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Google uses AI to reduce stop-and-go traffic on your route
- jackconsidine 2y agoCool but I didn’t really see AI specifics
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- eamag 2y agoMaybe here? https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/google-ai-reduce-greenhouse-emissions-project-greenlight/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/goog... > We build an AI-based model of each intersection, including its structure, traffic patterns (such as patterns of starting and stopping), light scheduling, and how traffic and the light schedules interact, and then we also build a model of the interaction between traffic lights. Based on this model, we develop AI-based optimizations and then provide recommendations to city engineers via the Green Light interface. As an example, we might identify an opportunity to coordinate between intersections that are not yet synced and provide a recommendation around the timing of the traffic lights so that traffic flows more effectively along a stretch of road.
- simonw 2y agoWhat's an AI-based model? What's the difference between an "AI-based" optimization and a regular optimization? It's not that it's inaccurate to call it "AI", it just doesn't actually tell us anything useful about what they did.
- whimsicalism 2y agoML is the same thing as AI - optimization applied to stacked weights to achieve an objective. I don’t see what the problem is with that
- lm28469 2y agoIt's running on the cloud so it's either an "app" or "AI", get used to it grandpa /s
- duxup 2y agoI guess this is more of a press release / PR blog, there's no technical explanation of anything here. >Today, Green Light is live in over 70 intersections I'm not even sure if this is a good production result to know what has been accomplished.
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- Nickersf 2y agoThose are my thoughts exactly. No metrics. It seems like an ad for some AI product to governments. Also, while cutting emissions is a good thing, wouldn't it be good to sell how this will make people's commutes more pleasant and generate some interest other than emissions control?
- samschooler 2y agoI understand the intention here of reducing stop time at stoplights for cars, but I think this is a dangerous project. The word pedestrian, or bicycle does not exist in this article whatsoever. Traffic lights are a flawed, but useful tool for traffic calming. If we optimize for reducing the amount of red lights cars will run into, this will fundamentally increase speeds on roads, and increased speeds, equals increase pedestrian, cycle, and car deaths. This is all conjecture, but it seems like the key indicator that Google is providing two cities is reduction in stop time. If that is their key metric, while also not looking at other things like bicycle stop time, or pedestrian wait time; we will be optimizing for average car speed indirectly. That is a bad thing inside of cities.
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- syrgian 2y agoIt seems to me that it would increase safety, but I guess only a simulation could truly tell. I understand your take, but I have a different one: most accidents happens when someone makes a mistake at stop light changes. Less cars stopping/starting at red lights seems less chances for accidents to me. Let's go with an absurd example: If you multiplied by 5 both the length of red and green stages, I would expect much less accidents per day, but it would obviously also be much more frustrating to move around (and possibly more accidents if the amount of infractions increase because of the frustration). If you divided them by 2, I would expect much more accidents of all kinds.
- rossng 2y agoAnother obvious issue: you can make traffic flow faster by reducing the time allotted to pedestrians. This makes walking a worse and less dignified experience. So even more people decide to drive instead of walking. Result: more traffic, more emissions, worse city. The researchers would have to be very naive to omit this from their model, so I am going to assume that they did take it into account. But I agree - it's disturbing not to see it mentioned at all.
- simonw 2y agoOn the one hand this is genuinely cool: take existing Google Maps navigation log data, use it to identify ways traffic lights could be reprogrammed to reduce stop and starts, build dashboards of those recommendations and share them with cities. Love that. But "Google uses AI to..." is such a frustrating way to frame it! Sure, there are likely some traditional ML models and techniques involved in this work. It first launched in 2021 so it's unlikely there were any generative models (which, let's face it, is what many people in 2024 assume when they see "AI" mentioned). It's not inaccurate to call it AI, but it adds about as much information to the story as saying "Google uses algorithms/computer science/data analysis to..." The more interesting component here isn't the "AI", it's the vast amount of road usage data. Google has been able to collect from prople running Google Maps for navigation. Though maybe their PE team don't want to emphasize that as much!
- danans 2y ago> But "Google uses AI to..." is such a frustrating way to frame it! It's a product marketing article, not a technical article or research paper. The details of the type of models and optimizations they use is probably a trade secret, but you can likely make an educated guess. As you say, it's mostly about applying known methods to existing data and identifying a product and market for the result (or the other way around). 4 years ago, they would have used the term "ML" (which nobody outside of tech grokked anyway). The new term is AI, and it also is the term that the public broadly understands.
- nerdjon 2y agoI think that is the problem though. In a lot of people's views, outside of our tech bubble, when they think "AI" they are thinking things like. General Purpose AI, ChatGPT, or this almost magic thing that this single thing is what is doing all of this. When the reality is thats not the case for the vast majority of this. It isn't like they are feeding this data into Gemini or another LLM and just tell it, process this data. Or its some magic single "Google AI" that is suddenly doing all of these tasks. But that is the public perception that is being painted for non technical people. Which is dangerous, it just further fuels this idea that ChatGPT and similar is a general purpose AI. Its a standard ML model that we have been building for many years. Whats even more concerning is ML and Machine Learning are no where in this article. Yeah its marketing, but its frustrating seeing how much we are now just calling everything "AI" as this magic term.
- sitkack 2y agoHow about Google maps uses traffic congestion predictions for routes and travel times? It does not, which is ridiculous.
- suyash 2y agoYes or another service which does this, Apple maps or open source alternative ?
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoThe interface, and directions I've had, suggest they do use predicted travel times and include congestion (in UK).
- sitkack 2y agoThey predict travel times based on current conditions. They don't predict travel times based on predicted conditions.
- yohannparis 2y ago> Everyday cars are stuck in traffic Nope, they are traffic!
- warkdarrior 2y agoI'm driving in my car, everyone else is traffic!
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- caust1c 2y agoGoogle needs to stop re-routing mid-navigation full stop. The number of times that I've had to miss exits or turns because google re-routed without sufficient lead time has caused me to stop using it for driving navigation. It's no wonder you see crazy people swerving across 3 lanes to make an exit these days. I blame google maps navigation for a lot of unsafe driving I see on the road today.
- mwhitfield 2y agoHuh? On Android at least, re-routing in navigation requires an explicit confirmation from you.
- linuxftw 2y agoGoogle is constantly telling me "We found a better route, tap to cancel switching" or some such. It will reroute you without asking.
- mnw21cam 2y ago"Tap to cancel" - I have had that a few times. It is very explicitly illegal in my country, with harsh penalties if caught. So yeah, Google, perhaps stop asking us to break the law?
- AlotOfReading 2y agoMaps is a much larger application than people usually realize. Most re-routings require explicit confirmation, but some do not. Some are automatic (e.g. road closure) and simply give a chime to notify the user that the change has happened, and still others are opt out (e.g. large time savings on another route can be opt out).
- nordsieck 2y ago> It's no wonder you see crazy people swerving across 3 lanes to make an exit these days. I blame google maps navigation for a lot of unsafe driving I see on the road today. 0% of that is Google's fault. Everyone knows that maps will recalculate the route if you miss your exit. "Crazy people swerving across 3 lanes to make an exit" is purely caused by selfish, dangerous drives who don't care about endangering themselves or the people around them.
- femtozer 2y agoThat was the subject of Google Hash Code 2021: https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/hashcode-2021-oqr-extension https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/hashcode-2021-oqr-extens... This format was really fun, it's a shame Google discontinued all its code competitions.
- Swizec 2y agoWhy do we need Google to do this? I remember learning 10+ years ago in college that (I think) Paris was using AI to dynamically optimize traffic lights to manage congestion. It was called machine learning back then, of course. The oldest paper that Google lets me find today is from 2017 (search has a recency bias): https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8122189 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8122189 edit: found one from 2014 – https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/engineering/technical-services/trans-r-and-d-repository/C-10-13%20Final%20Report_10-7-14.pdf https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/engineering/technical-servi... Edit: Found better sources! Here's a paper from 1990 about real-time modelling and monitoring of traffic patterns in Paris https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317769123_Modelling_and_Real-time_Control_of_Traffic_Flow_on_the_Boulevard_Peripherique_in_Paris https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317769123_Modelling... And a paper from 2015 that explicitly mentions using cameras for traffic detection: https://hal.science/hal-01491597/document https://hal.science/hal-01491597/document
- gniv 2y ago> Why do we need Google to do this? Many intersections don't have traffic sensors.
- fnordpiglet 2y agoAlso sensors in the road aren’t the same detail as having cars with sensors navigating the entire complex of all intersections at once. The granularity of that could really only be matched by cameras and vision models, which I expect cities couldn’t pull off as a comprehensive ML solution being simply too technically complex. Using their existing telemetry is the least intrusive way to collect lots of high quality highly detailed data at the individual car level.
- Swizec 2y ago> The granularity of that could really only be matched by cameras and vision models, which I expect cities couldn’t pull off as a comprehensive ML solution being simply too technically complex The systems I heard about in college used cameras. Lots of CCTV in cities like Paris :) Wish I remembered what it was called so I could find sauce Edit: Found better sources! Here's a paper from 1990 about real-time modelling and monitoring of traffic patterns in Paris https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317769123_Modelling_and_Real-time_Control_of_Traffic_Flow_on_the_Boulevard_Peripherique_in_Paris https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317769123_Modelling... And a paper from 2015 that explicitly mentions using cameras for traffic detection: https://hal.science/hal-01491597/document https://hal.science/hal-01491597/document
- suyash 2y agoSo google is tracking your google maps data everywhere you go? any way to opt out of the surveillance?
- firtoz 2y agoYes Yes - throw your and your friends and your relatives' phones into a river
- QuarterReptile 2y agoOn the off chance that you are serious: get a Pixel phone, install Graphene OS, follow the mobile Extreme Privacy guide (https://inteltechniques.com/book7a.html https://inteltechniques.com/book7a.html), and be ready for inconveniences.
- firtoz 2y agoAre location and mapping services genuinely privacy friendly?
- QuarterReptile 2y agoI'm not sure if I've understood your question, but I'll take a shot: By using an offline GPS app, you no longer have the need to coordinate with a centralized server. In exchange, you will lose traffic data. There may be some app that gives traffic with a level of privacy loss that meets your needs, but generally the data collection compromises your privacy, and the data is valuable... Anyway, OSMAnd is a popular F-Droid app I remember hearing mentioned. But, if you don't need traffic, then you could theoretically navigate with all your radios off, so you wouldn't be talking to towers. The experience will probably be quite slow, even with all the navigation constellations available now. The increasing incorporation of L2 and L5 GPS may improve that, but generally you're asking for niche performance, so I wouldn't hold my breath. I think people typically leave data on and prefer to just buy prepaid phone plans anonymously, paired with some combination of VPN usage and not using the phone for anything with a login, hoping to break the chain of tracking between the phone and the user's identity. It's probably enough to stay out of geofence warrants, at least.
- postalrat 2y agoIt seems like google maps routing will route you right through the maximum number of stop lights when it picks a "green" route. It's almost like its weighing a low average speed with green driving and a long string of stop lights will lower the average speed.
- Rastonbury 2y agoI actually realised it doing this more in my country too. Like why does it make me drive through side streets during off peak times, I now routinely check the options and have to pick the ones with bigger and faster roads. I am not going to make several more turns on unfamiliar small roads just to supposedly save 1 or 2 minutes
- paxys 2y agoCity planners – let's build major thoroughfares so we can keep traffic away from residential neighborhoods. Google Maps – this tiny residential street looks empty, let's send a million cars through it.
- Analemma_ 2y agoIf my taxes pay for it, I’m allowed to use it to reach my destination.
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoThe adult version, or one of them, of "I'm not touching you" - "my taxes paid for it".
- jeffbee 2y agoI think what they were saying is that for a person to believe that they have an exclusive proprietary interest in their "side street" is contrary to the fact that they are owned by the public.
- pbhjpbhj 2y agoI've found in the UK that Google Maps very heavily prefers major routes. That said, anything less than a motorway/A-road (trunk road) seems to get treated the same, whether it's a wide well marked road or a track with grass growing in the middle and foliage scraping the sides of the car. Do they use the same road weighting sets in all countries?
- mnw21cam 2y agoI find that for long distances, you're probably right, but for shorter distances, it definitely tries to route me down little tracks with grass growing down the middle and foliage scraping the sides of the car to cut the corner off a bend in a main road. I think the algorithm should probably weight more highly the time taken to reverse back to a passing point, and trying to turn right out of a tiny road into a busy main road behind a queue of ten other cars doing the same (which it fooled me into doing a while back). I agree with you that it doesn't seem to really know the difference between a less-major A road and a farm track. This makes navigating over Dartmoor interesting. And the roads are the wrong colours. </grumble>
- tylervigen 2y agoWhen I see projects like this one, my mind mostly goes to, "how will this be funded and maintained?" This requires a lot of specialized infrastructure to be run. I really like the idea of cities investing in measures that make small positive improvements for many people. However, for Google this seems like a side project, so I have my doubts that it will be around in 5 years. Not exactly the kind of thing I want to back with long term infrastructure dollars.
- judge2020 2y ago> In order to achieve a positive climate impact, we want to be able to deploy high-quality Green Light recommendations to many cities globally and scale fast. So we purposely set up everything to be simple and lightweight — cities don’t need to invest in any dedicated software or hardware integrations,” says Green Light Program Manager Alon Harris. “We just share our recommendations with the city, and then they evaluate them and take action.”
- barbazoo 2y agoSo this would be something like “make your east/west green phases 5 seconds longer between 7am and 9am and 5pm and 7 pm”.
- pncnmnp 2y agoA bit tangential, but can anyone suggest interesting resources for understanding Google Maps' algorithms and architecture? I am familiar with Peter Sanders' 2009 talk on Fast Route Planning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0ErpE8tQbw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0ErpE8tQbw).
- retrocryptid 2y agoI'm sure they believe they're doing that, but as other posts have mentioned, it is extremely difficult to give google feedback. I happen to know a few googlers socially from my days in SFLUG and BayLUG, so I can sometimes get a note to the appropriate product manager or engineer through the friends-of-a-friend network. But going through the front door has never worked. I believe that Google Maps is perfectly fine in most of the bay area. It's generally acceptable for roads that a google street view car has driven down. But pretty much a lost cause for other roads. Corner me at a conference sometime and I'll tell you about how google maps sent us four-wheeling through eastern california fire roads (a dirt road that collapsed after we turned around at a critical junction) or told me to get on and off the highway the first time I drove from Tacoma to Seattle (what should have been a simple 45 min drive with traffic turned out to be a 2 hour slog fest because I didn't have enough local knowledge to realize maps was full of itself.) While it's great they no-doubt are providing an internship for two or three PhD candidates, I think they may want to fix their data before thinking AI will improve the experience. The AI does not know the data you're training it with is garbage. If yoy do it right, you may be able to spot anomolies in the data or auto-cluster bits of data, but if you train any sort of CNN on garbage data, you're going to get garbage out. So while this may be great for people commuting from the GooglePlex in Mountain View to the Google facilities in San Francisco, and it //may// help people traveling along I-5 in California, I fear the garbage aspect of their geo data will not be magically solved by adding AI.
- bparsons 2y agoUsed individually, it is an amazing tool. Used collectively, it is an insane amount of power for a private company to possess. They can manipulate traffic flows almost anywhere on earth, at any time, instantaneously.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoIf I was going to ask for superpowers, that is not quite the first power that would come to mind. In fact it would be way down on the list, like on page 67 or something
- reaperducer 2y agoI imagine a movie where a bank robbery team hires a hacker to redirect all traffic away from the target bank, and clear the getaway route.
- QuarterReptile 2y agoThe idea is cool, but if you are in a US context, outside of a core city, please understand that your being delayed is actually part of the feature set of a stop light. Delaying you and other drivers allows gaps in traffic that let people enter relatively high-speed, unlimited-access roads that cover the US. It takes a lot of open space to safely enter a fast road. The alternative would be to narrow roads and lower speed limits as traffic intensifies, mitigating the need for stop lights. Unfortunately, design speed is the priority: we do whatever it takes to make sure that cars, when they are not stopped by lights or other traffic, can safely(ish) travel at the design speed.
- cvoss 2y agoThis is very true. I routinely depend on stop lights to govern intersections other than the intersection the light is posted at. And when I'm sitting at a red light with a bunch of other people, complaining to myself about how inefficient it seems because there is currently no cross traffic, I have to remind myself we are helping people downstream from the intersection to enter the road.
- cowsaymoo 2y agocognitive behavioral therapy enjoyer:
- smilekzs 2y agoThe goal you described matches more of an on-ramp meter instead of surface street lights? Unless of course we're talking about an intersection leading to the on-ramp, but now we're into back-off effects as well, which arguably could use more smartness in their schedule.
- QuarterReptile 2y agoIt's sort of the reverse, in a sense. If drivers adhered strictly to yield signs, those getting onto the highway would wait until there was a space in traffic. There would be times when you could not get on to the highway at all, when traffic was heavy but not so heavy that it slowed. To solve this (again, with strictly following RoW), you would have to either slow speeds on the highway or put stop lights on the highway to let mergers enter the roadway. This doesn't happen because everyone understands that those merging onto the highway are moving fast and running out of space, and prudence dictates that you slow down to make space, rather than finding out if you're driving next to someone who will crash into you. At the far end of the spectrum from that situation, you have people waiting forever to cross, in a marked crossing where they have right of way, because they're stopped (the status quo supports them not going) and they stand to die if the driver doesn't yield properly. Fast unlimited-access roads are somewhere in the middle: the mergers don't have the initiative, but the suffering is more evenly distributed in the case of a crash, so the passing drivers are perhaps more prepared to slam on brakes. The on-ramp meters provide the service of prioritizing drivers from distant suburbs or out of town at the expense of those who dwell in nearer suburbs. To put a different spin on it, they slightly disincentivize short trips on highways.
- nox101 2y agoit seems to me google maps is causing worse traffic by re-routing to side streets https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/your-navigation-app-is-making-traffic-unmanageable-2650279045 https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/your-navigation-app-is-making-...
- joshribakoff 2y agoOff topic. Changing the timing of the stop lights is not causing cars to reroute to side streets. The article you’re linking does not even mention project green light. In fact, project greenlight addresses some of the problems this article you linked complains about (the fact google and city leaders were working separately)
- jklinger410 2y agoThis is a chicken and egg issue. Congestion is so bad in many US cities due to a lack of investment by the local, state, and federal governments. It is thankless work, you have to inconvenience people and spend a shit ton of money just for a project that people will take for granted as soon as its done. So it doesn't get done. Then people have to solve their problem of simply not being able to commute in their own city by finding alternative routes. Which they would do without Google Maps anyway. Maps is just making it easier. So I disagree fundamentally with the generalization that these apps are "making it worse" just because they are making it convenient. The alternative is that people just don't do what they want to do because they don't know how, which isn't "better." I would rather blame the people not solving the problem (governments and voters) than the people who are (companies and apps) in this instance. The article you shared also has a false premise. If the main roads are congested, and people diverge from that road and congest other roads, there is still more overall traffic flow. And this isn't Europe, where we have thoughtful city planners in every major city. The city planners aren't fixing the bridge near my house and 4 lights within a short distance, or the static 50-second timed lights on the alternative route any time soon. I'm not breaking their genius plan because their plan wasn't genius in the first place.
- DistractionRect 2y agoWaze is about minimizing drive time for the locally for the individual, but that's at odds with minimizing drive time globally. This seems to be about optimizing flows globally, and there's a feedback loop between Google maps and intersection timing. For instance, if the majority of traffic flows east/west through an intersection, then you could expect more time is given to that flow than north/south. This would minimize global drive time, but it wouldn't be locally optimum for people that drive north/south through that intersection.
- gniv 2y agoCities don't install enough sensors. They are probably the best way to improve traffic outside busy times. The coolest implementation I've seen was in Los Alamos. The sensor was way ahead of the intersection so by the time I got to it, without slowing down, the light changed. This was more than 25 years ago.
- btbuildem 2y agoI find traffic infrastructure kind of inherently broken in North America. There's a serious over-reliance on signalization, and to boot, the signals and signs are often less than ideal for circumstances. You can have speed limit signs, but nothing controls speed better than physical infrastructure -- in city cores, things like pedestrian islands, bulb-outs, raised crosswalks; throughout, roundabouts in place of four-way stop and light-controlled intersections. There's an absurd amount of stop signs in the US and Canada -- practically every intersection has at least one. They're mostly superfluous, and could be done away with, replaced with proper education for drivers, and yield signs where priority is ambiguous. Stop signs can serve a purpose where the view is obscured, and the driver genuinely needs to come to a complete stop to evaluate if they can proceed safely. When they're planted everywhere, they mean nothing. Add on top of this a fine system that's proportional to the driver's net worth and the kinetic energy of the vehicle at time of infraction, and we could be getting somewhere. I honestly believe driving should be strongly discouraged, made more painful and more expensive, to push people away from it as a primary mode of transport. Decades ago car companies sold us a nightmare of a "freedom dream" and destroyed so much in the name of profits, it's unforgivable.
- tylerrobinson 2y ago> They're mostly superfluous, and could be done away with, replaced with proper education for drivers, and yield signs where priority is ambiguous. Stop signs can serve a purpose where the view is obscured, and the driver genuinely needs to come to a complete stop to evaluate if they can proceed safely. When they're planted everywhere, they mean nothing. Help me out here. You want fewer or no stop signs and instead to rely on “proper education for drivers”? What is the problem you’re aiming to solve with that?
- seadan83 2y agoOver reliance on signaling. The idea comes from intersections in southeast Asia for example. It's a massive free for all with higher safety rates than signalled intersections. In the face of uncertainty, drivers slow and focus on situational awareness and negotiation. That this is actually safer, is counterintuitive. Which goes go the larger thesis, over reliance on signaling. An idea that if you blindly follow the rules, that you'll be safe. It's the reason you should hesitate look both ways when proceeding from an intersection - to make sure someone else is not barreling thru, and that you're not blindly proceeding on the green to then get t-boned.
- riknos314 2y agoDoes anyone know if the google maps team offers a simulation platform to city planners? Seems like it might be useful for testing hypotheses about how proposed road projects might impact traffic flow.
- josefritzishere 2y agoIf you are using Ai to do it, you are not going to be net negative. This is another example of a solution seeking a problem.
- penguin_booze 2y agoI really liked the 'AI-generated summary' the page offers. I hope to see more of that on the wider web (because, my attention span doesn't go beyond paragraph no. 3).