There must be a better way than chaos on roundabout

I could not help noticing the daily traffic jams on the A5 roundabout, just south of Shrewsbury. But are you surprised? If you put traffic lights all over a roundabout, to slow down the traffic, the traffic will indeed slow. You have achieved your goal of making traffic jams.

What to do? Revise the traffic control system.

Take all the on-roundabout traffic lights away, and leave only the lights on the entrance to the roundabout. That way, the roundabout itself always runs free, and therefore runs much more efficiently.

Change the entrance lights so that they can only illuminate either red or flashing orange. So the only commands drivers get are red (stop) and flashing-orange (give way) i.e. give way in the same fashion as any other roundabout.

The roundabout now works in the following modes.

a. All lights flashing orange. The system works like a normal roundabout, with all traffic giving way.

b. The A5 westbound starts to back up, this is probably due to excessive traffic from the A5112 going southbound onto the A49. So just turn the A5112 lights red to allow the A5 run free. And if traffic from the A5 eastbound is not helping, then turn its lights red too. Now the only roads with access to the roundabout are the A5 westbound, and to a lesser extent the A49 northbound - and so the A5 westbound traffic runs free.

c. Any combination of blocking red lights you think appropriate, in order to let the other roads have access to the roundabout.

The most important thing is that traffic on the roundabout itself is always free to move and empty, because the roundabout itself contains no traffic lights. So the roundabout is working at three times the traffic-load of the present stop-start roundabout. And drivers have no distractions of traffic lights on the roundabout, making the roundabout easier to navigate and safer to negotiate.

This system is also much more efficient than a standard crossroads traffic light system. If the A5 westbound is blocked (red lights), the A49 northbound can give-way (orange lights) and empty. Yet if most of that A49 traffic is turning left onto the AS heading west, then A5 eastbound traffic and the A5112 southbound traffic can continue to function and slowly drain under the normal give-way rules (orange lights). That cannot happen with a cross-roads traffic light junction.

Try it, and see. Got to be better than the current chaos you have created.

Rod Elliot, Rhône, France