Macclesfield Road Park and Ride Traffic Lights

The news back from Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) is again that the lights by the Park and Ride are working as they are designed to do. The lights sometimes go red only when travelling from Macclesfield Road to the A6 but not in the other direction.

The official word is:

The traffic lights at this junction operate using a system called SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique). This is an adaptive system that responds automatically to fluctuations in traffic to optimise signal timings in real time, maximising thoroughfare and minimising delays.

When this system detects that Hazel Grove town centre is heavily congested, a gating strategy is automatically implemented which limits the green time on the main entry arms to the town centre (Buxton Road/Macclesfield Road/Torkington Road). This has two benefits; allowing for the congestion to clear before introducing more traffic to the network, while creating space for traffic to enter from side roads. Our Urban Traffic Control team will continue to monitor this location to ensure that the signal timings are optimised.

http://www.scoot-utc.com/

However, people still report that the lights seem to change too often, sometimes only staying green for 30 seconds, and when there is not particularly heavy traffic on the A6.

While we understand that these systems are very clever and the people that run them do an excellent job keeping huge amounts of traffic flowing most of the time it is still possible something might be wrong. Cllr Jon Twigge is still chasing TfGM for more information on exactly how the lights are supposed to work so we can double check they are not sometimes causing the traffic jams on Macclesfield road unnecessarily.

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