Amazing Cutting-Edge Revolutionary Technological Algorithmic Science Invention
Amazing Cutting-Edge Revolutionary Technological Algorithmic Science Invention
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
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.
Also since bikes take up less space more can cross in the same time
Yes, but depending on the locality they may only need to treat it as a stop sign (and can proceed if it’s clear) instead of waiting for a green.
Not always (which I'll mention in a moment) but:
- The trivial point was; car wait times are reduced when there are less cars.
- The main point is; even from a bike perspective its not about stopping/not-stopping, it's about wait time. I have NEVER had so many bikes in front of me that I missed the cross-walk signal and had to wait a whole other red-light cycle. Comparatively I regularly have that happen to me in a car. Idk if its a 30% improvement but its less time waiting at red lights.
- Finally, technically no, bikes don't always have to (legally) wait at red lights. This is only a technicallity but some crosswalks, like several in my town (or the iconic one in Japan), we get the walk signal on red. My town is also unusual by officially allowing bikes on pedestrian paths. So bikes can legally cross on red.
bikes dont have to do anything. bikes arent cars they just pretend to be to muck up traffic
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Yeah I think scribbling out the 30% with a 100% and saying "roundabouts" would make for a pretty good punchline. I figured I'd get complaints about AI being quick and low cost compared to road construction, which is why I ended up going with the "bikes" punchline instead.
Roundabouts are great but it's expensive to convert a crossing to a roundabout, not to mention difficult since the traffic needs to be rerouted during construction. In the most congested areas it's almost impossible, which is ironically where it is needed the most
Additionally (I still love roundabouts) there can be a max-wait-time problem when there is heavy traffic in one direction.
If a basketball game ends there can be 20,000 cars bumper-to-bumper trying to leave. Let's say (looking at a map) they're going left-to-right through an intersection.
If there's 1 car trying to go top-to-bottom...
- If the intersection is a stoplight it doesn't matter. Even if there were 20 million left-to-right cars; it's still a 5 or 10min wait for the top-to-bottom car.
- If the intersection was a stop sign it also doesn't matter; it'll be the left-to-right cars turn then the top-to-bottom cars turn
- At a roundabout though (at least in the US), vehicles entering on the left always take priority over vehicles entering from the bottom. So the top-to-bottom guy could be there all night
Game days on my campus can cause a 2 hour wait on a 1 mile road. My campus is unusual, but just FYI absolutely insane wait times do happen regularly in some cities.
Roundabouts aren't great for bikes. Huge blind spots for cars and drivers aren't clear on the rules.
I'm always extra careful on roundabouts cycling, people just don't notice you.
I think this is a US problem. In europe roundabouts seem much more popular - drivers are aware of the rules and bikes seem to go along fine.
However, roundabouts are only efficient if all connected roads are about equally frequently taken. If one main road and three small connectors are on the same roundabout, the small ones may end up being softlocked.
I like red lights, I just cycle full speed through them while laughing at all those suckers stuck in their gas guzzlers like sheep!
No one mention on how this AI would treat peatons or if they even know they exists at all. Stop measuring traffic by speed and throughput and start measuring safety.
Then roundabouts need to be used instead of red lights.
Bikes also have to stop at traffic lights.
Shh, you're not supposed to tell them that!
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.
So I do reinforcement learning research at my university, and the coworker I sit next to everyday does traffic signal optimization using multi agent reinforcement learning and simulation. (E.g. his reseach is on stuff like this paper)
And we literally agree with you; sensors are THE problem for 90% of the inefficiency. Its rare to even know how many cars pass through in a day, or whether its 1 or 500 cars waiting at a light. However, Google knows (or can approximate), which is partially why they and they alone can get something like 30% improvement.
The other 10% inefficiemcy is coordination stuff though, which can be more difficult than you might think to fix.
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.