How Could Smart Traffic Lights Work?

turns yellow and red again. 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. Even in the year, a year in which the pandemic shutdowns reduced traffic, drivers in the United States experienced slowdowns that added twenty seven hours to their commuting time and increased their fuel costs by

six hundred and five dollars per driver. And that was down considerably from non pandemic years of slowdowns added fifty four hours to commutes in twenty nine. With streets and highways returning to normal traffic density and gasoline costs soaring, this year's numbers are likely to be much higher. There's got to be a better way. Unfortunately, engineering visionaries have been thinking the same thing for years and have developed

a potential answer, smart traffic lights. These 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 prevent log jams from developing. Numerous companies, large and small, are pushing smart traffic light technology ahead.

For the article this episode is based on how Stuff Works, spoke with Carnegie Mellon University research professor Stephen Smith, who began working on the problem back in two thousand nine. That's when a local Pittsburgh business leader approached him with concerns that worsening grid luck might interfere with the city's efforts to transform itself from a smokestack city into a

technology and healthcare hub. A Smith, a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon'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 that have AI capabilities, which can use cameras, radar, or inductive loop detectors in the pavement to spot approaching vehicles and

adjust the signals timing. When Smith installed a few experimental prototypes at intersections in East Liberty, a heavily congested area on Pittsburgh's East End, he immediately got results. Drivers average travel time to get to their destinations decreased by and they spent forty percent less time idling and traffic jams. Since then, Smith's company, called rapid Flow Technologies, has installed its smart traffic management technology in twenty two North American cities.

Smith said, we generate the timing plans in real time, and so we watch the traffic that's approaching the intersection, and then in real time we generate a signal timing plan for moving that traffic through the intersection, and so we're actually scheduling the actual traffic on the road. A 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. Smart traffic lights like these could become even more powerful as increasing numbers of cars and trucks employ connected vehicle technology, which could enable them to communicate both with one another and with infrastructure such

as traffic signals. Instead of smart traffic lights relying upon spotting vehicles as they come in range of cameras, for example, they could 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. Smart traffic signals may even make it safer for cars and trucks to share streets with cyclists, pedestrians, and people using mobility devices such

as scooters. A smart traffic light could have the ability to detect pedestrians at street corners and calculate how much time they'll need to get across an intersection safely. Smith said, if you're moving with a walker or something like that, it knows how long you need to get across the street, so it communicates that to the signal in advance, so that when you do get the green light, you'll be assured to get enough time to cross. Meanwhile, an Israeli

company called No Traffic takes a somewhat different approach. Instead of decentralized smart traffic signals, it provides cities with plug and play Internet of Things sensors for intersections, which include cameras and radar, and combines them with a cloud based virtual management center. The effect is the same though, autonomous optimization of traffic flow for everyone on the road, reducing

emissions and making roads safer. How stuff Works also spoke via email with Vera Resnik, the company's vice president of marketing. He said, we demonstrated how our platform can potentially reduce the number of drivers driving through a red light by an average of almost also by eliminating time wasted and clogged traffic, smart traffic lights could play a significant role

in combating climate change. Study by Juniper Research found that smart traffic management systems could lower global emissions by two twenty six million tons by However, although the idea of adaptive signal control systems is gaining traction in the United States, it's still far from being universally accepted and implemented. Part

of the reason maybe the cost. According to the U S Department of Transportation, the cost of deploying certain intelligent transportation systems technologies is upward of twenty thousand dollars per intersection, and the numbers for these systems vary widely depending on location and any intersect and remodels or upgrades that might

be necessary. As Smith thinks it will take a couple of decades for this technology to become the norm, and even that could be a generous estimate and depending on how companies and municipalities alike are able and willing to adopt the technology and cooperate with each other. Today's episode is based on the article going Nowhere Fast Smart traffic lights can help ease gridlock on how stuff works dot com,

written by Patrick J. Keiger. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen into your favorite shows.