12 ms·

Why cant we have smart stop lights. Nothing more annoying than sitting on a street with nobody coming and a red light for some arbitrary time period that's tota

Why cant we have smart stop lights. Nothing more annoying than sitting on a street with nobody coming and a red light for some arbitrary time period that's totally incorrect for the time period I'm currently in

tayo42 3mo ago
They exist. Your city needs to set it up. They can also switch to flashing red lights.
cortesoft 3mo ago
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/277/ https://xkcd.com/277/ Most cities have some intelligence on their traffic lights, and they do have traffic sensors to know where cars are waiting. You might not see any cars and are annoyed waiting at the light, but you don’t know what downstream things they are trying to control for. Maybe if they send you through the light, you are going to join some other traffic event that will cause an issue. It could also just be suboptimal, but it very hard to know just from what you observe as an individal
- waterTanuki 3mo ago
  I like XKCD but I don't really agree with the underlying premise of this one. When I was in the Netherlands, one of the global gold standards in terms of urban planning and design, I noticed it wasn't only more pleasant as a pedestrian or cyclist, it was more pleasant as a driver as well. Lights were smart and did not sit on red forever if you were the only one waiting at an intersection. This comic suggests there's some "invisible, massively complicated" mesh of signal interactions we can never possibly fathom, and therefore wasting precious hours over the course of our lives sitting at an intersection is the most optimal one. The Dutch have figured this out, why can't North America?
  - cortesoft 3mo ago
    I don't think the answer is as simple as "The Dutch have better traffic light engineers" There are a ton of factors that go into traffic and traffic patterns. For one thing, I would be curious to see total traffic numbers.
- c22 3mo ago
  If you drive the same route frequently you can definitely figure out which intersections/areas are improperly configured. There's a stretch of road I drive on several times a week where the speed limit was dropped from 40 to 30 a couple years ago, but the lights are all still timed for 40. If you speed you get a sea of green, but if you drive the new speed limit you end up stopping at half the lights.
toast0 3mo ago
I've lived places where stop lights were all scheduled (unless someone was operating it manually), but most of the lights I experience operate dynamically based on sensors (typically in the road or cameras and ped buttons)
ezfe 3mo ago
Most cities I've lived in have these in the US...
SoftTalker 3mo ago
Also, left turn lanes that are too short for the average number of cars wanting to turn left, and left turn signal cycles that are too short to clear the left turn lanes.
jdontillman 3mo ago
I agree. Startup Proposal: Intelligent Traffic Signals https://till.com/articles/smarttraffic https://till.com/articles/smarttraffic

tayo42 3mo ago

They exist. Your city needs to set it up. They can also switch to flashing red lights.

cortesoft 3mo ago

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/277/ https://xkcd.com/277/ Most cities have some intelligence on their traffic lights, and they do have traffic sensors to know where cars are waiting. You might not see any cars and are annoyed waiting at the light, but you don’t know what downstream things they are trying to control for. Maybe if they send you through the light, you are going to join some other traffic event that will cause an issue. It could also just be suboptimal, but it very hard to know just from what you observe as an individal

waterTanuki 3mo ago
I like XKCD but I don't really agree with the underlying premise of this one. When I was in the Netherlands, one of the global gold standards in terms of urban planning and design, I noticed it wasn't only more pleasant as a pedestrian or cyclist, it was more pleasant as a driver as well. Lights were smart and did not sit on red forever if you were the only one waiting at an intersection. This comic suggests there's some "invisible, massively complicated" mesh of signal interactions we can never possibly fathom, and therefore wasting precious hours over the course of our lives sitting at an intersection is the most optimal one. The Dutch have figured this out, why can't North America?
- cortesoft 3mo ago
  I don't think the answer is as simple as "The Dutch have better traffic light engineers" There are a ton of factors that go into traffic and traffic patterns. For one thing, I would be curious to see total traffic numbers.
c22 3mo ago
If you drive the same route frequently you can definitely figure out which intersections/areas are improperly configured. There's a stretch of road I drive on several times a week where the speed limit was dropped from 40 to 30 a couple years ago, but the lights are all still timed for 40. If you speed you get a sea of green, but if you drive the new speed limit you end up stopping at half the lights.

toast0 3mo ago

I've lived places where stop lights were all scheduled (unless someone was operating it manually), but most of the lights I experience operate dynamically based on sensors (typically in the road or cameras and ped buttons)

ezfe 3mo ago

Most cities I've lived in have these in the US...

SoftTalker 3mo ago

Also, left turn lanes that are too short for the average number of cars wanting to turn left, and left turn signal cycles that are too short to clear the left turn lanes.

jdontillman 3mo ago

I agree. Startup Proposal: Intelligent Traffic Signals https://till.com/articles/smarttraffic https://till.com/articles/smarttraffic