Yeah, what is the deal with traffic lights?

From Panos' profile page -- "He has sat at one unsynchronized traffic light after another"
As have we all ...

Which begs the question -- in a city with relatively few major surface streets and rather well-known patterns of flow & volume during the course of a typical workday, what POSSIBLE reason can be given for such poor system control on an ongoing basis? I presume our candidate could offer up some technical opinions based upon his past work, but I would like to go even deeper -- WHY does the Transportation Services Dept. not make any effort to correct this chronic issue? Do they seriously lack the technical ability? or is it simply a question of will and inertia?

??