Self-Adapting Traffic Lights

Could a new generation of traffic lights respond to conditions to ease congestion?

1 minute read

December 19, 2004, 1:00 PM PST

By Chris Steins @planetizen


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.

"Gershenson finds that, in his simulations, adaptive request control is the most efficient for low traffic densities, but works poorly for dense traffic. Adaptive phase control also works well at low densities, and doesn't clog up at high densities either; so on average, it is the best method overall. Both schemes are typically around 30% more efficient than the non-adaptive ones."

Thanks to Slashdot

Friday, December 3, 2004 in Nature

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