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[uberscheisse]

i decided to drive from kashima, ibaraki, to funabashi, chiba today to visit a friend. i took route 51, and then turned right on route 16 through chiba city and funabashi. i didn't take the expressway because i haven't been paid yet and wanted to save a little cash.

as the crow flies, it's about 70km, i think.

however, with traffic it took me 2.5 hours. that was understandable, it's a saturday.

what i cannot understand, i just simply cannot wrap my head around it, is the way they time traffic lights. i almost have to draw a diagram to describe what i am trying to say, but i'll do my best with words.

imagine you're going at a steady clip down a 4-lane street/highway. you're going with the flow, which means you're probably doing 60 km/h in a 40 zone. but so is everyone else.

you breeze through a light, and you can see a second light maybe 3/4km away. you pick up speed because you know it may get stale and go yellow, and lo and behold, it does. whether or not there's cross traffic.

it really seems as if traffic lights are designed to make you spend as much time stopped as possible. i tried driving as fast as humanly possible, and i also tried adhering to the speed limit like a good little boy.

in the end, i got stopped at roughly 60% of all the traffic lights between chiba-shi and kashima-shi. i have not been so thoroughly frustrated in a long time. i think it probably added an hour on to my trip home.

second part of the rant - have you ever noticed that at sets of lights that are close together, the first light will be green, but then the second set of lights will automatically go red, thus causing totally avoidable traffic snarl?

it just makes no sense at all. the only thing i can think of as a reason is that they're making city driving as inconvenient as humanly possible so people take transit more or use the expressways.

or, maybe they're trying to keep people from speeding.

or they just have poor organizational skills. how hard is it to time traffic lights for a minimum of snarl?

end rant. home now.

[David W]

I've heard the lights are specifically designed that way to slow you down. I know, I know it sounds daft to me too but there you go.

[AndyH]

That's why I never minded taking the train.

[cornishmuppet]

They just widened a single lane road near me into a a two-lane to ease traffic flow on that section in the mornings. Of course, they added three new sets of traffic lights as well, at approximately two hundred metre intervals to accomodate three tiny little junctions into industrial land. I just don't think they can help themselves.

I'm sure that at least one in every five sets (at least) could happily not exist and have no bearing on traffic flow whatsoever. I think each council must have a limit they have to install in order to get next year's budget.

[Apsara]

Most likely much faster by train than by car, huh. I enjoy driving when I go back to New Zealand, but I am more than happy to do that kind of trip in Japan by train.

[flyer]

LOL, you should come and live in Hokkaido then!

seriously, there is a big difference between Honshu and Hokkaido

speaking for myself I always imagine it will take ages to go anywhere in Honshu (unless you are in the middle of nowhere)

[uberscheisse]

further to my original rant...

i drive to work. it is about 9 km from my door to the school. i drive along a 4 lane road, route #255. i then turn up #51 towards lake kitaura.

on some days it takes me 15 minutes to drive to work, if i can time the lights well.

today i was bowing and apologizing to my principal for being late because it took me 40 minutes. i hit every red light between my house and the school. most times there was tons of traffic going my way, but absolutely none going the opposite (well, perpendicular) way.

not only were the lights timed poorly, they last at least a minute and a half. so if you count that there's maybe 15-20 intersections between my house and the school, that's a good extra 20 minutes.

people i have talked to in my city also notice this. it's maddening, inefficient, and it makes no sense. it could be efficient. it's not.

another thing - japanese drivers seem to have a different way about them. i drive aggressively. not unsafely, but i definitely push the envelope a bit. but i've never had an accident and i have received one speeding ticket since 1987.

the speed limit is 40 in my town. yet most people seem to say "hm... 40? maybe i should go 38 just to make sure." and "green light? ah, let's let it age like a fine wine before we hit the gas." such hesitant, non-committal drivers. that is of course excepting much of the younger generation who drive like wounded bees.

[flyer]

yes, driving on the weekends is a killer (in Honshu)

[Apsara]

In NZ conversely (well, Auckland at least, possibly they are more laidback in smaller cities) we have drivers who will do their utmost to get through the light before (or even after) it turns red, drive as fast as they can manage in the traffic conditions, and follow so close they are almost touching your bumper.

Accordingly, the number of nose-to-tails is high and at any given intersection there will be small piles of broken glass and bits of headlight- new piles almost every day. I very rarely see this in Japan and I live near some very busy intersections. Maybe driving slowly isn't such a bad idea.

[vancouver_syndicate]

my understanding is that on 2 way streets, the lights are timed so that they allow you to make the lights half the time only otherwise the otherside of the street would be stuck all the time.

i know it's not a good explanation.

this also facititates people turning left or right onto a cross street. otherwise in heavy traffic there won't be any room for them to turn into.

on one way streets it you catch a green it should go straight through if you maintain the speed limit.