Wait, you mean the thing where people who do the speed limit have to stop at 3 straight reds while people doing 15 over are able to squeeze through all of them is the result of an intentional choice? It irritates the hell out of me how often that kind of thing happens in my town, but I always thought it was just some kind of oversight or inefficiency on the part of the engineers who set up the timing cycles, given how how clearly and directly it incentivizes speeding...
If driving the speed limit is the most efficient way to get where you're trying to go, people will tend to drive the speed limit. Seems like that should be pretty obvious, imo.
Never been a fan of the "we shouldn't make the smaller, easier improvements because we need to do the bigger, harder things instead" argument...
Yes, we need more and better public transit, but that is going to take a whole lot of time, money, and effort to work towards. Yes, it's worthwhile, and we shouldn't STOP working towards it because of this, but I don't think that's a reason to balk at a smaller, easier incremental change that encourages safer driving while also simply being more efficient.