More Than 30% of the Signals We Surveyed in Bengaluru Run Anticlockwise. Here Is Why That Blocks Traffic

Introduction

When you wait at a signal in Bengaluru, you watch only your own light. Very few people notice the order in which the green light moves from one road to the next. But this order decides how smoothly the junction clears.

Our team at Infra Kaizen surveyed 70 traffic signals in Bengaluru. We found that more than 30% of them change in anticlockwise order. This looks like a small detail. On the road, it is a daily loss of time for thousands of people.

What clockwise and anticlockwise mean

Think of a normal four-road junction seen from above, like on a map. Most Bengaluru signals give green to one road at a time. After one road finishes, the green moves to the next road.

• Clockwise order: the green moves North, then East, then South, then West.
• Anticlockwise order: the green moves North, then West, then South, then East.

India is a right-hand-drive country. Our steering wheel is on the right and we keep to the left side of the road. Because of this, the left turn is the easy turn. A vehicle turning left does not cross any other traffic. That is why "free left" is allowed at many junctions.

Why the order matters

Take one example. Vehicles coming from the East road have the green light. Some of them turn left, into the South road.

In clockwise order, the next green goes to the South road. Vehicles from the South road go straight, left or right, but none of them enters the South road itself. So that road stays empty. The left-turning vehicles from the East road can keep moving freely even after their own signal has turned red.

In anticlockwise order, the next green goes to the North road. The straight traffic from the North road goes directly into the South road. Now the left-turning vehicles from the East road have to stop, or push into that heavy stream. The left lane gets blocked, and all the vehicles behind are stuck.

The problem for the daily commuter

• The free left stops working. Left-turning vehicles wait even though they have no real conflict with anybody.
• The waiting left-turners block the left lane, so the queue grows longer on that road.
• Drivers try to force their way into the moving traffic. This creates risk for two-wheelers and for people crossing the road.
• The loss repeats in every signal cycle, the whole day, at every such junction.

Nobody complains about it, because nobody can see the reason. People only feel that "this junction is always jammed".

Root cause: a design failure

We could not find any engineering reason for running a signal anticlockwise in India. So we asked "why" step by step, the way Toyota teaches:

• Why are left-turners blocked? Because the signal order is anticlockwise.
• Why is the order anticlockwise? Because it was set that way when the signal controller was installed or repaired.
• Why was it set that way? Because there is no written rule that says the order must be clockwise.
• Why did nobody catch it? Because the order is not part of any checklist or inspection.

So the root cause is not the driver and not the number of vehicles. It is a design and standard failure. The order is left to chance. That is why some signals are right and some are wrong.

Solutions: one small step for each root cause

This problem does not need crores of rupees or a new flyover. It needs one rule, one checklist and regular follow-up. That is Kaizen: small corrections, done properly, at every junction.