It's Official: Traffic Lights in This City Suck!

I'm one of those paranoid, overly dramatic people who convince themselves that the entire world is out to get them. A lot of my paranoid delusions revolve around driving, of course: that dude slowed down just to piss me off! Every time I change lanes traffic gets worse! (Also known as the "Office Space" rule.) These lights are timed badly just to slow me down!

Turns out, that last one might not just be all in my head. In today's L.A. Times, Steve Hymon discovers that whacked-out, unsynchronized traffic lights are more often the norm than the anomaly in this city:

If you believe that traffic signals near you aren't synchronized as well as they should be, you're probably right.

Relatively few cities in the region have state-of-the-art technology when it comes to traffic signals, according to several transportation engineers I spoke with recently. Even the city of Los Angeles -- the widely acknowledged leader in advanced traffic signals -- is undergoing a $150-million upgrade to its lights.

Both L.A. and Orange counties are making big pushes to help dozens of cities get their lights in sync, with the emphasis on big arterials that cross cities. The O.C., for example, is syncing up Euclid Street, which in 15 miles crosses six cities and four freeways.

Good news, I guess -- but then again, it's simply unacceptable that it would take so long to correct such a simple & easily identifiable problem such as light synchronization. In this day and age, when computers can do EVERYTHING, why can't somebody notice that I've been sitting at this god-forsaken stop light in Burbank for five minutes now and not a single car has come through the intersection???