Chicago's traffic aides, those uniformed people who try to keep city rush-hour traffic moving, may be facing mass layoffs to reduce spending.



The workers are staffed during special events, airports and downtown during rush hours.



They tell WGNTV they were in shock Monday when more than 70 full time traffic management employees were given notice that they're being laid off.

We heard about this fantastic new invention - the Traffic Signal. It's supposed to control traffic flow via a set of red, green and maybe yellow lights. We're really hoping it will catch on here in the States. It should free up dozens of police officers and enable Rahm to count them as "redeployed" to the streets.



This is some hilarious reporting though. " try to keep city rush-hour traffic moving "? Since when? We can't recall an intersection downtown that couldn't be completely gridlocked within one light-cycle by a TMA. If you ask most of them, all they do is watch the traffic signals and try to keep their hand-waving coordinated with the already predetermined timing - timing that's supposed to have been planned out by Traffic Engineers to keep downtown streets moving in an orderly fashion. TMA's are the answer to a problem that never existed - a human back-up for a computer system that replaced humans. Wow.



The only reason to have TMA's is if you need to override traffic signals, such as when moving a large crowd away from a congested venue (UC, Soldier Field, Sox Park, etc) onto surrounding arterial streets and expressways.



You want to keep downtown streets unclogged? Let the traffic signal do its job. Then have a traffic cop or two at the intersections with one of those automated ticket writers ( one that seems to work more than 15% of the time ) and a book of I-Bonds. Word will get around pretty quickly that blocking the intersection will cost you $75 and it'll stop within a month.



Labels: we got nothing