Anarchy... a better traffic solution

madness on the streets of Saigon… and yet it works so much better than the Taiwanese system of “stop every vehicle, at every red light, at every intersection” system of traffic (mis)managment…

efficient traffic flow 101… a model for the future of Taiwan

Oh my god! :astonished: My parents are there right now. Hope they are riding around in a tank. Makes Chung-Ho traffic seem tame. Maybe that video is of Kaoshiung 15 years ago. :wink:

There are a few cities (towns) in the Netherlands that started experimenting with doing away with the traffic lights and most of the signs and have chaos take over the flow of traffic … it’s getting used to people say … but it works and they have less serious accidents because everyone has to watch out …

Belgium too is going to start with removing the overload of information on the streets (traffic signs and lights) becaus there are simply too many anddrivers can’t handle all the information and because of it they get involved in accidents … they are concentrating on the signs and lights and not on traffic …

You know, I know for a fact that if I show that video to my Taiwanese wife, she’s gonna say “Yeah? So what? What’s the big deal?”.

That’s quite funny Plasmatron, I touched on this very theme this morning in another thread:

There were also fewer noticeable accidents . . still, I’m not sure I’d like to tempt it. I’ve ridden in Vietnam many times and while it is reassuringly slower traffic flow, there are oodles of spills. When a bike goes down in Saigon, expect it to take down several others each time.

Aren’t the roads of southern Taiwan still suitably anarchic?

HG

[quote=“belgian pie”]There are a few cities (towns) in the Netherlands that started experimenting with doing away with the traffic lights and most of the signs and have chaos take over the flow of traffic … it’s getting used to people say … but it works and they have less serious accidents because everyone has to watch out …

Belgium too is going to start with removing the overload of information on the streets (traffic signs and lights) becaus there are simply too many anddrivers can’t handle all the information and because of it they get involved in accidents … they are concentrating on the signs and lights and not on traffic …[/quote]I’m from a town of 160,000 people and about 5 sets of traffic lights. The rest is all roundabouts, and people following right of way laws.

Try 15 minutes ago…Friday nights are still terrible in Kaoshiung

Ahh for the peaceful days of beautiful Co’s in their white Ao Dai’s pedalling along the boulevard.

Thanks for posting this.

[quote=“belgian pie”]There are a few cities (towns) in the Netherlands that started experimenting with doing away with the traffic lights and most of the signs and have chaos take over the flow of traffic … it’s getting used to people say … but it works and they have less serious accidents because everyone has to watch out …

Belgium too is going to start with removing the overload of information on the streets (traffic signs and lights) becaus there are simply too many anddrivers can’t handle all the information and because of it they get involved in accidents … they are concentrating on the signs and lights and not on traffic …[/quote]

I read about that. Apparently they’re also removing most of the distinction between car and pedestrian areas - no bollards, no curbs, just a different colour of paint on the ground.

It actually seems like a really good idea, but given the complete unawareness of drivers here that there are other people on the road too, I’m not so sure it would work in Taiwan :slight_smile:

When I recently read an article about this “shared space” concept, I was immediately thinking that’s it’s similar to Taiwan: in the Netherlands, they get rid of the traffic signs and lights, in Taiwan, they ignore them… :wink:

However, I don’t think you can say the following about traffic in Taiwan:

[quote]When Mr. Monderman, a traffic engineer and the intersection’s proud designer, deliberately failed to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the street, the drivers slowed for him. No one honked or shouted rude words out of the window.

[…]

An elderly woman crossed slowly in front of him.
“This is social space, so when Grandma is coming, you stop, because that’s what normal, courteous human beings do,” he said. [/quote]

Click here to read more…

I think this “getting used to” is the keyword here.
In many ways this trafic flow is the same as purely pedestrain traffic.
When you walk in crowded cities with people accustomed to large pedestrian flows (definitely not Taiwan - too little open areas)
while walking you will minimize the amount of times you need to stop or turn suddenly because in other case you just get more tired.
Getting tired is a penalty which makes you want to adapt: predict the flow and smoothly avoid collision.

The most important things:

  1. Everyone must adapt the speed to be fully in control of the motion and aware of approaching traffic.
    This limits maximum speed to what you can observe 5-10km/h (just a human brain speed of reflexes limitation)
    Note that the bigger vehicle the slower it enters the flow - it is harder
    to be aware of all traffic around larger cars.

  2. There must be anough free space. Once the flow saturates it will tend to get stuck.
    I would expect that once Saigon gets more cars (taking more space than motorcycles) it all will halt to a standstill.
    BTW I think the wide roads are the French colonial heritage.

And the last thing: I bet all those motorcycles use manual gear box.
So there is penalty (ger change needed) for sudden changes in speed
affecting the smooth flow.

It is a good explanation to why all the traffic here is just so uneven.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that the Traffic Department in Taiwan deliberately creates traffic meltdown in a rampantly misguided attempt at home grown “meibanfa-ist” traffic control…

A couple of years back during one of the traditional annual CNY traffic meltdown sessions some eager reporter took it upon themselves to get the head honcho from the traffic dept. on the record with a quick interview about the traffic situation… being of the standard issue “incompetent money grabbing crony” persuasion he quickly deferred to the two stooges in charge of traffic management policy…

what they had to say was in fact quite enlightening and served to confirm what I’d suspected all along… they explained how in some countries complex algorithms are used to model, predict and control traffic flows through major arteries ensuring the most efficient flow of traffic across the city… in other countries a less high-tech trial and error timing system is used, but either way by timing and coordinating sequences of traffic lights, traffic can be herded and channeled through areas of maximum congestion and high traffic density… of course some of these less high tech systems are somewhat limited to major traffic arteries since there’s just too much complexity to control and time every single traffic light across the city, but the bottom line is congestion and traffic meltdown can be reduced exponentially by implementing a synchronization and timing system for traffic lights on high density routes… they went on to explain how Taiwan uses a system that compared to the models described above is “special” or as he put it “很不一樣” (anyone familiar with the colloquial Taiwanese use of the phrases 特別 and 很不一樣 will have detected that this is where the proverbial spanner enters the works)

On planet Taiwan, the foremost traffic minds that a piss poor public education system and a “don’t rock the boat” civil servant selection process could produce arrived at the conclusion that trying to synchronise traffic lights or in fact implement any pro-active system whatsoever would just be in too great a conflict with the overriding government “meibanfa” policy on all similar matters… their ingenious solution is to make sure that every vehicle is stopped at every light, every time… now before someone accuses me of playing fast and loose with the truth, of course it’s impossible to ensure you really are stopped every time and there are noticeable if relatively insignificant exceptions… but the broader policy is to ensure that traffic remains as segmented as possible, with small pockets of traffic moving at a slow and staggered rate across the city

I always wondered why some traffic lights stay on red for almost 3 minutes … no wonder people running red lights, they don’t want to be held up that long … :s

Another great no-BS post.

Funny, I wasn’t in Taipei more than a month, and I remember one day being in a particularly bad mood, deep in culture shock, and thinking, “It actually seems like they have no traffic engineers at all!” And all this time, recalling that thought, I believed that I was just some asshole suffering from an overblown sense of Western superiority. :wink: