the southwest corner, and high volumes of vehicular and student traffic at 
predictable times of the day, might experience vehicular traffic throughput 
increases, and greater student delays in getting to class (making the large, 
and often unwarranted, assumption that none of them jaywalk) if timed-cycle 
traffic lights were installed. However, one can only say "might" without 
actual studies over a variety of time periods and weather conditions in the 
absence of numerical count and throughput efficiency studies.

What is more important: getting everyone to and from class safely in a timely 
manner, or allowing some fraction of a mile-per-hour velocity increase for 
vehicular traffic through what is essentially a pedestrian zone? The value 
judgment that should be made here is that pedestrian safety, and, given the 
nature of the neighborhood, pedestrian precedence, are to be given preference 
over ease, convenience, and timing of vehicular traffic flow, frustrated 
drivers or not.

It might well turn out that timed-cycle traffic lights would actually slow the 
efficient throughput of a weighted combination of pedestrian and vehicular 
traffic. However, heeding Lord Kelvin, numerical data from appropriately 
representative observations is needed before well-informed decisions may be 
made.


Ken Marcy