Calgary’s Traffic Lights

Instead of complaining about slow drivers, this issue’s blog is all about the poor synchronization of Calgary’s traffic lights and how it creates more congestion than is necessary. To be fair, there are many areas where the lights are sequenced properly, for the most part. At other times, though….

I was one time repairing equipment at City of Calgary Roads, and I ask jokingly “you’re the ones I talk to about traffic lights?”. Their response was “wrong department, that would be the traffic dept.”. I was asked though, were I found the traffic light synchronization the worst. I said Barlow, and it seems to have improved somewhat there.Downtown for instance, during rush hour no one can move due to the congestion of traffic waiting for the next light to change after yours has changed to green.

Would it not be smarter to have all the lights, say down 5^th Ave downtown, change at the same time. This would allow everyone to move more than 2 or 3 cars. While were on 5^th, the traffic lights at the Drop-In Centre are totally out of sync with the rest and cause problems throughout the day.

Going to work I am usually quite lucky driving west down 32^nd Ave. early in the morning. It aggravates me to have to stop occasionally at the side street lights that are activated by a vehicle entering 32^nd Ave.The lights change out of sequence and forces the traffic to stop unnecessarily. Would it not be better to the flow of traffic to have the light change synchronized with the other traffic lights down the main road when no traffic would be approaching.

These are but a couple of my traffic light peeves, I have many more and I will be blogging about them on a regular basis. I am but only one person, and usually one complaint doesn’t warrant any action. What we need is everyone to voice their concerns about Calgary traffic.

Be sure to comment and let the city know which traffic patterns cause you issues by letting WebStamp be your voice about traffic concerns. Comment on any of our traffic blogs, or submit your own article that could be published in WebStamp and be sure to call 311 to complain also, with more people voicing there concerns, the bigger the movement will be.