Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 8
May 13 2014
Emeritus Professor Peter Bonsall cross examines Mr Gordon Robertson, Traffic Signals Engineer for Leeds City Council and subjects the detail of the altered junctions and traffic modelling to close scrutiny.
http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-day-8-may-13-2014-late-afternoon-session/
Day 8 of the Leeds
Trolleybus Enquiry saw a new witness take the stand, Mr Gordon Robertson,
Traffic Signals Engineer for the NGT project.
Audio recordings of all of
today’s sessions can be found at the following links
Early morning
Mr Gordon Robertson, who is responsible for traffic
management in the NGT proposals, explains how this is expected to work. Traffic
Regulation Orders (TRO) are examined by Mr Walton for the Applicant.
Late morning
Gregory Jones QC cross examines Gordon Robertson of
NGT on the traffic modelling for the trolleybus scheme.
Early Afternoon
Gregory Jones QC cross examines Gordon Robertson of
NGT on the matter of traffic flows, and Chris Longley of the Federation of
Small Businesses follows with a short series of technical questions.
http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-day-8-may-13-2014-early-afternoon-session/
http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-day-8-may-13-2014-early-afternoon-session/
Late Afternoon
Emeritus Professor Peter Bonsall cross examines Mr Gordon Robertson, Traffic Signals Engineer for Leeds City Council and subjects the detail of the altered junctions and traffic modelling to close scrutiny.
http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-day-8-may-13-2014-late-afternoon-session/
Today’s evidence saw the Enquiry move from the
strategic planning levels of the last two weeks onto the serious detail of the
proposed new road junctions and traffic flow modelling. Much of this was of quite technical nature
and deserves to be listened to rather than have me try to explain it blow by
blow.
However, certain facts stand out from the massive
detail, such as that the Inspector asked why the new layouts had not been tried
before, (without the trolleybus obviously).
It is really telling to hear such a question asked by ‘the only person
in the room who really matters’ as one of the objectors described Mr Whitehead
the other day. Clearly if traffic flow
could be optimised by making these kinds of changes at junctions and so forth
then it would be sensible to see how much improvement they could effect without
the massive extra involvement of the trolleybus and its dedicated lanes.
Standing back to try and gain some overview one
can’t help feeling that this is an immense jigsaw made of parts which are only
partially connected to each other. When
in the examination from Professor Bonsall it emerged that the city traffic
control system had a stock of ‘archived’ traffic programs it did not sound to
me like a state of the art smart system which responded in real time to vehicle
numbers on the ground but one which had stock responses to standard scenarios,
such as rugby matches at Headingley and so on.
So perhaps this is where the Inspector’s question originates, the amount
of research that has, or has not, gone into optimising the flow in the present
configuration.
Gregory Jones QC attacked this question from a
number of angles including whether ‘bunching’ otherwise known as ‘platooning’
of buses would be likely to occur.
Those readers familiar with the concepts of mathematical
Chaos Theory will know that small changes in dynamic systems can have large
outcomes. Whilst Mr Robertson certainly
came across a great deal better than his two predecessors, one can’t help
having reservations about the limits of what his profession can achieve,
especially transferring his skills in mathematical modelling to an entirely new
situation. Indeed at one point he said
that certain aspects of the new system could not be precisely modelled in advance
and would need to be adjusted after it was up and running.
We must be cautious about the claims made for the
trolleybus system and remember that at this stage it is all entirely
speculative and if a decision were to be taken it would be a gamble with the whole
future of Leeds. Its cost competes
with, and seems to outrank, other, what are normally considered as essential,
services such as care of the elderly and education.
If it was unsuccessful, we could scrap the
trolleybuses (the first time in Leeds a century ago they lasted for all of 17
years from 1911 to 1928) but we would be left with the massive debt, the
evisceration of a series of Conservation areas, and we would still have the
same problems as we have now, except the widened roads and Headingley bypass
would encourage more road users to fill up the empty space.
At a conceptual level this is all not coming at it
from a level of intelligent and integrated design. The whole scheme is predicated on the value judgement that
communities and environments are expendable.
Perhaps the time has come when this sort of assumption has to be
challenged.
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