Slashdot Mirror
Self-Adapting Traffic Lights
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you're like me, I bet you hate moments when you're in a hurry and all the traffic lights seem to intentionally switch to red just in front of your car. Now, according to Nature, a Belgian traffic researcher thinks that traffic lights that respond to local conditions could ease congestion and reduce your frustration. His method would not give you the individual power to switch the light to green. But if you were part of a group of cars approaching a red light, inexpensive traffic-flow sensors would detect your group in advance and turn the light to green. His simulations show that such adaptive traffic control is 30% more efficient than traditional ways of regulating traffic. However, his system has not been adopted by any large city. So you'll continue to be frustrated by these ?%&$! traffic lights for a while. You'll find more details and references in this overview."
Don't lights like these exist already? We have lights that change for you in southern Wisconsin. They do force you to slow down a little as you approach the light.
Visit BobtheKing.com it's perhaps the best thing I've ever made to waste your time with.
Are you sure they are weight sensors? I was under the belief that those sensors worked on the principle of induction. They send a magnetic field up through the pavement, which induces a current in any metal vehicle above. That induced current, in turn, creates a magnetic field which is sent back down through the pavement to the sensor. Works in any temperature and will even dedict lightweight objects like motorcycles.
Now I just need one that will recognize my motorcycle at 2am when no cars are around to tigger the lights for me.
I ride a supersport Yamaha YZF-R6. Weighs about 410 wet and I have problems triggering many stop lights, so much so that I have areas I don't ride when traffic is light because they never turn green for me.
You seem to be under the impression that city engineers (and their political bosses) would implement this if they thought it worked
Yes, from experience I can tell you that these people do not like traffic congestions and go to great length to reduce them, regardless of what any individual driver may think when he's sitting in his car and goes through a "red wave" (a set of consecutive road lights designed specifically to reduce speed [that may just be a french term tho]). Slower traffic here may mean smoother traffic there.
Of course that only applies to the people I've worked with, so granted, I'm generalizing.
Hey look over there, it's Mount Gullible! Seriously, that's an urban legend. In some places emergency vehicles use IR (read: not visible light) strobes to activate sensors on the traffic lights but that is the exception, not the rule. If you could somehow flash your high-beams with millisecond accuracy then you might be able to activate some of the sensors. I don't think most incandescent lights can turn on or off quickly enough to signal properly anyway. Finally, whenever the preemption signal is activated a (visible) light on the traffic light flashes. So you're most likely not activating anything. The light changes on its own, just like it does when you press the button to use the crosswalk at most intersections or when you press the close door button on elevators. 95% of the time, those buttons do nothing. 99.9% of the time (there is probably one random traffic light somewhere that changes because light flashes) flashing your brights will do nothing.
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Try lining up your bike tires with one of the edges of the sensor when you pull up. Once I learned to do this I was able to reliably trip the sensor and get the light to change.
The sensors work off of magnetic induction (like a metal detector) and your bike just doesn't have that much metal to be detected. Positioning yourself along the edge of the road's sensor should trigger the light.
In order for induction to work, you would have to have a large quantity of metal in your finger.
So unless you're Wolverine, you're probably out of luck.
I learned in my motorcycle safety class that if you extend your kickstand at a redlight it is more likely to trip the sensor.
Get up off your ass and raise up your glass!
My current bike won't engage the solenoid if the bike is already running. I don't have to shutoff the bike first. I just press the start button real quick and the light turns green. Since most lights are switching to camera sensors this isn't as useful now. Flash the lights a couple of times and the camera will pick it up as motion.
Well, they have the capability to detect motorcycles and bicycles, but often the street dept. lowers the sensitivity to the point that only vehicles larger than a small car are detected. This is well documented on many motorcycle discussion boards.
N redlitelaw/
Motorcyclists in Tennessee can legally run red lights because of this
http://www.motorcyclecruiser.com/newsandupdates/T
The fact that more people are running lights couldn't possibly be the fault of the drivers could it?
Any camera system i've encountered will not flash unless your car is crossing the stop line when the light is red. If you are going the speed limit you should have no trouble making that stop safely. If you are in the intersection or on top of it when the light turns yellow you have nothing to worry about
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
The bike doesn't have to be ferrous. It just has to conduct electicity. Aluminum is actually better than iron for tripping a road sensor.
The trouble with bikes is their geometry. The bike's shape offers little capacitance for current flowing perpendicular to the wheels, so only a little bit of induced current flows before an electrostatic field builds up to counter the induced emf.
Even if the bike was made of plastic and bubblegum you can always trigger the detector if you kill your ignition and then re-start the bike. The windings in the starter motor create a significant electromagnetic disturbance when cranking the engine.
Many of the cities in Oregon have smaller sized inductive loops placed in the bike lanes. Typically, they're around 18 inches in diameter, and they have no problems detecting the presence of bicycles.
"a Belgian traffic researcher thinks that traffic lights that respond to local conditions could ease congestion and reduce your frustration. His method would not give you the individual power to switch the light to green. But if you were part of a group of cars approaching a red light, inexpensive traffic-flow sensors would detect your group in advance and turn the light to green. However, his system has not been adopted by any large city."
I am a traffic engineer, and traffic lights similar to what this Belgian traffic researcher describes already exist. They are called "actuated signals." They work as follows: Loops (not weight sensors, but magnetic loops) are placed in the roadway approx. 300 meters before the traffic light, then 200m, 100m, 50m and 10m. When the light is green for this path, every time a car drives over a loop(assume 300m loop), the green light time is extended long enough for the car to reach the next loop (200m), and so on and so forth until it reaches the 10m loop, where the green light is extended long enough for the car to travel safely through the intersection. Now, if the 300m loop is not reactivated every 3 seconds, the light "times-out" and will turn red once all vehicles have passed through the intersection safely (so if a vehicle is on the 100m loop, the light doesn't just turn red). Additionally, the light has a maximum green cycle time (sum of green and yellow light time), typically 58 seconds. So, if there is a never-ending stream of cars, the light doesn't remain green forever. I hope this clears things up a bit. Also, actuated signals are intended for minor arterials (major collector streets), not for principal arterials (expressways and large intersections).
"His method would not give you the individual power to switch the light to green."
Actuated signals do give you the individual power to switch the light to green.
Sydney has had this for the over 20 years.
Around 2500 of the intersections in Sydney are linked together and they "marry" and "divorce" each other based on live statistical data as cars flow through the intersections.
It's a self-calibrating system. It has been exported to many countries.
The local intersection controllers measure traffic flows and adjust timings locally and also are linked to regional controllers that share statistics for an area and these regional controllers are all linked to the central monitoring facility in the city.
Google on the Sydney Co-ordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS)
e.g. http://www.traffic-tech.com/pdf/scatsbrochure.pdf
We actually take citizen complaints of this nature seriously, regardless of if it's someone driving a car or a bicycle. As I nentioned earlier, the only thing is that work load dictates how soon we might be able to address the complaint. We *have* to respond, and document our findings in every instance.