What's worse than pointlessly whiling away your life sitting at a red light in the middle of the night? Sitting at another one right after the first one finally turns green.

You sit there at the red light, looking ahead you can see every other light on the street is green. There are no other cars - it's the middle of the night. There are no cars waiting on the side streets for their turn to go, no pedestrians pushing buttons to activate cross walks. As soon as this light you're stuck at turns green, you're home free.

Only, you're not, because just as soon as your light turns green, the one at the very next block turns red. Rinse and repeat - stop and go traffic when you're the only one on the road, all night long until you finally arrive at your destination.

This experience could be equated to trying to brush your teeth while getting punched in the face every five seconds. Just as soon as you get started you have to stop, and it hurts every time.

Eisenhower, the guy who pioneered the first pope-mobile-like plexiglass bubble from which to be admired by his adoring fans as he was cruising around in his limousine, knew a thing or two about energy and transportation. He thought sitting at a red light in the middle of the night was a waste of energy. He hated red lights so much he made the interstate highway system, a place free from red lights where you can drive as fast as you want and never ever stop (as long as you keep it under 65, Dale.).

The city where I grew up, Denver, has a pretty good handle on things. The planners there seem to realize that stop lights are only necessary for part of the day and that when they are no necessary they can be flashing yellow on the main thoroughfare and red on the side streets. During the day, the lights are timed so that, if you drive the speed limit, you can hit all consecutively green lights.

Here in Utah it is the opposite. Lights run with long long cycles at 3am, and during the day the lights are timed to make you stop as many times as humanly possible. At least, that's what it seem like. I think the Salt Lake City planners wanted their city to be known as a fun place, but didn't quite get what a "red light district" was supposed to entail exactly.

Sometimes you will be sitting at an intersection where every light in every direction is red for minutes at a time. I don't know if there is some traffic control center where people are just messing with us, or if the damn things are malfunctioning. Neither thought is very comforting.

The problem is that here in Utah if you were to make an intersection flash yellow, people would not know what to do at all. It would be mass chaos. People would slam their breaks on, their heads exploding and their brains splattered all over the inside of their windshields. We still haven't figured out stop signs, surely blinking lights would be way too much.

Still, I think even this obstacle could be overcome with a few educational billboards (Utahns LOVE billboards) and generous applications of my horn.

So how bout it, Utah? Can we get some blinking yellow lights at night and some properly timed light sequences during the day? Then we can get to work on a proper red light district.