Chester: City of a thousand traffic lights

I first used the term ‘city of a thousand traffic lights’ to describe Chester, Cheshire in the early 1990s. I lived in London at the time and  when I came up once, they had added traffic lights to most of the roundabouts adding around 10 traffic lights to my journey. Chester never had much traffic problems, so I never understood the logic. Now they are at it again, with traffic lights on another two roundabouts, including one on the A41 that would now deserve the most confusing roundabout in the country award.

Though traffic lights are necessary in some instances to keep flow moving (northbound at Harlow junction on the M11 comes to mind), in most cases I think they are not needed. Traffic lights are by design less efficient than roundabouts as there are periods when the lights change when the roads are empty. Adding traffic lights to these roundabouts has thus slowed traffic down for no benefit as far as I can see, unless you see drivers as unable to handle stopping at roundabouts themselves without some help.

I tend, by default, to favour routes with the least traffic lights, so I will now be avoiding these roundabouts wherever possible, as I think many others will, so traffic will just be displaced elsewhere.

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