Next week: Google is closing down its traffic light program. It’s Mad Max on the roads now.
I have concerns about what this would mean for non-drivers. Sometimes you don’t want lights to align for maximum throughput. There are other factors at play here.
There was research on this at least 10 years ago where approaching traffic was detected and the lights were dynamically adjusted to improve traffic flow. This is the first time I’ve heard of this since.
Sadly, no one is considering optimising pedestrian traffic flows as they tend to have to wait at beg lights for increasing amounts of time. If we want liveable cities then we need to consider walking as a priority.
I believe several cities here will give bikes green more often when it’s raining, but I’m not sure how fancy you need to make your traffic detection. A basic green wave system seems to work fine for cars.
If you make the system too smart, I think you’ll end up with weird edge cases, like pedestrians waiting forever because of a constant trickle of cars. Measuring cars is pretty easy, just count how many times a magnetic loop gets interference from a metal frame, but counting pedestrians requires either cameras or tracking phones.
Real walkable cities shouldn’t need that much traffic light tweaking, because pedestrians and cars shouldn’t be crossing each other on high capacity roads in the first place. Perhaps there are tweaks to be made to help pedestrians overcome areas fucked up by car centric designs, but I think walkable cities without extensive road and traffic flow redesign will just be kind of shit for everyone.
As I recall it, the system used cameras or maybe radar to detect the cars some distance away so it had time to optimise the lights. The Google system seems to be based on historical data which probably the quickest way to improve using the current technology. My observation is that most traffic lights are set and forget so there are probably huge improvements possible.
As google data is based on mobile phones, they probably do have data on pedestrians as well as cars which could be promising.
To really fix things there will need to be new technology to allow realtime adjustments which introduces the opportunity to detect bikes and pedestrians.
In Norway it’s very common for pedestrians to walk red lights as long as there isn’t any cars. And it’s not illegal. Works pretty well for us.
It’s technically only illegal here in the US if done unsafely, too. So if there were no cars in sight, walking through a red light is ok. Crossing somewhere other than a crosswalk is also okay. Walking out into busy traffic without even looking is illegal. Also stupid and dangerous.
Are they now flashing targeted ads in Morse code while you wait?
For a small fee, traffic will slow outside your business! Become a premium elite subscriber to redirect thru traffic away from your house.
They are not making them more efficient. They are studying how to make them more efficient. It’s a really big difference because I am not yet ready to place my life in the hands of a CNN-based AI
