Switch off lights for a jam-free city

The brains - and what brains! - behind this admirable experiment has been 61-year-old Hans Monderman, a traffic planner involved with the Brussels-backed Share Space project. He says: "We only want traffic lights where they are useful - and I haven't found anywhere where they are useful yet. It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk." In Drachten, with a population of 50,000, there used to be a road death every three years. There have been none since the removal of traffic lights began seven years ago.

If Mr Robertson was reading this article, I wonder if he then turned to the Telegraph's leader column. It stated: "On the face of it Monderman's theory sounds like something dreamt up in a certain sort of Amsterdam cafe . . . but because they were thinking about fatal accidents, Drachten's motorists didn't have any. Britain, too, might benefit from fewer traffic lights." This echoed my thoughts exactly. And I recognised at once some obvious candidates for extinction, at Oxford's nightmare Frideswide Square. But could this complicated intersection possibly function without the dozens and dozens of lights that control every movement there?

As it happens - and with astonishing synchronicity - I was to get an answer to that question within a few hours of reading the Telegraph report. Pedalling westwards from the city centre on Saturday afternoon, I arrived at the Park End Street-Frideswide Square junction just before 4.30pm, to find that every traffic light in this absurdly designed road system was out of action. I suppose I ought to have realised something was different a few moments earlier because, for once, I had not joined a long queue of cars and buses waiting at the junction. (One of the stupidest aspects of the traffic system is that the lights here only allow two or three vehicles through at a time, so there is always a long queue. A cyclist usually has to resort to wheeling his or her machine along the pavement to pass the line of buses.) Advancing tentatively into the junction, I found that other road users were stopping for me, and I was able to cross safely. Realising quickly that here was something worth watching, I took up a position in front of the Jam Factory - and marvelled at how well the system worked when the lights were off. With traffic as heavy as you might expect on a Saturday afternoon, everything was moving so much better than it usually does. From whichever direction, buses, cars, commercial vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians were arriving at the junction and going on their way with a minimum of delay - once precedence had been agreed with a signal from the hand or a friendly smile.

Even the most seemingly complicated and dangerous manoeuvres were being carried out effortlessly - a passage, for instance, from Hollybush Row, across the front of the Royal Oxford Hotel, and right, passing oncoming traffic, into Hythe Bridge Street. In no direction were queues building up. And this includes Botley Road, where traffic usually stretches over the River Thames and beyond. Twice movement stopped completely, to allow ambulances to pass through at speed, with their sirens sounding.

Wheeling my bike, I joined pedestrians crossing towards the railway station. Cars and other vehicles paused to let us on our way. On the station forecourt, I stopped to talk to the driver of the first of the line of taxis plying for trade there. He told me he was not surprised at how easily the traffic was moving. He had seen breakdowns of the lights a number of times before, and these had always eased congestion. We agreed how easy it looked for buses, leaving the bays around us, to cross towards their next stopping point on the south side of the square. It is the necessity for this manoeuvre, of course, that led to the special complications of this whole ridiculous traffic system.

At 5pm precisely, power returned to the lights. With the restoration of normal service came restoration of congestion. I rode home towards a warming cup of tea, leaving Frideswide Square in its usual mess.

Earlier in the year - in the morning rush on Monday, March 21, to be exact - the 25 sets of lights around the square suffered a similar failure, lasting two hours. The Oxford Times reported: "Road campaigners and traders believe the power cut hitting traffic lights at Frideswide Square helped reduce congestion for early morning commuters. Video footage shows motorists freely passing through the square, where seven busy roads meet, during the blackout. The photograph on this page was taken at the same time. But minutes after power was restored, traffic was queuing."

A pretty powerful case, then, for removing the lights. Not so, in the opinion of the aforementioned David Robertson, who might be wondering why I introduced him into the first sentence of this article. His explanation for how well the junction operated that morning? The Oxford Times stated: "David Robertson, the county council cabinet member for transport, said: 'Across Oxfordshire the flow of traffic was much better. We don't know what that reason is; it was not just Frideswide Square.'"

So what was his explanation for the situation on Saturday afternoon? Don't tell me - it must have been the crowd of 8,000-plus off the streets watching Oxford United. In March, Mr Robertson said the council could not judge the success of removing the traffic lights on one day's evidence. Well, now he's had more evidence - and the result of the Dutch experiment. Why not switch off the Frideswide lights, for a controlled test?

Do anti-semitic sentiments become less vile for having been uttered by a Jew? Is it an excuse for gay-bashing remarks that one has made them as part of a plan to 'out' others for their homophobia? I ask these questions, having gone on Monday to see Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. (A ticket costs £7, by the way, and if you take my advice, you'll save yourself the money - the film is crap, a substance dear to Cohen's heart on the evidence here.) I suspected what I was in for from the over-the-top nature of most of the reviews (including our own - "It could stake a claim as the most hysterically funny film of the year"). Nothing could be that good. According to Dan Jolin, of Empire: "This is Sacha Baron Cohen's finest hour. This isn't just a few smirks and chuckles actually, this is exactly what it is. Instead, it's rib-crackingly, face-hurtingly, endorphin-flushingly hilarious."

That being the case, how was it that the audience around me at the Odeon managed to contain its enthusiasm so impressively? Where were the streams of urine the reviews had encouraged me to expect to see swilling down the aisles, having been unintentionally expressed by hysterical punters? Where the corpses of those who had died laughing?

But perhaps people in Oxford aren't too surprised to find that redneck America contains redneck people who with a little encouragement - and Cohen gives a lot - will reveal their poisonous prejudices when they think they are in the presence of someone who shares them.

Perhaps, too, they know enough about the real world to recognise the film as a nasty libel on an infant state recently emerged from beneath the Soviet jackboot, with an impressive tolerance and respect for people of all races. The fact that Kazakhstan is very poor is hardly a laughing matter - but at times you suspect that the odious (very rich) Cohen finds this the funniest thing of all.