Signal of the times

I read the news today (oh, boy) that the Michigan Department of Transportation has OK'd a traffic light for the intersection of 64th Street and Blue Star Highway in Saugatuck Township.

Although the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh. ...

To you big city folk, another traffic light is not news. To me, this is huge. If this red, yellow, green light is erected, it will be the first one outside a city in the western part of Allegan County (I think, anyway).

Oh, the humanity!

There are traffic lights all over Holland (I go through about a dozen on my normal route home), but only one in Saugatuck (and it's set on blinking mode in the winter) and one in Douglas. There are no traffic lights in Fennville. The lights don't appear again until the city of Allegan to the east and the city of South Haven to the south.

I dislike traffic lights. They stop the flow of traffic, like putting a dam in a river, and waste gas and energy. They are symbols of poor planning and our embarrassing dependence on the automobile. We need them, I'm sorry to say, for our style of living in America, but that's like saying the drug addict needs clean needles to survive.

What is to be done

The popular alternative is the traffic circle. I dislike these also, but mainly from bad past experiences dealing with them in Buffalo. I've softened my hatred of these recently, but the case is still open on whether I'd rather have one of these than a stop light.

My idea to reduce the number of traffic lights is simple: Reduce the number of automobiles. If we only allow vehicles on certain roads, for example, and rely on mass transit, such as light rail systems, and neighborhood retail (that is, a local hardware store instead of a box Lowe's, a local grocery instead of Wal-Mart), we could make the whole nation a better place.

But for now, I'll just lament another place I'll be forced to stop, another example of the state regulating my life instead of accommodating it.

Thought: What would Caligula the rubber chicken do?