I have now joined the ever-growing group of people who have spent Christmas in Tenerife. Being able to sit outside, walk, take the bus or car anywhere, and explore beautiful nature, interesting houses, and culture, all in summer clothes, was fantastic. Mind you, I live in Iceland…
The population of Tenerife is just under one million, and foreign visitors are probably around 3 million a year. All these people need to go around, and the island has many steep hills. Nevertheless, the public buses run quickly and regularly and are widely used (1.45 euros for a ride). Private cars, taxis, and rental cars are numerous. In 2018, there were 64,000 registered cars, and the number has only increased.
What particularly caught my attention was how few the traffic lights were. Nevertheless, the traffic ran smoothly. If a pedestrian stood at a crosswalk the cars just stopped. Now, I don’t know if pedestrian accidents at crosswalks are very common in Tenerife, and maybe someone knows. At least, I did not witness any and spent much time walking around.
It was also not the case that all traffic was at a snail’s pace, just slow enough to consider the environment, circumstances, and pedestrians. There were quite a few one-way streets, but always two together, so people could travel in both directions.
In Reykjavik, with fewer than 200,000 inhabitants, traffic lights are placed every few meters. On Bústaðavegur alone (the street where I live), there are about 10 traffic lights from one end to the other. On average, half are synchronized, the other half not, causing considerable delays.
On Snorrabraut on the way downtown and to the Hospital, from Hringbraut intersection, there are 7, I think, and no consideration is given to whether there are buttons for pedestrians on the lights (they are not used, in other words). It’s the same story: about half of the lights are synchronized, then comes a stop.
The lights at the end of Eiríksgata are a joke. There, you can drive south and north on Snorrabraut and down Eiríksgata and then turn south onto Snorrabraut. When the turn signal up Eiríksgata turns on, the light pointing north on Snorrabraut turns red and stays that way even though there is no traffic to interfere. Presumably, the reason is that there is a crosswalk there. It is little used, and there is a button on the pole that should be able to be used to turn on the green light for pedestrians. Well, this button is useless, not connected, just like at countless other lights at crosswalks. Instead, there’s a red light that delays all traffic for longer periods every day – and only a few people use the crosswalk.
The question is; why invest in these expensive lights, with a button for crosswalk lights, if they are more or less inactive?
Can’t the money be better spent?“