A smart traffic light can have the ability to detect pedestrians at street corners and calculate how much time they need to get across an intersection safely. Smart traffic signals may even make it safer to have complete streets, in which cars and truck share streets with cyclists, pedestrians and people using mobility devices such as scooters. But Smith thinks it will take a couple of decades for that to become the norm. Instead of relying upon spotting vehicles as they come in range of cameras, for example, smart traffic lights will be able to make decisions based on messages that they're receiving from the cars about their location and direction, or even their entire planned route in advance. "If you imagine a future where all vehicles are connected, or all travelers are connected, then that's going to be transformational for traffic signal control," Smith says. Such smart traffic lights will become even more powerful as increasing numbers of cars and trucks employ connected vehicle technology, which enables them to communicate both with one another and with infrastructure such as traffic signals. "Once an intersection builds up a timing plan, and starts to execute it, it will send to its downstream neighbors, for example, what traffic it expects to be sending their way according to its schedule," Smith says. Smart traffic signals also can share their traffic plans with other signals along the route. So, we're actually scheduling the actual traffic on the road." And then in real time, we generate a signal timing plan for moving that traffic through the intersection. "So, we watch the traffic that's approaching the intersection. Unlike some other smart traffic systems, which update the timing of lights every few minutes based on recent traffic, "We generate the timing plans in real time," Smith explains. Smith, a faculty member at CMU's Robotics Institute who studies the use of artificial intelligence to coordinate large systems in transportation, manufacturing and other fields, developed traffic signals equipped with individual computers and software with AI capabilities, which can use cameras, radar or inductive loop detectors in the pavement to spot approaching vehicles and adjust their timing. In Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) research professor Stephen Smith began working on the problem back in 2009, when a local business leader approached him with concerns that worsening gridlock might interfere with Pittsburgh's efforts to transform itself from a smokestack city into a technology and health care hub. Numerous companies large and small are pushing smart traffic light technology ahead. They monitor incoming traffic and continuously adjust their timing to keep vehicles flowing as smoothly as possible, communicating with other lights along routes and working together to keep logjams from developing. There's got to be a better way, right? Fortunately, engineering visionaries have been thinking the same thing for years and have developed an answer: "smart" traffic lights. With streets and highways returning to normal traffic density and gasoline costs soaring, this year's numbers are likely to be much higher. Yep, road rage is real and the frustration seems to be mounting every day.Įven in 2020, a year in which the pandemic shutdowns reduced traffic, drivers experienced slowdowns that added 27 hours to their commuting time (down considerably from non-pandemic years - 38 hours in 2000 and 54 in 2019) and increased their fuel costs by $605 apiece, according to a study released by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Once it's finally your turn to get across the intersection, you may only get to roll a few hundred yards before you're confronted by another light about to turn red. You wait for what seems like forever until the red turns to green and the cars and trucks slowly start to move through the intersection, and then you grind to a halt again when the light turns yellow and then red. If you're a driver in a city or suburban area, it's likely that you've experienced the frustrating experience of being stuck in a long line of vehicles at a traffic light. Smart traffic lights can untangle the snarl of pedestrians, cars, bicycles, wheelchairs and baby strollers that cause so much of the congestion and gridlock in major cities.
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