Traffic chaos

A post on Philipp Schumann's blog this morning reminded me of a local situation. Here's what I posted in his comments.

After we had a flood in our city, there was no power to some important traffic signals for quite some time. It was noticed that traffic was flowing through the junction more smoothly without the lights. Rather than just ignore the evidence, they ran a pilot scheme for a while which kept the lights turned off. Now, they only operate on a part time basis, in peak rush hours (maybe a total of 4-6 hours per day). The rest of the time it's just a free for all.

I don't drive often, but as far as I can tell, it works. I doubt anyone would ever have been brave enough to try it if the original experiment hadn't been forced by the flood.

So basically, the traffic signals went without power because of an unforseen disaster, but then we found out that we could manage without them. There must be a lesson in there about being bold. Challenging rules, constraints, and perceived wisdom... something like that.