Saving energy or not?

We have a highway near home we use daily to go wherever, church, store, visiting, work, you name it and we along with many others have to use "Carefree Hwy (AZ71)" many times a day and/or a week.
This is a stretch of highway going through State trust land mainly on both the north and south sides of the road, a ranch here or there and some homes a few acres off the road to both the north and south. There are streets like 12th, 16th, 24th and 36th and run into the road from the north but do not cross the road to the south. A few folks living north of the highway will use these streets to get to Carefree Hwy, and with what little traffic there is might have to wait 10 to 30 seconds after arriving at the stop sign before turning right or left onto Carefree Hwy. I said 10 to 30 seconds they might have to sit and wait to enter onto Carefree Hwy...............not 10 to 30 minutes but SECONDS!

A while back our City, DOT, or whomever decided to put up some lights at 16th and 24th street entrances onto Carefree Hwy, lights used only by those few folks turning left or right onto the highway mind you. Now folks traveling on Carefree Hwy east and west are moving at speeds of 55 mph to 65 mph most often on a posted 55 mph Hwy, and the traffic cruises right along and always has which allows those entering not to have to sit and wait more that the 10 - 30 seconds most of the time.

Now stop and think about this from an energy use perspective, you see now if a car pulls up to enter Carefree Hwy from one of these streets he/she may have to wait up to 3 to 5 minutes for the light to change all the time the engine is running burning gas. When the light does change for them the many more cars just cruising along Carefree Hwy have to brake very hard to slow down in a hurry in order to stop for these lights. These cars have to slow down from speeds of around 60 mph to a stop in seconds or decide to put it to the floor and run the yellow or fading green light...............very dangerous! OK, now that one or maybe after waiting 5 minutes there are now two cars there at the light, they proceed to make there turns while maybe a dozen cars wait for this usually one guy to enter the Hwy. Now the light turns green for what has become 12 to 15 cars now from the east and the west and they all stomp on the gas to get back up to speed and in doing so have opened all four barrels if the carburetor is that big which is the case for a lot of cowboys in their trucks. Do you get the picture, one guy gets to wait 3 to 5 minutes burning gas while dozens stop on a dime and then burn out or stomp on it burning 25 times the gas they'd have burned just cruising right along the highway and stopping for that one or two vehicles that might not even have been there if they didn't have to wait for a green light!

In my opinion these light have cost us so much in wasted energy it's pathetic and assinine, does anyone thing of these things went putting up a traffic light years sooner than it might have been needed? Maybe one or two old farts bitched about waiting a few seconds more or less one night and had the pull to get these put in.....................what a waste of time, energy and money for the City of Phoenix.