cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5292633
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The original was posted on /r/science by /u/calliope_kekule on 2025-03-01 05:53:17+00:00.
Wait until it learns that lanes can be turned into dedicated tram corridors.
Wait until they run the numbers on carbon emissions of stop signs vs. sensible yielding laws.
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.
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.
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.
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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!
Oh God no
“big data” is not generative AI. They’re different things. Just in case anyone read that as “AI fixes things”.
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!
one intersection influences others down the line,
And gets data from them, in the form of how and when cars arrive, and that’s all you need, at that point it’s a simple problem: When an individual traffic light regulates local traffic optimally based on that local information, then it does not cause undue problems for other traffic lights. Evolution does decentralised factory shop-floor planning just fine with just local information (have a look of how the genome assembles itself into bodies), and traffic flow is vastly less complex. “Acting on local information” does not mean “blind to global concerns”, that local information includes what’s necessary to know about the global situation. You can have every traffic light talk to the one down/upstream ("I’m seeing this many cars from you, I send you this many cars) but that’s just another way to do the local sensors.
Traffic routing can make use of global information, but we were talking about deciding the length of light phases, not figuring out where to build a metro line, narrow a street, whatnot.
this completely ignores larger traffic patterns like arterial roads.
with your idea you are guaranteed to get massive gridlock all along the major roads.
and biochemical assembly of proteins has just about nothing to do with either shop-floor-planning or traffic regulation.
what you are suggesting IS better than simple timers!
but it is NOT better than central coordination.
you are seriously underestimating the complexity of the problem, and your “all you need to do…” bs only shows how little you understand of the underlying issues.
do you really think nobody else has thought of what you’re proposing?
of course people have thought of this approach. it doesn’t work.
this completely ignores larger traffic patterns like arterial roads.
with your idea you are guaranteed to get massive gridlock all along the major roads.
How. Seriously. Show me an adaptive traffic light dumb enough to cause gridlock. Not to mention that gridlock and having arterials, road hierarchies in general, are kinda incompatible with each other and most of the world doesn’t use grids in the first place.
And it’s not like we don’t have central control over here – it’s that all the information necessary to make decisions for a single traffic light is available right there, at the traffic light, because it is impossible to have traffic (or the absence thereof) and that not carrying the necessary information. Roads are wires, so to speak. Central control could make those decisions, but as local information suffices, why would it, regarding traffic lights it’s generally only monitoring. Central control can override things, things like ambulances influence traffic lights in a non-local manner (which is a luxury problem because they are allowed to cross on red anyway), but for basic operation central control could vanish and you wouldn’t see a difference, when a light loses connection but not power it just keeps on operating. Things like information systems telling people where to park need non-local control because they need non-local information.
wow, no.
none of what you said is actually true.
- “gridlock” happens in non-grid layouts too, the english name is just taken from american road patterns.
- “show me…” no. YOU made a claim (that local information suffices, which is a VERY bold claim), so it’s on you to prove that local information suffices.
- roads are absolutely NOT “like wires”; they are like pipes. which is why civil engineers commonly use fluid dynamics to simulate traffic.
- the rest of what you said is irrelevant to everything else.
seriously, if you make a claim contradicting both the very premise of the post, and common knowledge on the topic, then at least provide a source for that claim, lr explain WHY you think your claim is true.
“all the information is there” is not enough information to verify the claim; it’s a wild guess without evidence to back it up.
if shit where THAT simple, we’d have it figured out 50 years ago… it’s almost like this isn’t the simple problem you desperately want it to be…
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 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 think it’s often the opposite, a traffic circle is much less intelligent but quite effective at increasing traffic flow. We can’t put them everywhere, but we should put them in more places.
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.
how would that even work, if there’s no indication that driving too fast was the reason for the red light?
do these actually include some sort of screen that tells the driver they were too fast and that’s why the light turned red?
I’d imagine that this “feature” would only result in more frustration, and thus more speeding, instead of less.
They will truly do anything not to admit the problem is cars
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.
Doesn’t go against my comment at all.
Like they said, it could lead to more people driving. Not only are they uncertain, is it likely to be by an amount that would be more than the emissions saved?
Let’s look at this from another angle. What do you think we should do? Every government on Earth suddenly decides to destroy every car on the planet within the next few months?
Like I said, cars will continue to exist for a while. It makes no sense to put your hands up and say “well, cars are bad. But if they can’t be eliminated completely then we shouldn’t attempt to reduce vehicle emissions at all”.
This change is a good one. I’ve said it already, but you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good.
It makes no sense to put your hands up and say "well, cars are bad.
Nobody is doing that. We’re saying “cars are bad, let’s put money and effort to alternatives so people use less cars”. Putting effort into squeezing more cars on the roads is literally the opposite of that goal. This change, like many other one-more-line-bro changes might look cool, but will make situation worse, if the change will even happen at all.
Yes, if the induced demand results in similar levels of congestion - which it very often does - there would be more emissions in the end.
And you’re right, cars will exist for the forseeable future. I do not however want the government subsidizing car dependency since it is destructive to the environment and to everyone’s health and safety.
A couple of possibilities to drastically reduce traffic:
- turn all multi-lane streets within cities into single-lane streets for cars with exclusive bus and bike lanes to treat all forms of traffic equally
- reduce all inner-city speed limits to 30 km/h to reduce car noise, emissions and increase pedestrian safety
- traffic lights should prefer public transit, pedestrians and bicyclists instead of cars
- stop subsidizing parking spaces for cars with city money and drastically reduce on-street parking as cars take away massive amounts of space
- put toll roads onto highways as their cost is massively higher compared to fuel taxes. After all, trains have to pay a costly fee to use train tracks already - why should cars have this privilege?
There’s a lot more I could write here but you get the gist. Making car traffic more efficient does not reduce emissions in the long term in the slightest. Making car traffic less efficient reduces emissions instead because people will not use cars as frequently.
And keep in mind, I’m not talking about Bumfuck Nowhere (population: 725) when mentioning public transit. Cities have insane amounts of car traffic which can be massively reduced with just a couple of decisions. This would make car traffic less efficient as right now it enjoys many privileges over other forms of transportation.
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.
It‘s even worse. You need mass surveillance and strip away human rights to do it the way China does it. And I am sorry, but that‘s not worth it. There are countless better ways to deal with climate change because in the end of the day it‘s still a self serving mission for the most part.
Which human right does this strip away?
Privacy obviously. They collect everything about their citizens and use it in every system. They‘re not some super advanced country that simply does tech better than everyone else, they just hoard more data than anyone and use it carelessly everywhere.
Your take is that changing traffic management is a violation of human rights?
Your bad faith argument aside, they absolutely do use technology that violates human rights and integrate it in this system. Think about why smart cities are controversial and amp it up to 11. That‘s China managing their population. Point systems that prevent you from air travel or entering other provinces because you dared criticize the almighty government do violate the basic human right of free speech and control traffic at the same time.
Point systems that prevent you from air travel or entering other provinces because you dared criticize the almighty government
That’s… just not real… Your understanding of Chinese policy comes from curated western sources with vested interests in putting a dystopian and totalitarian understanding of China and its government in our countries’ people (we’re both westerners). There are systems in place to prevent certain convicted criminals from freely moving around there country, but that has little to do with criticising the party.
Regardless, big data on traffic doesn’t imply knowledge about the particular vehicles and drivers inside said vehicles. You’re just going ahead and assuming “dystopian control of people” because it’s China.
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.
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.
Honestly I’ve seen round abouts in the US and while I totally think their more efficient and causes less wrecks statistically. People are fucking idiots. Everyone complains and thinks their worse and hate them to hell and back. No amount of facts or convincing will change their minds. It’s insanity. People are so resistant to change it’d incredible the mountain out if a mole hill they will make it out to be.
It doesn’t help that we use them poorly. We have one between a stoplight and a shopping area, and it always gets backed up. They’re never in high traffic areas, so drivers never get used to them. I want to replace highway intersections with traffic circles instead of putting them in random neighborhoods.
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?
Look for a square or an X (or a square with an X in it) right Infront of the stop line for the lights. If it’s there, that detects a car waiting.
There may be more of them further up the road to detect more cars waiting/arriving.
They are basically using big loops of wire to detect cars through magmatism.
They tend not to detect cyclists, so I often have to move to the side and wave cars forward so lights on side streets will change.
Sensors are cheap and have been around for a long time, but I’m going to guess the number one reason is the small part. Fewer cars = less traffic.
I’ve actually watched a city I visit regularly grow over about 20 years and it went from them having zero traffic to Los Angeles style traffic jams. This is despite their best efforts like making extra wide roads, using roundabouts, etc.
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.
Oh so I don‘t have to worry about China‘s increasing emissions output because they use unhinged mass surveillance and terror against the people to put a band-aid on it. Cool…
Doesn’t China emit like half the amount of carbon per capita compared to the US?
China has a very large capita.
What’s your solution to that
China already “solved” it with the one child policy. They will have the most massive population decline ever in the coming decades. It will probably destroy their economy.
It’s not that there should be a solution per se, more that it impacts their emissions per capita. When person density goes up average per person emissions go down, simple as.
Yes, and they are by far the best in green energy
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-record-surge-of-clean-energy-in-2024-halts-chinas-co2-rise/ And it would be even worse for the US and others if they would produce all the stuff they out now outsource to China.
It’s a typical Chinophobe ‘at what cost’ commenter.
There is literally nothing they can do right.One issue with that is China is still a heavily bike and moped driven country. The issue is when more of their population is able to afford cars. So they could still “catch up”.
I would be happy for sensors at traffic lights that detect whether cars are there or not. I don’t consider that to be meaningful surveillance.
But they already have sensors. That‘s not what China differentiates from the rest here.
Did you read the article? Standard traffic cameras or sensors are all you need to implement this. And yes, most places have the technology already in place to do most of it. You just need to add the part to network them and control the lights.
Of course there has to be a sore loser China bad commenter with some made up BS
I am used to tankies on Lemmy but man, if you say China isn‘t an Orwellian surveillance state you‘re just lying through your teeth.
I expect nothing better from someone who uses the word tankie and parrots western propaganda.
I bet you also use “+100 social credits” and been told about this imaginary spying system. Show me proof of this “Orwellian surveillance state”.I know the land Orwell comes from has the most survaillance ameras in the world per capita and nice facial recognition vans driving around and parked in front of stations.
and if you’re a germ you shouldn’t really be talking.
Always on the wrong side of history.
Try protesting genocide and see if you won’t get violently beat up.
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.
