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The Intelligent Intersection Could Banish Traffic Lights Forever (arstechnica.com)
Jonathan M. Gitlin reports via Ars Technica: With a degree of coordination -- between vehicles, and with traffic infrastructure -- traffic chaos should theoretically be banished, and less congestion means fewer pollutants. Clemson researcher Ali Reza Fayazi has provided a tantalizing glimpse at that future, a proof-of-concept study showing that a fully autonomous four-way traffic intersection is a hundred times more efficient at letting traffic flow than the intersections you and I currently navigate. Because cars don't sit idling at the lights, Fayazi calculated it would also deliver a 19 percent fuel saving. Fayazi designed an intersection controller for a four-way junction that tracks vehicles and then uses an algorithm to control their speeds such that they can all pass safely through the junction with as few coming to a halt as possible. What makes the study particularly interesting is that Fayazi demonstrated it by interspersing his own physical car among the simulated traffic -- the first use of a vehicle-in-the-loop simulator for this kind of problem. Fayazi drove his real car at the International Transportation Innovation Center in Greenville, South Carolina, where a geofenced area was set up to use as the simulated intersection. Using GPS sensors, his car was just as visible to the intersection controller as the virtual autonomous vehicles that were also populating its memory banks. Ideally, Fayazi says he'd like to have tested it with an autonomous vehicle, but they are hard to come by, particularly in South Carolina. Instead, the intersection controller directly governed his speed in the study (as it did with the simulated vehicles), and this controller sent him a speed to maintain in order to safely cross the junction. Over the course of an hour, the intelligent intersection only required 11 vehicles to come to a complete halt. By contrast, when the simulation was run with a traffic light instead, more than 1,100 vehicles had to stop at the junction over the course of an hour.
I've driven a bunch of times lately in Europe and its amazing how long you can go without ever coming across a traffic light.
I don't know how many pedestrians are killed right below the foot bridges here in Latin America, but it's a lot. Good for you if you live in a country where people are educated enough to realize that the foot bridge is there for their safety. Here it's much easier to cut a hole in the fence placed specifically to force people to use the foot bridge, and play Frogger on the highway.
But then again, sidewalks are advanced technology too. You always see people walking in the street right next to the sidewalk. Simply put - civilization only works when people choose to follow the rules.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Aside from the obvious pedestrian issues
Very few pedestrians in most parts of the South where study was done, they probably didn't consider pedestrians. I've found in South Carolina, where sidewalks actually exist they're more for decoration than to be used. They're usually at a 30 degree incline slopping towards the road (and thus much more comfortable to walk on road rather than on the incline) or they just randomly start and stop every few blocks with no continuity, requiring you to walk through tall grass full of ticks (or the road) for half your journey.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
This is probably a bad idea. We know that eventually the roads will be owned by the corporations. The corporations will want to give preferences to businesses that are willing to pay more. Then we have a road neutrality movement. I have enough aggravation supporting net neutrality. Please don't add road neutrality to this list!
No it doesn't.
Large intersection, especially with more than the standard four directions, are the same kinds of size as an equivalent roundabout.
The UK has MUCH less space that the US, I assure you, and we have roundabouts everywhere.
Also, there's this thing called a mini-roundabout, for tiny junctions. It's basically a circle painted in the middle of a four-way intersection. Does the same job, just as effectively.
Even large roundabouts don't require bridges or nonsense, and where they do (e.g. large motorway intersection), you already need ramped sliproads and everything else anyway.
Go look at London. Our roads are tiny, they are surrounded by ancient buildings, the layouts are far from uniform, and there are thousands of roundabouts throughout.
They also require NO INFRASTRUCTURE. No power, no timing, no signals, no monitoring, no more servicing than any plain section of road. You paint a circle in the road, or plant a large circular lawn in a big junction. Done and finished.