Wait until it learns that lanes can be turned into dedicated tram corridors.
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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Wait until they run the numbers on carbon emissions of stop signs vs. sensible yielding laws.
Yup. Most European countries barely use stop signs as opposed to the US.
"big data" is not generative AI. They're different things. Just in case anyone read that as "AI fixes things".
It's a confusing situation, because big data is what it sounds like. Large amounts of data on actual events. But it doesn't mean they didn't use AI to help interpret the data, or to come up with the adaptive traffic signaling.
It's weird cause technically adaptive traffic patterns are trained using tools like reinforcement learning, which is technically AI, however it's the broad term AI and not GenAI.
I mean, this is also an area where neural networks will improve things. Neural networks are excellent for optimizing data with an extremely large amount of input variables, as is the case here. You don't need language models, you don't need to steal all the content on the internet for training. You have analysis tools that will easily validate any solution, so you're not going to deal with mystery hallucinations.
It's not an extremely large amount of data at all, you can get perfect efficiency by having lights act on completely local, real-time, sensor data, as in "how many cars are in which direction". AI is useful to recognise who wants to use the light but that's the end of it. You don't need to predict traffic patters as you don't need them to see what's the state of the streets right now, worse, such predictions are a source of BS. Lots of patterns happen all the time that have no precedence as construction sites shift, sportsball games get cancelled or not, whatnot.
I'm extremely sceptical about local data being enough to properly guide traffic...
the problem is that intersections are connected.
one intersection influences others down the line, wether that is by keeping back too much traffic, thereby unnecessarily restricting flow, or by letting too much traffic flow, thus creating blockages.
you need a big picture approach, and you need historical data to estimate flow on any given day.
neither can be done with local data.
could you (slightly) improve traffic by using local traffic flow to determine signals? probably, sure.
but in large systems, on metropolitan scales, that will inevitably lead to unforseen consequences that will probably probe impossible to solve with local solutions or will need to be handles by hard coded rules (think something like "on friday this light needs to be green for 30 sec and red for 15 sec, from 8-17h, except on holidays") which just introduces insane amounts of maintenance...
source: i used to do analysis on factory shop-floor-planning, which involves simulation of mathematically identical problems.
things like assembly of parts that are dependant on other parts, all of which have different assembly speeds and locations, thus travel times, throughout the process. it gets incredibly complex, incredibly quickly, but it's a lot of fun to solve, despite being math heavy! one exercise we did at uni, was re-creating the master's thesis of my professor, which was about finding the optimal locations for snow plow depots containing road salt for an entire province, so, yeah, traffic analysis is largely the same thing math-wise, with a bit of added complexity due to human behavior.
i can say, with certainty, that the data of just the local situation at any given node is not sufficient to optimize the entire system.
you are right about real-time data being important to account for things like construction. that is actually a problem, but has little to do with the local data approach you suggested and can't be solved by that local data approach either... it's actually (probably) easier to solve with the big data approach!
Why does it often seem like only China is using modern tech to make real quality of life improvements? It's the opposite of the US. Seems like that same modern tech is making everything a bit worse day after day.
They have more catch-up to do. The US already does things like traffic control, but they have a different goal: they want drivers to feel like they're making progress instead of actually improving things.
For example, we put traffic signals everywhere instead of teaching people to use traffic circles. Why? Drivers like to drive fast and would rather stop than slow down. Traffic circles improve flow, but they do reduce average speed, whereas traffic lights decrease flow and increase average speed. It's stupid, but we're entitled jerks who like to show off at signals.
but they have a different goal: they want drivers to feel like they're making progress instead of actually improving things.
Sorry but I want a source for that claim.
That was a bit tongue in cheek, but my point is that we're ignoring an obvious solution due to inertia. Here's a short video by John Stossel interviewing the mayor of Carmel, Indiana, which converted to roundabouts, and here's a longer CNBC video about them as well. That second video is interesting because it shows that roundabouts started here in the US, but fell out of favor when salespeople pitched signals as cities electrified.
Here's a video that's a bit more critical, and the main argument against roundabouts is they're expensive and disruptive to put in. That's true, but it doesn't explain why new signal-based intersections are put in.
Politicians will take the lowest fiction solution to keep their positions. Switching to roundabouts is a large political risk, even if it's backed by science. People hate change, and roundabouts are annoying to get used to.
More and more countries are using mass surveillance to control the population so China might not be the only ones using it to deal with traffic at all.
Take a look at the USA government right now. 😜
But ya you're right, anyone could have been doing this for a long time. I guess it's just politics.
You wanna reduce traffic times with these better lights? Think of all the billions of dollars lost to advertisers since people won't be forced to look at their ads now while waiting!
They will truly do anything not to admit the problem is cars
Exactly all this does is create more road capacity which will inevitably lead to more cars and then increased congestion.
This is the big data equivalent of “one more lane”.
China has more public transit of every type than the rest of the world combined at this point, and most of their cities are quite pedestrian centric.
Cars are a luxury outside the rural areas, and they're a problem, but this is unrelated to that.
No they aren't. They're saying smarter traffic systems are an improvement over what we have now. I've looked in the article and nowhere do they say cars aren't a problem, or that emissions is down to traffic lights not cars.
I see so many examples on here and on Reddit of people letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Whether we like it or not, cars will be around for a while. It makes no sense to put zero effort into improving efficiency in the meantime. You don't have to be so all-or-nothing.
Yes, and such intelligent systems can also optimize for pedestrian traffic, reducing the time waiting for a walk light, monitor bike lane usage, track dangerous intersections, improve emergency response times, prioritize buses and trams, etc. It's good for people to be gathering this data and trying to make things better.
Yes, and such intelligent systems can also optimize for pedestrian traffic,
In the US, these types of "intelligent" systems almost always degrade pedestrian traffic quite severely.
And next year the congestion will be the same as before, except with even more cars and even more emissions.
This is equivalent to building another lane on a highway to increase throughput and decrease traffic jams. In the beginning, emissions will be reduced since traffic jams occur less frequently. And then, through induced demand, there's congestion again.
Improving car throughput directly leads to increased emissions with a small delay.
From the paper:
Increased speeds from adaptive signals may induce additional travel, as people opt to drive more or travel farther, potentially offsetting some congestion benefits. Our models do not fully capture induced demand due to data limitations, but adaptive signaling generally supports higher traffic volumes and smoother flows.
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It's infuriating when a light turns red while only a few of the cars have gone though, makes sense a more intelligent algorithm would be more efficient.
I pass like 15 lights on my commute and the amount of time standing still for NO REASON is absolutely infuriating. How much could it possibly cost to add a simple sensor? No cars coming from the sides? Light stays green! But no, it's all just dumb timers instead...
Interestingly, some lights are set up to deliberately slow down speeders. If you are above the speed limit, they turn red, just to slow things back down. Unfortunately, most of the people involved never put cause and effect together.
What annoys me is the road to work in the morning actually seems to do the opposite. It’s a 35 or 40mph road, but if you do 40 you’re not gonna make it through without stopping. But if you do 50-60? No stops.
Once again though people don’t pick up on this.
Maybe they could just try a roundabout? Or even better... Ditching the dead end of car dependency for free public transport?
Because phony "AI" is here to save capital, not the planet.
The article mentions specific deterministic algorithms so I don’t think it’s AI in the way youre thinking.
In Switzerland we have sensors in the streets at most crossings. And behind it I assume, is a determinate algorithm whoch decides who has green for how long. This mainly is done to avoid the backing up of one crossing into another.
In my little Southern US town the lights seems to work logically and traffic flows nicely, noticeably so. I'm never sitting at a light screaming, "Oh FFS turn!" or "Why did that light change and there are no cars?!"
Traffic only gets a bit thick on the main road in late afternoons. Not much to be done there, it's a major east-west thoroughfare connecting several towns.
Have no idea how they're doing this. Sensors I'm guessing? Seems like we're too poor for fancy civil engineering like that and I'm sure we can't afford what the article talks about.
Anyone know how that might work?
Sensors on a main road and well set timers after a few months of data can do wonders and be extremely low cost, but it requires some upfront spending and enough public will to put up with bad traffic until everything is tuned.
See, this is a reasonable use of horrible dystopian technology.
It doesn't excuse the rest of it, though.
What's horrible about traffic signal optimization algorithms? This isn't GenAI, just an algorithm that looks at traffic patterns and optimizes signals to improve flow. There's nothing dystopian about that.
The horrible and dystopian part for the comment above yours is the fact that it happens in China, which is ontologically bad and oppressive
Wait, China is technology? TIL.
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