Autoblog

Hey Bert, where exactly are those lights in Montreal?
I travel Park Ave on a daily basis and curse the city engineers who timed those damn lights...every time one turns green...the one ahead turns yellow...then, guess what...RED..those morons!!!!

They have no clue about efficiency and energy consumption...I bet Petro Canada and the local Canadian Tire garage shops send them gift baskets for all the business they sent their way...

And don't get my started about road repairs....lol

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Perry, you will find them up-and-down the main boulevard in TMR (Town of Mount Royal) for those non-locals out there. I think there are also a few in St-Michel on (ex. Lacordaire, Viau, above the Met.)

But there are far far far too few of them.

The issue with setting the timing correctly is not one of ineptitude, though our city counselors are surely able to be inept enough, it's a question of generating revenue from people who drive a bit too fast, trying to get through the light or thouse who are a bit slower and will blow through the light.

One case in point, On Henri-Bourassa, right around Lacordaire, there are two sets of lights setup of an off-set sort of intersection (see below). You can get in to a situation where you legally go through a green light on the first light, but run a yellow/red on the next light, 500 feet down the road. Cities use speeding, red-light-running, parking, etc. fines as a source of income. They don't see it as a means to deter people.

Some cities are now complaining and altering their red-light camera policies because it is costing them more money to install and maintain or rent the cameras that the revenue they generate. People know that at the intersection of Main and Church there is a camera, so they don't run the light anymore.


http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=henri-bourassa&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=43.578243,59.0625&ie=UTF8&ll=45.605256,-73.624041&spn=0.002361,0.003605&t=h&z=18

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stop and go driving reduces fuel efficiency.

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tbcolby-

agreed. totally +1.

"couldn't this be considered a green technology too?"

No, because the people who gave themselves the authority to decide for you what is "green" and what isn't are the same people who scorn you and yours for both driving your Audi and for enjoying it.

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To me, it sounds like this system can actually measure how "stale" a green light is, and let you know whether it's worth it to floor it, or if you're not going to make it anyway.

Your brain (as far as I know) can only really tell you that a light has just turned yellow, and by then (if you're close to the intersection) it's usually too late to do anything but slam on the brakes or gun it and risk running a red. I think that's exactly what this is trying to eliminate.

Personally, I think the lower-hanging fruit would be in reducing stoplight idling time and unnecessary stops (such as when you come to a red and there's nobody around). I've always thought that motion detectors could cheaply solve that problem - if there's motion coming from one direction and not the cross-street, flip on the green and let the car(s) through. "Dumb" timers and the bulky ground sensors that can't do anything until vehicles have *already* stopped at the light anyway seem to be getting very old.

The push toward hybrids and start-stop technology will solve a good portion of this problem, but will still sacrifice a minor amount of fuel efficiency, brake wear, lost time, and efficient traffic flow.

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Ah, but I can see into the future! lol, of course, I can't tell how stale a green is, but I can look at other clues- how much traffic is stacked on the cross streets? What is the crosswalk for my direction of travel doing? The best is when there's a timer for peds, that's (obviously) a dead giveaway. I guess the point is I'd rather be thinking of it myself than listening to my car telling me what to do. Keeps you awake, and the mental activity isn't a bad thing on the morning commute.

And I think the traffic lights with the ground sensors can tell if a car is there and it's moving, as they just detect magnetic interference. It doesn't matter if you're going 60 or 0, your chassis will still interfere. As far as I know, of course.

In any case, point taken, and while it's a cool system, I'll pass on it. Cars already look in my blind spot, ahead of me, behind me, and now they know when the light will turn? What driving is left for the person behind the wheel?

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mostly @Bungle, but everybody-

Very good points. I see that this story is not just about innovative Audi technology but about how the price of fuel is pushing us all to reconsider everything, including nothing less than civil engineering, also called city planning. Great discussion idea.

A big smart idea is the humble roundabout. The traffic circle. Simpler than traffic lights. No moving parts. The intersection can accommodate flowers and trees. And get this, they slow traffic while they keep it moving.

I don't know about where you live, but here in eastern Loudoun County, Virginia, they could have done well to make circles of several intersections. With complete seriousness, they opened large right-angle intersections with stop signs but no traffic lights. While (yes) it forces everybody to a complete halt, tell me how that conserves fuel and mechanical wear better than would a traffic circle. And you can guess at the severity of drive-time backups. Ridiculous. Spirit-crushing.

I know, I know, in moderation. I read of an English town that had so many roundabouts that local mechanics noticed the lefthand edges of car tyres wearing excessively :)

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Is this what driving is coming to!! Why not just put slots on the street and let some computer pull the trigger....uh, oh I mean decide how fast you should go and when you should change lanes.

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@JD:

You're right - and despite its possibilities, I do think this system is probably overkill. Keep in mind, though, that there are a great many intersections in America that *don't* have much in the way of visual cues to the "staleness" of a green light. Most of the ones around me never have pedestrians, and even with cross-traffic stacked up, there's not enough information for me to process at 40mph to really make an educated guess.

You're probably correct about the ground sensors, but all of the ones I've seen are positioned right at the intersection. All that a light can determine from that is that either a car has just gone through the intersection, or a car is stopped at a red light. It's blind to situations where there are cars approaching a light that's red for no reason (no cross-traffic to let through), or a light that's just about to turn red, forcing a huge mass of cars to stop. If lights could sense approaching cars from a good distance away, they could make better choices about what to do well in advance of forcing any cars to stop. Even better, if they could get a rough count of those cars, we could see some stoplight democracy - the biggest pack of cars goes through the intersection first.

@Lx:

Roundabouts are certainly good in some situations, but I personally don't think that America is ready for them en masse. Most drivers that I encounter are selfish, aggressive, and in a hurry - a recipe for disaster at anything other than a forced stop. A parking lot at a nearby Costco has a roundabout near its entrance, and I ended up finding an alternate way in because I was tired of SUVs pulling out right in front of me when I had the obvious right-of-way.

With regard to higher-speed traffic, I still have to stick to my idea of "intelligent" traffic lights. Very often I'll see a situation in which I "know better" than a light that I'm approaching, and yet I'm forced to stop (or cross-traffic is forced to stop just for me) when it really makes no sense. It's just a function of a traffic light that has no sense of what it's doing. Maybe "smart stop signs" could work for neighborhoods, too?

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Bungle-
What you're saying about lights near you is certainly an issue, the lack of peds can make things sort of complicated, but often lights will automatically give peds the walking man even if no one hits the button, so that's generally pretty reliable. I notice that busier intersections around my place often have a sensor set about 10 car lengths back from the intersection, which gives me some faith in this "stoplight democracy" you speak of, and I think that this is absolutely how it should work. Dynamic > Static. However, lights are so damn stupid I'd be surprised if they did anything but tell it how long it needs to stay green. Oh well.

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