The problem is, people would just end up wasting even more gas. :-/
As for the lights, I understand your pain. One of the lights on my commute is a side street that seems to get 50/50 time distribution with the main thoroughfare that I am driving on. The problem is, that side street has about 1/4 the traffic. Nothing is more annoying than hitting two consecutive red lights (because traffic is backed up) only to see half a dozen cars (at most) going by either direction on the cross street.
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