I am officially offering a bounty. I will personally buy a coffee, a pastry, and lunch for whoever can find the person in charge of programming the traffic lights in this town and ask them what on earth they have against us. Because I am convinced there is a guy in a room somewhere just manually flipping switches to red specifically to watch us suffer.
Can we talk about the left-turn arrows for a minute? I timed it yesterday. I literally sat there, pulled out my phone, and timed the left-turn green arrow. Three seconds. THREE. SECONDS. That is enough time for exactly one minivan, and maybe the front bumper of the car behind them, to make it through before it turns red again. Meanwhile, the opposite side of the highway gets a green light for four uninterrupted minutes while the road is completely empty!
What is the result? People have to pull out into the dead center of the intersection, wait for the light to turn red, and then make a run for it just so they can get home before their kids graduate high school. It’s incredibly dangerous, but what choice do we have? You either do that, or you sit at the same intersection for four complete light cycles questioning every decision you’ve ever made in your life.
And the lack of synchronization! We are living in 2026. We have the technology to land rockets backward on floating barges in the middle of the ocean. We have refrigerators that can text us when we are out of milk. But somehow, in Lakewood, New Jersey, the concept of synchronizing three traffic lights in a row is treated like forbidden magic.
If you get a green light at one intersection, it is a mathematical certainty—backed by the laws of physics—that the very next light will turn red exactly 50 feet before you reach it. It’s just a start-stop-start-stop crawl of absolute misery. You hit the gas, you hit the brake. You hit the gas, you hit the brake. It takes 25 minutes to drive a mile and a half.
This is not a population issue. This is not a zoning issue. This is a literal “somebody needs to plug a laptop into the metal box on the corner and update the software” issue. This is completely, 100% fixable.
We are wasting millions of hours of our lives and thousands of gallons of gas just idling at red lights staring at empty cross streets. Call the DOT. Call the township. Recalibrate the sensors. Give us a 15-second left-turn arrow so more than one human being can turn onto a side street. Bring our traffic grids into the 21st century before we all lose our collective minds.
SG
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While you’re at it please find the guy in charge of giving out road construction permits and have him warn people when the streets are going to be closed
I know you’re serious and this is written with great concern, but u got me to laugh out loud! Just in time for Chodesh Adar! I gotta give you an applaud!!!!!!
Literally. I fully agree with everything you said and have the same frustration. But the way you expressed it gave me a very good laugh!
I offer you a salary to work for DOT! You sound quite knowledgeable and I think they can use your help. Honestly, pick up the phone and offer your advice. The more people call them, the more seriously they will take your concern. Finding a hay in a haystack won’t do any good. It’s time we step up to the plate and do something concrete – not just for sidewalks …
me!!!!!
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe light synchronization is a New York thing. I think jersey believes in sensors instead. So if you pound a dead horse go ahead. You can’t knock sense into a deep rooted ideology. You might even need an act of legislation to fix it which brings up the whole avi Schnall thing. So I don’t know if you want to go there
If was truly working sensors it would pick up on the cars waiting & adjust the timing.
I think they tell us there are sensors as a mind game to get us to believe something & not complain. Like the crosswalk buttons. We all know those are placebo.
also find out who approved railroad street to get approval without any sidewalks?? its so dangerous there when the kids walk to the co op there’s no shoulder and no sidewalk
Love your writing style!
Should I tell him how good the lights are on Saturdays ?
No, seriously, I have found that the state and county roads are fairly well synchronized for the posted speed limits. When the traffic volume is reduced and I can maintain my speed at the speed limit, no faster, no slower, I can cruise the full length of major roads like New Hampshire, Cedar Bridge, even Route 9.
The lights work in a vacuum but they aren’t setup for the actual driving conditions in town. Besides the aggressive drivers we are known for, we also have a preponderance of people driving like they were just born. They move 10 to 15 miles below the speed limit and they’re not just ‘slowing’ down the people behind them, they are actually disrupting the flow of traffic on the road.
These ‘lost’ drivers create the variation that I don’t think the engineers are prepared for.
I’m totally moskim I wait by intersections for like half hour especially by Central and the nine
talking about central, while you guys coming down central get that left turning arrow, people on rt 9 south waiting to turn right up central should have a green arrow at the same exact time, instead of sitting there like a bump on a pickle
just turn on red. (you’ll tayna about the no turn on red sign? someone should do half of lakewood a big favor and go in middle of the night and take it down)
I agree! I was at a red light today thinking the same thing. I legit have to be ready to floor it before it turns red again. Was green for maybe 3 seconds. Cars backed up for 10 minutes. Traffic is not moving. I hope the person who fixes this gets extra coffee and danishes! And that I get to work on time!
I moved out of Lakewood a few years ago, thinking the same exact thing (especially that left turning arrow on 9 North onto Kennedy). I was hoping that things would change by now.
Bingo! Right on! always wondered same thing. as an individual driving around for service calls, it baffles my mind who made up the green arrows for two cars to go thru…why are some lights at 6:30am longer then the galus if theres no one within site coming from a diff direction…please follow up on this and ask the community to help u compile a list of all the lights that can be synchronized better…
Yes!
The person has a bachelors in Talmudic law.
Super qualified in traffic studies.
I was learning with a friend of mine, a Talmudic whiz. He told me “when we get to the two dots, we’ll stop.” Apparently, he knows all the traffic rules and he knew where we were supposed to stop, which kind of confirms what you’re saying.
The Lakewood township doing anything normal or reasonable? Yeah that’s never going to happen