Demand traffic lights using a loop sensor that can pick up a car through magnetism are nothing new. They can be a problem for cyclists because many bikes don't have enough metal.
There used to be a traffic light in Ithaca where if you were heading out of town via the South hill you could bypass South Aurora St and instead go up a residential street up a steep hill with very little traffic, hang a left and trigger the light and almost always get the light to turn red in front of the person who was in front of you on the main road.
Note that here they are working via phone apps, so if you are navigating with a local navigation app like Karta GPS, Flitsmeister or Sway, these apps can let the lights know you are heading that way and will be there in X minutes. Therefore this approach is not _really_ car centered and also works for bikes or any alternative form of transportation. If I read between the lines of the article, the system was developed for emergency services first, but is now expanded.
I think it would actually be better if they refuse to integrate with the large apps, and instead use the green activation as a feature to entice people away from those apps.
"We want to be present on the apps that people already use" How can they not see that an app for traffic lights is clearly the wrong approach? Smart traffic lights are working great in many countries without needing an app for them to work.
Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.
This is solving the wrong problem. If a traffic light can turn green at a whim, for any arriving app user, the intersection is not busy enough to have a traffic light. Then the traffic light should be removed or switched off for those times, instead of getting a very expensive (I presume) upgrade. If the intersection is busy enough so that people are waiting on all (or most) stop lines, then simpler traffic density sensors are a better, less invasive, far cheaper, and more privacy-preserving option.
In Melbourne, Australia, a long time ago, they embedded weight sensors in the road for a lot of intersections, so they can react dynamically to traffic conditions.
I live in Berlin, which doesn't have such sensors and it's always frustrating waiting for lights to change when there's no traffic.
I wonder what technology they're using to back this. The Netherlands has a system not too dissimilar to this (seemingly mostly marketed towards bikes) with wide scale deployment in cities: https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFI...
I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong.
Packaging this in app form seems like an excellent way to permit someone to emulate a couple dozen installs, all traveling along the same path, tricking congestion systems into giving them priority over other traffic participants.
I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively.
Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.
Many cities use TPMS monitoring/fingerprinting on highways to gauge traffic levels. Wouldn't be shocked if they started using that for traffic light timings
Do bicyclists and pedestrians really require the use of sensors? There are a lot of paths around me that cross busy roads with traffic signals. We just press a button. It speaks after you press it for visually impaired users and shows a red light after you press it for audibly impaired users.
In Eindhoven, NL, there is a similar system without app. At night traffic lights are red by default, if sensors in the pavement detect an approaching car they turn green in time. If there are no other cars you never have to stop. Great system and has been there for a decade at least.
Surprised by the negativity here. This sort of predictive/automated traffic is a pretty clear win without a corresponding downside. Worst case scenario for all drivers is more or less same as dumb lights with fair bit of time saving potential
250 intersections covered is nothing at all, I'm absolutely not surprised that private companies don't want to dedicate resources to interfacing with such a minuscule system.
They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.
Right. The government facilitates the commercial apps to communicate using the ETSI ITS standards with the traffic lights. For these protocols, lots of privacy discussions have taken place, like using different IDs at every intersection, and even hiding the line number of a bus. This make doing analyses like routing decisions pretty hard using only the public data. But the commercial apps have access to everything...
> these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens.
While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps.
> Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights?
The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights.
> And due to the inherent red-queen arms race
What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation.
Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.
Very glad to hear that. If the apps are made by commercial entities then presumably I get a choice of which one to use, which means in the absence of any artificial barriers I can choose one that respects my privacy (possibly something open-source).
If it were a single, government-made app then there would be no such choice.
I went into the article assuming we were talking about the (illegal) Mobile Infrared Transmitters (MIRTs?) that were something like the phreaker "boxes" (somehow I thought they were called "Chrome boxes" but I can't find a reference now). (I'm pretty sure the U.S. emergency vehicles still have those — for which of course they are legal.)
Here (switzerland) lights turn red on purpose to slow down traffic. The idea is that if you see a green light in the distance, you are motivated to speed up to catch it before it turns red. If it is red in the distance, you slow down because you eventually have to stop, and when you are like 20m from it, detectors will see you and turn it green.
My experience as a cyclist contradicts that: many motorists will still (riskily) overtake you just to reach the red light sooner. Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them. See also: people passing by you on a multi-lane highway and then promptly slowing down once they have returned to your lane...
Sounds like they never heard of Goodhart's law. They rigged a system which measures behavior (distance of approaching vehicle) and tied it to decision making (controlling a traffic light) in order to create an incentive toward a certain desired behavior. That's a prime example of something where people will learn the system and game it to optimize their own advantage instead of the desired behavior.
> A simple example: at night, a main road mainly displays green, the side streets only get green for a very short time. If you arrive with the app from a side street, you can get green immediately, provided there is no traffic on the main road.
In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night! All traffic lights already have yield/stop/priority signs as a fallback, so those take over. The yellow lights on the side street will usually flash as an additional warning so you don't overlook the yield/stop sign.
I remember learning in primary school about 25 years ago about this new-fangled technology where they embed sensors in the road surface that allows the traffic light to change its cycle based on the traffic patterns.
As far as emergency vehicles go, we have had a system in place, around here, for years, where the vehicles have some kind of infrared device that forces the light green.
Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn.
I think there's also a black market for the devices for impatient drivers.
I've been pondering this since the 90's. In my imagination the ultimate form is to have an auction with auto-bidding and minimum bids. If you haven't money you configure the app to collect only with a low minimum bid. When wealthy you have everyone wait for you. For example: From one direction 20 cars are approaching the crossing. Only 1 from the other direction. From the 20 car direction the highest minimum bid is 5 euro. For the single car to get priority they would have to pay 100 euro. The money goes in the other drivers account.
Manual control is also possible. The wait time is displayed on the dash along with the fee. If the fee is below the configured maximum you can press a green button, if there are no higher auto-bids the light will turn green. If there are the fee increases for you to press the button again.
It would finally provide a fun game for people with high testosterone issues so that they can assert their dominance by handing out free money. That you own a fancy car doesn't mean you get to go first, I have more money than you therefore you should wait while watching me cross the crossing. The old lady behind the Bentley also gets 500 euro in her account.
Late at night, at a friends house, and his car died, but I need a ride to my car.
So, we took his motorcycle.
We come up to a street light, and it's not sensing us. So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button, and run back and hop back on. In moments, the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way.
Inevitably, a couple of blocks later, we're in the same boat.
Being too clever by half, I rinse and repeat -- off the bike, hit the WALK button, run back.
This time, the WALK sign turned on, but the light remained red.
47 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 63.9 ms ] threadThere used to be a traffic light in Ithaca where if you were heading out of town via the South hill you could bypass South Aurora St and instead go up a residential street up a steep hill with very little traffic, hang a left and trigger the light and almost always get the light to turn red in front of the person who was in front of you on the main road.
They retimed it so this didn't work anymore.
I live in Berlin, which doesn't have such sensors and it's always frustrating waiting for lights to change when there's no traffic.
I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong.
Packaging this in app form seems like an excellent way to permit someone to emulate a couple dozen installs, all traveling along the same path, tricking congestion systems into giving them priority over other traffic participants.
Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.
They are the products of https://ndrive.com/ , https://www.flitsmeister.nl and https://be-mobile.com/ .
They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.
While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps.
> Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights?
The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights.
> And due to the inherent red-queen arms race
What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation.
Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.
If it were a single, government-made app then there would be no such choice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave
https://www.wired.com/story/99-phones-fake-google-maps-traff...
In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night! All traffic lights already have yield/stop/priority signs as a fallback, so those take over. The yellow lights on the side street will usually flash as an additional warning so you don't overlook the yield/stop sign.
Bit annoying, when you are in a cross street, and you know it's about to turn green, then an ambulance comes by, and it skips your turn.
I think there's also a black market for the devices for impatient drivers.
Manual control is also possible. The wait time is displayed on the dash along with the fee. If the fee is below the configured maximum you can press a green button, if there are no higher auto-bids the light will turn green. If there are the fee increases for you to press the button again.
It would finally provide a fun game for people with high testosterone issues so that they can assert their dominance by handing out free money. That you own a fancy car doesn't mean you get to go first, I have more money than you therefore you should wait while watching me cross the crossing. The old lady behind the Bentley also gets 500 euro in her account.
So, we took his motorcycle.
We come up to a street light, and it's not sensing us. So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button, and run back and hop back on. In moments, the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way.
Inevitably, a couple of blocks later, we're in the same boat.
Being too clever by half, I rinse and repeat -- off the bike, hit the WALK button, run back.
This time, the WALK sign turned on, but the light remained red.
Curses.
We just ran that one.