So there is this traffic light in our town. It is at the intersection of a relatively major road, and a tiny minuscule side street and tiny industrial park. I suspect that many moons ago either the residents of the minuscule side street, or the employees who worked in the tiny industrial park complained to the town and got a traffic light put in to make their lives easier. The traffic light was never really that bad though. A minor nuisance more than anything. Plus, it had pretty good sensors, so it would only turn red for the major road when someone pulled up to the light from the minuscule side street or tiny industrial park, and even when it turned red, it was only long enough to let the other car out. So like I said, minor nuisance, nothing more.
Then about a month ago, they added two more additional traffic lights, literally hundreds of feet down the road from the original nuisance. For more than 28 years there were not lights there, and no accidents at these intersections that I can remember, but people must have been fed up with — GASP! — waiting at the intersection, so they complained to the town and got traffic lights installed. Yay, government works for you! But not only that, the controls of the original nuisance has been changed, and now it turns red for the main road for no reason whatsoever! At 5:15AM when I’m driving to work along that road, the light at the intersection of the minuscule side street and tiny industrial park turns red even when there is no car pulling up. And it’s red for a solid 15 seconds, which is a long time when you have a train to catch!
I can forgive the two additional traffic lights. I’m a real Mother Teresa in that regard. But I cannot forgive waiting at a red light at 5:15AM at an intersection that hardly anyone ever uses! Especially when that intersection worked fine for years prior to that! I was so fed up, that I did something I’ve never done before. I emailed the town. That would surely get their attention, am I right?! So I went to the town’s website and sent the following query:
What happened to the traffic light on Connetquot Ave and Westbury Street in Islip Terrace? It used to only turn red when cars came down Westbury and wanted to turn onto Connetquot. Now it turns red for no reason, even during early hours when both streets are deserted. Why the change?
A few minutes after I sent that I got a response:
Thank you for expressing your concern. I have forwarded your message to the Department of Public Works, which is responsible for all road and traffic matters in the Town of Islip. If you’d like to call them, the number is 224-5600.
Wow! My query was going somewhere! Who says the government can’t get anything done? Then the next day I got this:
According to the town Department of Public Works, Manhattan Blvd. (from Spur Dr. N to Connetquot Ave.) is on the 2010 repaving schedule.
Um, what? Just so you can see how utterly useless this information is in relation to my query, I present the following map:
Yeah, so since they’re repaving Manhattan Blvd at some point this year, the controls of the traffic light a mile away needed to be changed in order to give imaginary cars the right-of-way? I’m not really following. Or is it that some extremely well trained government employee looked at my email blankly for a while, then unsure of what else they could possibly do, typed “Connetequot” into some handy dandy database and got the repaving information and was like “Eureka! This must be what they’re looking for!” and passed it along to me. Well as the title of this post says, thanks for nothing, you stupid jerk.
I’m thinking your explanation is the true one. Light? What lights? Oh he must mean the pot holes and paving stuff. I’ll answer with that. Nothing can piss you off more than sitting at a red light with nary a car in sight going the other way. Arrgghh. A real rebel would say screw it and run the red.
Sooo, is “Connetequot” pronounced the same as “Connecticut”? Other than that, all I gotta say is, county government sucks. And I know all about that since I AM, after all, a county employee!
At least you didn’t get a response explaining garbage pickup in the neighboring town, or a reprint of an ordinance concerning the allowable height of weeds on your property., like you’d get around here.
HUGS….
Stupid response, yes, but you can still call the number you were provided, eh?
Oh and once again, Tam and I are sharing the same thoughts: I run the damn thing if it’s an early or late hour and there’s nothing coming in either direction I can see.
HUGS…
Can Super Viagra and Vagina Girl help?
That reminds me, Eureka is a good series on SyFy.
Your page thinks I’m Ryan the Cupcake and just filled in all his info instead of mine. Weird.
Um, I;m surprised actually. How ungrateful of you. THEY NAMED A ROAD AFTER YOU!!!!!!!!!!111
We have a stoplight on one side of a freeway entrance that will sometimes flash green. It will turn green for long enough for two cars to go through before the lights on both sides of the freeway go red together.
Sounds like the heat is getting to someone…that reminds me of a song
…”it’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes!”
I remember back in the day when mamma used to take us out in the Model T and we would go down to the Woolworth’s for an egg cream. All those traffic lights were but one light at the intersection of Connetequot & Sunrise Highway. Now you say “Paul have you gone completely senile there’s a bridge that goes over Sunrise Highway!” and I would say “First, call me senile again and I will kick you so hard in the junk, it will be sticking out of your left ear, and second they built that bridge 35 years ago to improve the flow of traffic on Connetequot Ave.” So as you see we have already started the mental decline as predicted in the movie Idiocracy. It starts with the town governments and quickly spread through the rest of society. On the bright side we will get to enjoy plenty of “Brawndo. It’s got electrolytes.”
We have only one traffic light in town – which only blinks red – I have to drive about 90 miles to sit at a red light, and that is just fine by me
However, when I did live in the Big City I would have totally ran that sucker if there was no other car in sight.
Hmm, rhoddy01, I see by the map, Craig Road is near the Arboretum. Perhaps Craiggers’ parents named him after the road the were on or near when he was conceived? You just know they were wild in their youth.
HUGS…
Wow. Down here in Florida, a certain number of people have to die before they put in a new red light anywhere. I also think your latter explanation is what happened.
Oh my god, you get up early.
My first thought, like Michelle’s, was “Oh my god, you get up early”
My second thought was: “you mean you stop at red lights in new york state?” (I live in the Boston area … red lights are mere suggestions; stop signs are invisible to drivers, and yield signs, well, I doubt they even teach kids what yield signs mean in drivers ed).
All kidding aside — do you have an alderman or councilman that represents your ward or predinct in East Islip? You should be able to email him or her and ask about this. You will get a *lot* more of a response from that than from contacting the town’s website. Most town governments are staffed by part-timers or even volunteers and they aren’t paid particularly well (if at all). My advice to you is to focus your concerns on the people who care about getting your vote. That’s how we’ve learned how to navigate the complex politics of our city and we’ve actually managed to accomplish a lot. You don’t win every battle but there is a process for getting your voice heard.
I hate driving so I do it as little as possible. I like sitting @ traffic lights though so I can sing loudly to the captive audience in the cars behind and nexxxt to me!
There’s a couple lights that begin the turning-red process when I’m approaching. No other cars at the intersection…just me. I believe there’s some guy who operates all the lights in the city and late at night, he activates red lights just for his amusement.
“YOU WILL OBEY MY LIGHTS….OF DOOOOOM!”
I forgot to mention that I tend to live something of a charmed life with cops. I’ve gotten my share of unfair (and fair) moving violations over the years (worst was a $500 speeding ticket in vermont where the speed trap was precisely set at a point where the speed limit went from 45 to 25 and the sign was behind a tree; the cop was laughing as he wrote it and was bragging about how they love to catch out-of-staters). But on the whole I usually get out of tickets.
My four best stories:
1) Pulling a U-turn on Mass Ave in Cambridge; got pulled over. Was on my cell phone with speaker on. Lisa was screaming “you idiot!!! why did you do something so stupid!!!!” as the cops walked up to my window. They overheard me and (misogynistically) laughed and said “Seems like you’re in enough trouble already, buddy” and didn’t write me a ticket. Having a “Grace” can be so useful sometimes.
2) Pulled an illegal left turn in Harvard Square. Got pulled over. Acted all innocent and confused and lied to the cop saying that Harvard Square is so confusing it’s hard to know what you’re doing. The cop raised one eyebrow and said “Yes, that’s very true, but you kiiiinda looked like you were doing that as a pro” (of course I was). He let me off.
3) Went the wrong way down a one-way street for a block in order to avoid having to do a 15-minute circle around MIT. Got pulled over. Told cop I knew it was the wrong thing to do and was stupid of me to try to save time by doing it. The cop told me I was the first person who had ever admitted I was wrong and didn’t write me a ticket.
4) This is the one that is relevant to Craig’s situation: at 2am once I was working very late and drove home in the dark. There is a 3-way intersection in Cambridge which takes FOREVER because the lights have to cycle between three streets. It was after 2am and there was NOBODY around. I stopped for a bit and then just kept going. Got pulled over. Was the same cop who had correctly pegged me as a “pro” in Harvard Square. He didn’t recognize me. He told me he wasn’t pulling me over to write me a ticket, but just because he knew that the lights were confusing at that intersection (they can be — if you’re not a local) and that he had been asking the city for months to put guards on the sides of the lights for the one side-street so the green wouldn’t be visible from the main street. He actually believed I went through the red because I was confused. He seemed very sympathetic and worried I could have gotten hurt by mis-reading the lights. He told me to have a safe drive home.
Somehow I doubt Craig would be so lucky — since it’s just a regular 2-way intersection.
I have one of these lights in West Palm Beach on Dixie Hwy which is a major north/south road. There are lots of lights on Dixie Hwy but if you are traveling along early enough in the a.m. you won’t stop at any, including the main cross roads. But there is this one light, at Monroe St., that will turn read regardless of whether or not there is a car waiting to trun onto Dixie and any time during the early hours of the a.m. like 5.00 a.m. This drives me up the wall, there is no reason that I should have to stop at Monroe at 5.00 a.m. when there is no car waiting, even if there is a car waiting I shouldn’t get a red light (since I’m on the dominant Rd.). After many mornings I have decided that the Dunkin Donuts which is just north of Monroe has somehow gotten in on this and figured out how to get this light to turn red. Because a good half of the times I’m sitting there I contemplate stopping at DD.
Only half?
Don’t bother with the town or it’s dpw. Get to know the elected rep for that area and needle them incessantly.
See? Tony said what I said. Only he said it succinctly so you might actually read it