Traffic Management – The Waterford Way

If you’re designing a city and need some tips on how to best manage your traffic problems, why not take a look at the Waterford Model…

The ideal solution is to keep your traffic moving and prevent congestion at peek rush hour traffic times. Here’s an incite into the how its done in Waterford.

1) The Bridge Solution: Stop traffic from entering the City altogether at rush hour by raising the bridge at 8:30am. This takes roughly 20 minutes to stop the traffic, raise the bridge, let a small boat through and then lower the bridge. The net affect is 4-mile tailbacks on both sides of the bridge.
2) Synchronised traffic lights. The main road through the city runs down the mall into Manor Street and in this small section of road there are 4 sets of traffic lights, would it be a problem to synchronise these lights? The corporation claims they are, but only if your driving through them at 4am at 50mph, please.
3) Dig up the roads: Picture this, The Quay is the main artery of the city and the corporation with their mighty wisdom, decide that we have too much tax payers money burning a hole in our pockets, I know lets dig up the quay at the Clock Tower (20m section of Road) and put down cobble stones, it would look really nice… Yeah but I ask you how much is nice costing us the taxpayer eh. Also its causing traffic chaos and the noise is unbearable. How long does it take to do this section of road, current 2 weeks into it and its only half done.

Please somebody send Waterford Corporation on a Traffic Management and Financial Management Course.