The Oil Drum

Coming back from the UK, there are a couple of impressions that I would like to put down before they get overcome by the ongoing changes in our world that seem to be already happening.

Over the past weekend since my last post I took the train from London up to Nottingham, and then, on the following day, out to visit with friends (whom I will call, hoping they don't mind) the Sociologist and the Voice. When they drove me to the airport yesterday I left in the middle of a London rush-hour (to work). I arrived here in the middle of a US rush hour (after work). The traffic in both cases was very heavy, multi-lane, yet in the UK was moving faster and with better control. The Sociologist commented that the authorities had installed cameras and had adjustable speed limit signs along the highway that they changed to cope with the traffic. She commented that it was a system that worked and that, for example, holding traffic to 40 mph kept it moving at around that (which it did for us) while keeping a fixed speed would otherwise have brought it down to 15-20 mph (which was the US experience).