[waterTanuki]

I like XKCD but I don't really agree with the underlying premise of this one.

When I was in the Netherlands, one of the global gold standards in terms of urban planning and design, I noticed it wasn't only more pleasant as a pedestrian or cyclist, it was more pleasant as a driver as well. Lights were smart and did not sit on red forever if you were the only one waiting at an intersection.

This comic suggests there's some "invisible, massively complicated" mesh of signal interactions we can never possibly fathom, and therefore wasting precious hours over the course of our lives sitting at an intersection is the most optimal one.

The Dutch have figured this out, why can't North America?

[cortesoft]

I don't think the answer is as simple as "The Dutch have better traffic light engineers"

There are a ton of factors that go into traffic and traffic patterns. For one thing, I would be curious to see total traffic numbers.