4 ms·
Adaptive Traffic Lights FTW
- jrwoodruff 16y agoIt's about time somebody did a study like this. I don't know how many times I've sat at a red light with no cross traffic thinking about how much gas is wasted in such situations.
- dangrossman 16y agoNear my home (southeastern Pennsylvania), if you pull up to an intersection and there's no traffic in the opposing direction, the light changes so you get a near-immediate green. It works great at night when nobody else is near the intersections. I noticed the same thing when I lived in Seattle for a few months. I doubt the signals are communicating with each other, but there is definitely some deployment of signals with sensors to detect whether a car is waiting on each side of the intersection.
- memetichazard 16y ago"It’s a paradoxical effect that occurs in complex systems," says Helbing. "Surprisingly, delay processes can improve the system altogether. It is a slower-is-faster effect. You can increase the throughput - speed up the whole system - if you delay single processes within the system at the right time, for the right amount of time." Braess' Paradox! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27_paradox Alright, so not quite - one is talking about introducing delays and the other is about the availability of options to rational players, but everyone should know a little bit about it.