How to Shake up a bureaucracy

Every time you go to a bureaucracy with something a little different from what they expect, you are almost guaranteed to get a brush off--fast or slow.

In my small town a new traffic signal was installed on a well used but not major road. The traffic signal was at the entrance to a gated community and the signal light for all traffic on the road was set to Red. Thus all cars and trucks and buses using the road had to come to a stop regardless of traffic in or out of the gated community. After a short wait, the light would turn green. As you might expect, frequent users of the road were very annoyed by this arrangement.

A letter was sent to the traffic department suggesting that the light should be set to green until a car wanted to exit from the gated community. A reply came back to the effect that the light was designed to slow traffic on the road, since a few cars were going too fast. Nothing was to be changed.
Who could expect anything else?

So, cars coming out of the gated community were counted and cars being stopped by the red light were counted. It turned out that about ten vehicles were being stopped for every car coming out of the gated community. A new letter was sent to the traffic department pointing out the ratio of traffic and also the fact that close to one million cars per year were being unnecessarily stopped.

This letter apparently had some effect because a letter came back to the effect that instead of stopping cars on the road, only cars traveling at more than 30 mph would be stopped. After about a month or so, the signals were changed such that cars traveling at less than 30 mph did not have stop routinely.

Thus, one way to shake up a bureaucracy is to hit them with some facts and data. Unfortunately, this is not always possible.