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This article doesn't really go into details about what the solution is. It basically sounds like they're saying they can control traffic when they control enou

by yosito 5y ago

This article doesn't really go into details about what the solution is. It basically sounds like they're saying they can control traffic when they control enough of the variables. Traffic engineers have been using digital models for decades. The bigger problem is that the real world has too many pesky autonomous drivers. I'm not convinced that many drivers really want a solution that takes their autonomy away. If they did, they'd just use public transport, which, incidentally, is capable of moving far more people with far less congestion issues.

Arnt 5y ago
Drivers wanting autonomy isn't the only uncontrollable variable. Property owners along the streets have ideas, too. Optimising their street for the ability of drivers to drive quickly through it on their way from elsewhere to elsewhere typically isn't high on their list. Adds noise, depresses property prices. The whole thing reminds me of some modernist architecture dreams. One of the great architects had an idea of cities as... let me be pointed and unfriendly. Of magnificently designed apartment blocks connected to magnificently designed workplaces by wide fast roads, and nothing else. Fantastic looks, very clean, very elegant in a way, but nothing else. Corporatist, not far from fascist, very far from humane.
- axelroze 5y ago
  Bad old Le Corbusier. Who would have thought moving architecture away from beauty and into "efficency" would end up so badly? (i am sarcastic)
  - Arnt 5y ago
    It's easy to be sarcastic about him, but be fair. What he was moving architecture away from wasn't so much beauty as it was random slums for most people and beautiful comfort for the 1%. It's easy to look at the hundred-year-old apartments and see the beauty, but that suffers from survivor bias.
    - chopin 5y ago
      Two years ago I admired the Edwardian blocks in Edinburgh. I don't think they where built for the 1% and are much more humane.
      - Arnt 5y ago
        Yes. And I don't think Le Corbusier ever wanted to replace the best of the old housing, he wanted to replace the mass of bad building. And he had rather ahem ideas about how people ought to behave, once they had spacious apartments with hot and cold water. Which is the part I was reminded of when I read the article we're discussing. That view of the city as a set of streets to drive through is like his. Very simplistic, one-sided, optimisable but not humane.
    - axelroze 5y ago
      Actually I agree that commieblocks/modern-architecture is very efficient in the same way as Ford's car factory in producing a lot fast. And just as Ford said that the car can be had in any colour as long as it black, so the architecture of this period is in any colour as it is dull concrete gray. The dream of equality to the letter is what actually lead to this. We should all be equal => We must all live in ugly soulless copy-paste commieblocks. Would person A be less equal to person B if A lived in a box painted red and B lived in a box painted green? Le Corbusier et al obviously thought the answer is yes. I take a lot of issue with that. Marble pools, huge gardens and other forms of opulence and luxury are a thing to cling in these arguments to but there are many many worker communities who lived in very beautiful buildings at the turn of the 20th century. Why not continue that strategy but go instead for ugliness? The ego of Le Corbusier and the desire to be modern and free of shackles of the past. WW2 destroyed Europe. What to do? Make it so ugly that no one ever again bothers destroying it. By the way beauty was not completely lost in the communist countries. The new steel mill processing plant in Krakow is a community built in renaissance style. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta
karmakaze 5y ago
Why not put an ML system in with some basic safeguards, like the direction changeover duration and that each direction has to be green for at least x within period y. Sure it would suck at first but then it would get smart pretty quick when a long street has all their lights controlled by that model.

by yosito 5y ago

Arnt 5y ago

Drivers wanting autonomy isn't the only uncontrollable variable. Property owners along the streets have ideas, too. Optimising their street for the ability of drivers to drive quickly through it on their way from elsewhere to elsewhere typically isn't high on their list. Adds noise, depresses property prices. The whole thing reminds me of some modernist architecture dreams. One of the great architects had an idea of cities as... let me be pointed and unfriendly. Of magnificently designed apartment blocks connected to magnificently designed workplaces by wide fast roads, and nothing else. Fantastic looks, very clean, very elegant in a way, but nothing else. Corporatist, not far from fascist, very far from humane.

axelroze 5y ago
Bad old Le Corbusier. Who would have thought moving architecture away from beauty and into "efficency" would end up so badly? (i am sarcastic)
- Arnt 5y ago
  It's easy to be sarcastic about him, but be fair. What he was moving architecture away from wasn't so much beauty as it was random slums for most people and beautiful comfort for the 1%. It's easy to look at the hundred-year-old apartments and see the beauty, but that suffers from survivor bias.
  - chopin 5y ago
    Two years ago I admired the Edwardian blocks in Edinburgh. I don't think they where built for the 1% and are much more humane.
    - Arnt 5y ago
      Yes. And I don't think Le Corbusier ever wanted to replace the best of the old housing, he wanted to replace the mass of bad building. And he had rather ahem ideas about how people ought to behave, once they had spacious apartments with hot and cold water. Which is the part I was reminded of when I read the article we're discussing. That view of the city as a set of streets to drive through is like his. Very simplistic, one-sided, optimisable but not humane.
  - axelroze 5y ago
    Actually I agree that commieblocks/modern-architecture is very efficient in the same way as Ford's car factory in producing a lot fast. And just as Ford said that the car can be had in any colour as long as it black, so the architecture of this period is in any colour as it is dull concrete gray. The dream of equality to the letter is what actually lead to this. We should all be equal => We must all live in ugly soulless copy-paste commieblocks. Would person A be less equal to person B if A lived in a box painted red and B lived in a box painted green? Le Corbusier et al obviously thought the answer is yes. I take a lot of issue with that. Marble pools, huge gardens and other forms of opulence and luxury are a thing to cling in these arguments to but there are many many worker communities who lived in very beautiful buildings at the turn of the 20th century. Why not continue that strategy but go instead for ugliness? The ego of Le Corbusier and the desire to be modern and free of shackles of the past. WW2 destroyed Europe. What to do? Make it so ugly that no one ever again bothers destroying it. By the way beauty was not completely lost in the communist countries. The new steel mill processing plant in Krakow is a community built in renaissance style. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta

karmakaze 5y ago

Why not put an ML system in with some basic safeguards, like the direction changeover duration and that each direction has to be green for at least x within period y. Sure it would suck at first but then it would get smart pretty quick when a long street has all their lights controlled by that model.