Michael Day knows about the traffic in Canberra.
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His desk looks out on one of the busiest intersections on Northbourne Avenue. He can see the flow or lack of it out of his window.
And he can see it on a bank of screens at his desk in the hub of the ACT government's control room at 496 Northbourne Avenue in Dickson.
He is recognised worldwide as one of the experts in traffic flows and how to smooth them. He is an engineer and not a politician. He has the ability to alter the timing of red lights at the click of a computer mouse - but the decision is political, he said.
Tilting the whole system one way or the other, towards pedestrians or cars, is one for elected representatives. "If you wanted to do something really dramatic, yes, you could do that but that would have to be a decision that would be made by politicians."
The screens tell him which interchanges are busy and where traffic is moving smoothly. It's the computer system which regulates the timing of red and green lights according to whether the volume of vehicles is great or light; heavy traffic and the green light lingers longer.
"What lights do is allocate time on a fair basis. They basically measure traffic volumes and say 'OK there's more traffic here. We'll give you a longer green light. There's less traffic here, we'll give you a shorter one.
"The theory is that everybody gets a fair go."
And between cars and pedestrians? "There is a balance to be achieved between the two," Mr Day, the ACT's assistant director of traffic, says.
"If you move in one direction you could have a situation where vehicles are totally dominating and pedestrians are hardly getting a look in.
"You could swing it around the other way. You could make it so that pedestrians got a huge amount of time to cross the road and the vehicles were missing out and there would be queues, so I think you've got try to find that balance between the two."
But changes have consequences. If, for example, the crossing time for pedestrians were increased, cars would be delayed and that might push drivers to alternative routes through residential areas (not to mention, anger).
The first traffic lights were switched on in the ACT in 1965 when the population was less than 85,000 (a quarter of what it is today).
Today, there are 315 sets of signals at intersections, 40 sets of signals mid-block for pedestrians and four sets of singles to regulate traffic approaching roundabouts.
On the day after the first lights were switched on, The Canberra Times reported that there was trouble.
An electrical failure caused the 25 lights to go to red. "Canberra motorists kept seeing red", wrote the witty newspaper wordsmith, repeating the nice line in the first paragraph ("Motorists saw red at the intersection of Northbourne Avenue and Boldrewood Street.")
The city also had its first traffic light crash causing "only minor damage and no injuries".
It was the first of many.
