Dear City of Charlottetown,

It's 1:09AM and this night owl is wide awake however the majority of Islanders are sleeping, however all the traffic lights throughout town are wide awake as they are a 24/7 operation. At night, there is obviously less drivers on the road, and from what I've seen tonight they are more apt to break the law to get to where they are going. I feel Charlottetown should give the traffic lights six hours off per night.

Every night at midnight, why don't we have the lights setup to flash red, much like they do in other cities like Halifax or even our neighboring town of Cornwall? As there is a major decrease in traffic at this time, its not going to affect many Islanders and there isn't enough people on the road at that time for it to effect many people.

I think Charlottetown should have the lights setup so that going North-South most of the lights should be blinking orange. The exception would be any streets that cross Belvedere Avenue or Grafton St. For Belvedere Avenue and Grafton St, have all the lights going east-west flash orange and all other lights on this street flash red.

This would provide a continuous flow of traffic within the city at and reduce the useless stop and go traffic at night.

Why do we have uesless stop and go traffic at night? Because most of the lights downtown are setup on a fixed timing system. That means that the traffic going east-west at an intersection is given the green light for 60-90 seconds (estimated) while the north-south is given the red light for 70-100 seconds. The other 10 seconds is for the orange light (5 seconds each way).

This means that you could be sitting at a red light for close to a minute or two waiting wasting gas while your waiting for the light to change just because of the timer. This makes the system utterly useless during the night time, when there is barely any traffic on the roads.

Within this, there would have to be a few exceptions, such as the bypass always having a green light for those who are on the bypass. All other roads which go through the bypass will have to have a flashing orange light.

Capital Drive will all be orange flashing lights on a east-west basis except for the intersection that connects to University Avenue. Capital drive in this case would be given the red light. All other road ways with lights going through Capital Drive would be given a red flashing light.

These changes will allow Islanders to save gas by having less stop and go traffic at night which in turn will also have save the environment. It will also make things more efficient as Islanders will catch on to such a adjustment and take the best routes to get from point a to point b.