I saw a good article on c/upliftingnews about AI improving traffic signal controllers. It’s good and all, I just can’t help but think of the “look at what they need to have a fraction of our power” meme while reading it
Improving traffic lights doesn’t require AI, you just need sensors and some basic code to respond accordingly.
Most lights in the us run on a cycle without accounting for traffic at all. Most don’t even take into account the time of day.
Car dependent design is bad. But the us can’t even do car dependency well. You have to constantly wait at a light to leave the intersection clear for no one.
The solution is not AI the solution is having people responsible who care at least somewhat.
outside the rush hours that is true.
in the rush hours it gets tricky because of effects like a light turning green, but traffic being jammed from a red light before. For these you need a network model and it is crazy complicated to adequately model and optimise even just a small street network.
So yeah, best solution is to reduce car traffic as a whole.
That’s why you take into account the traffic lights/intersections ahead as well. Works fine over here in NL.
what is ahead? for that you need to find out which are the main routes people take. But you also cant just give the dominant route alle the passage, because the other routes are important too. With that you get a complex network you need to optimise, where a central control uses the sensor input from the individual lights, but local contral is not sufficent.
And this is what the original comment stated, with his colleagues using reinforcement learning as one possible approach.
Aren’t bikes also required to stop at red lights?
Yes, but you don’t need lights if there are only bikes. Lights are there to prevent heavy vehicles from colliding. If there are no heavy vehicles, then the lights aren’t needed.
So you’re ok with getting hit by another bike (or several) when you go through an intersection.
Unless you live in a small town, if everyone used bikes, city centre intersections would be mostly mountains of crashed bikes and people trying to get out of that mess while more bikes continue to pile on.
All green on a large car intersection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIqCei97M74
Intersection designed for bikes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQrKP9a0XE
People on bikes naturally avoid and communicate with each other non-verbally.
I couldn’t watch the first video, all I see is an ad. The second video is not an intersection.
That said, a roundabout does solve the issue, both for cars and bicycles.
Just reload and watch the video. Humans evolved for that speed, which is the reason we don’t need traffic lights to avoid people bouncing into each other in busy pedestrian areas. The same translates well for bicycles.
Only once we start putting tons of metal around us, allow for super fast acceleration, and isolate ourselves from our surroundings by blocking view and and sounds, this becomes an issue.
So you’re saying bikes going at 30 km/h are the same as people walking. Got it.
The average speed of bicycles is roughly 20 km/h:
The average travelling speed in Copenhagen is 15.5 km/h for cyclists and 27 km/hour for cars. In places with green wave for cyclist the average speed is 20.72 km/h.
