Getting Stuck in Traffic is Bad for Your Carbon Footprint
May 17, 2008
Ever been stuck in a traffic jam? Of course you have. Everyone has. In many cases traffic jams are unavoidable. Big cities have too many people in them to allow traffic to run smoothly. But a report released by a group of says traffic does not need to be nearly as bad as it is, which could mean big reductions to your carbon footprint.
Each time you are stopped at a traffic light, you car engine remains on using up lots of fuel and spewing out lots of carbon emissions. As well, starting and stopping a lot uses up much more gas than driving at a steady rate, another increase to your carbon footprint.
The report says that with some analysis and simple changes to the traffic lights, US road congestion could come down by 10%, and carbon emissions from drivers would drop by up to 20%. Unfortunately, responsibility for this is left to local government who use their transport budgets for building new roads and maintaining existing ones. A shame, since less congestion on the roads would result in them requiring less maintenance.
The US has about 300,000 traffic lights scattered across the country. According to the Department of Transportation, three out of four of these needs to be replaced or have the timing adjusted.
If anyone questions whether tweaking traffic lights can really make much of a difference, lets take a look at Georgia, where this has been a focus since 2005. Travel time in Atlanta’s traffic corridors has dropped 18% and time stopped has gone down by 39%. Must be a state full of happy drivers with smaller carbon footprints. Hopefully the rest of the country will catch on soon.
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