City of Red Lights
Thursday, July 16th, 2009By ‘city of red lights’ I’m NOT referring to Amsterdam’s red light district, nor has this post anything to do with the ‘red light’ areas of any cities. I’m talking about the innumerable red lights that populate every city to frustrate drivers and residents alike: the first group wishing there were less red lights and the latter that want even more red lights (in their area, but they also hate red lights in other neighborhoods).
No More Red Light Districts
Global warming is an issue for newspapers but it’s obviously not a priority around a city council’s chamber. I recently had the Mayor of my city in my taxi. I was driving him from the airport after his most recent boondoggle at the taxpayer’s expense. We were traveling on a particular road where the lights are NOT timed to facilitate the traffic flow: when you hit one red light, you get all the red lights.
“You know,” I said, “that a person who safely proceeds through a red light is doing something pro-active to combat global warming, but the city maximizes every car’s carbon footprint by making us idle at every single intersection.”
“I would like to disagree,” he replied with political vagueness, “but this particular stretch of road is the province’s responsibility” (I’m in Canada, you could replace ‘province’ with ‘state’).
“Avast Matey!” The ClickBank Pirate says “You’ll amass a vast sum.”
“Yet if I had the Premier in my car,” I retorted (if you’re an American, you can think ‘Governor’ in lieu of ‘Premier’), “He would say that each avenue or street crossing this road belongs to the municipality. So you two have a nice little jurisdictional dispute so that neither of you has to spend the money on having the red lights timed to facilitate a good traffic flow. But I’ll bet you have it figured out right to the nickle which grasping, greedy government gets the revenue from the red light cameras.”
Is this what we put these clowns in office for? This type of nonsense is WHY we have a problem with global warming. Multiply each red light in the politically retarded western world by the amount of cars that must needlessly break for red lights, idle and then speed up afterward – only to repeat the gas burning process one or two blocks later at the next red light. The total equals a carbon footprint that is MUCH larger than necessary. But the city or red lights needs to annoy drivers with a long string of red lights, so they will run one out of frustration and provide the greedy government with ticket money.
When there is no opposing traffic, then the red light ticket is NOT a safety issue: it is purely greed AND the law’s pathetic desire to keep us as slaves to it. I have much more to say on the subject of red lights and greedy governments but I’ll save it for another red light and greedy government post.
