Google's AI-Powered 'Project Green Light' Speeds Traffic, Reduces Fuel Consumption and Carbon Emissions (engadget.com) 93
Google's "Project Green Light" uses machine learning on Maps data to optimize the length of green lights, reports Engadget, "reducing idle times as well as the amount of braking and accelerating vehicles have to do there."
When the program was first announced in 2021, it had only been pilot tested in four intersections in Israel in partnership with the Israel National Roads Company but Google had reportedly observed a "10 to 20% reduction in fuel and intersection delay time" during those tests. The pilot program has grown since then, spreading to a dozen partner cities around the world, including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Manchester, England and Jakarta, Indonesia. "Today we're happy to share that... we plan to scale to more cities in 2024," Yael Maguire, Google VP of Geo Sustainability, told reporters during a pre-brief event last week. "Early numbers indicate a potential for us to see a 30% reduction in stops...."
Maguire also noted that the Manchester test reportedly saw improvements to emission levels and air quality rise by as much as 18%. The company also touted the efficacy of its Maps routing in reducing emissions, with Maguire pointing out that it had "helped prevent more than 2.4 million metric tons of carbon emissions — the equivalent of taking about 500,000 fuel-based cars off the road for an entire year."
Maguire also noted that the Manchester test reportedly saw improvements to emission levels and air quality rise by as much as 18%. The company also touted the efficacy of its Maps routing in reducing emissions, with Maguire pointing out that it had "helped prevent more than 2.4 million metric tons of carbon emissions — the equivalent of taking about 500,000 fuel-based cars off the road for an entire year."
Railroads? (Score:2)
Re: Railroads? (Score:2)
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Does it factor in (or even attempt to measure) the effect on intersections it isn't being used on? Like, say, cross streets a few blocks each way from the intersections it is being used on?
Nice idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I do like how Google shows me the relative traffic congestion in my nav system though. Probably as good as it will ever get around here.
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Timing signal lights has been around since at least the 60s, and they did a good job of it too just using manual methods.
I have no doubt this is true. Just not here.
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Not here, either, here being "most of southern California," where the car is king.
And on the few major thoroughfares where they do time lights, it makes an even bigger mess of side streets.
Re:Nice idea (Score:4, Interesting)
it makes an even bigger mess of side streets.
There's not much to be done* about waits on the side streets. If the side street is also a heavily used arterial, the timing problem becomes tricky. But if it's lightly used, you just wait your turn for the next light.
There was a "fix" to this. Which involved timed light cycles plus traffic sensors on the side streets. If there was traffic from the side, the next timed cycle would permit the timed cycle. If not, the traffic on the major road just got a continuous green. The timing cycle kept traffic moving more or less in a green wave. If the through traffic had to stop for side streets, the timing cycles were such that you could catch back up with the wave again.
*Anecdote: Near where I live, there is a neighborhood (side street) with a few residents that have an inordinate amount of political clout. They had a light installed with sensor loops. Not just sensor loops at the intersection, also a hundred yards back. Set to flip the light green for them as they approached the intersection. Never mind stopping for a few seconds. Same for their left turn lane to go into the neighborhood. This street is about a block off an I-405 interchange and during rush hour, when the lights are set up this way, the result is backups down the off-ramps onto the freeway. So the state engineers probably scream at the city engineers and tell them to turn that bullshit off. Which they do. For a few months until the locals call their buddy up at city hall and have their priority lights reinstated.
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There's not much to be done* about waits on the side streets.
I will also point out that, while southern California didn't event road rage, we did organize the first professional leagues.
Re: Nice idea (Score:2)
Yep here in TN of you turn left onto a artery from a light you are treated to stopping at every God damned red-light for the duration of your trip ... it's significantly faster to hop on a highway, punch the shit out of the gas until the next exit and merge back to the main road
Re:Nice idea (Score:4, Informative)
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My favorite is sensor-based lights that make absolutely no accommodation for the possibility that the sensor or the connection of the sensor to the light might be broken, leading to a red light that never changes. Obviously an intelligent design would give it at least a brief green every five minutes or so. I once waited at one like that for a whole half an hour at 3 AM with absolutely no traffic passing by the other way. I eventually just ran the light because what else was I supposed to do. I also just lo
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I once waited at one like that for a whole half an hour at 3 AM with absolutely no traffic passing by the other way. I eventually just ran the light because what else was I supposed to do.
Been there done that, but nobody really waits half an hour :-)
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I wasn't really in any great rush. I managed to kill the time somehow, although I did eventually get frustrated.
You've identified the problem (Score:3)
Yes, the idea is to drive up ticket revenue. Multiple districts were caught shortening the yellow lights because red light cameras weren't generating enough revenue. Doing that also increased the number of accidents substantially.
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There's a concept of "piercing the veil" for corporate crimes or serious civil violations. There needs to be a similar concept for the immunity government officials get while performing their official duties when they act completely contrary to their mandate so they can individually face civil or criminal action. Maybe there is, but it never seems to work out that way.
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Unfortunately the law as it stands is opposite: the doctrine of qualified immunity grants government officials immunity from liability unless they are doing something really bone headed (violating a "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known"). But yeah, shortening a traffic light without some evidence that that's safe does seem like manslaughter or criminal negligence if accidents go up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I think that @tragedy was trying to say that qualified immunity should go away.
As a note, "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known" translates not to "this is against even a the plainest reading of the constitution", but "we have had a court case of pretty much exactly this where it was ruled unconstitutional", and beyond that, it has to have happened in the circuit the offense took place in. Because officers can apparently be expected to follow
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I wasn't in a particular rush. I guess I was curious if it was ever going to change. Eventually got sick of it though.
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Re: Nice idea (Score:2)
Except that's exactly what happens in the usa
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Don't forget besides the extra pollution from idling cars, you also get the increased noise from the cars getting back up to speed, not that it's significant these days.
I have to say that my most common route is horribly timed. It might even be deliberate - you're 90% likely, when you get a green light at the first intersection, that it'll turn red just in time to catch you at the next intersection - and over 90% of people are going straight at that point. Then you're ~80% likely to get hit at the light a
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Don't forget besides the extra pollution from idling cars, you also get the increased noise from the cars getting back up to speed, not that it's significant these days.
On the bright side I quite like my car's exhaust note. Understood others may not agree though..
I have to say that my most common route is horribly timed. It might even be deliberate
I hear ya. Every day I get 3 in a row on a collector street. Every single day, no exceptions. Would not be safe to try and beat them, but would also not be surprised if some people try. With sufficient speed you can indeed make them all as well.
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Maybe we live near. My area- there are lights that turn RED as you approach. As soon as you hit a pair of sensor loops, the light will go yellow, especially later at night where there is NO side street traffic waiting. I'm sure it's to power and control people. Several of those intersections will hold you (main highway) stopped at red for several minutes, nobody was ever on side street.
Most traffic lights have a light sensor- mostly to receive the signal sent by emergency vehicles. I used to have a later sh
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They should take lessons from the Pascagoula, MS, DoT from 1980. All of the lights on Hwy 90 were timed so that If you lived west of Pascgoula, if you caught the first light green, you'd be able to reach the other side of town without having to stop (except for the next-last light, you didn't even have to change speed, either) on your way to work in the a.m. The timing was changed in the afternoon so you could get out-of-town to the west without catching any lights. We assumed that someone at the DoT
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In my city, traffic engineers could not time a traffic light if their lives depended on it.
Your city times traffic lights? What is this, the 1950s? In my city the traffic lights intelligently manage traffic in a network based on an understanding of how many cars are at any place in an intersection (induction loops are placed significantly back from the intersection, not just at the line) and switch dynamically to clear them as they move.
Funny one of lights near me has a method where you can see the logic in the intersection work at the bicycle crossing, they've added a timer there because bikes w
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Your city times traffic lights?
Yes, but I'm pretty sure they are not coordinated in any way with some rare exceptions. It is handy to see the pedestrian countdowns - as a driver I find them useful for predicting light changes ahead, but I think most people are completely oblivious to such things. When I say timed I perhaps should have said sequenced, as in there is no effort to string them together in such a way as to make multiple greens in a row.
And yes, our traffic infrastructure here seems totally out of the 50s.
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Here in Brisbane there is a road called Gympie Road. Its a major arterial stroad connecting to the biggest shopping center in the state (among other things). As someone who regularly sees the traffic mess on this road (not just peak hour but other times as well) from my seat on the bus, its obvious to me that changing the traffic light timings so you get free flowing traffic would make things so much better.
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I've noticed a lot of timing problems coming from roads that cross from one town to the next, even if each municipality times their lights, they don't coordinate. And that has contributed to a commuter train I was riding wrecking about a dozen vehicles once during the early day-before-Thanksgiving rush (The light in front of the tracks turns green, then the light beyond the tracks turns red, catching a bunch of not-
smart traffic lights (Score:2)
how about actually optimizing all traffic lights so once you hit a green light, you will never hit a red light again as long as you stay in the same road, there are no accidents and you keep the speed limit?
that would not only optimize emissions/fuel savings but decrease driving times as well. only potential downside i could see is this [fandom.com]
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It could work in both directions if you eliminated intersections, but that would mean a lot of bridges and/or tunnels.
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It could work in both directions if you eliminated intersections, but that would mean a lot of bridges and/or tunnels.
Traffic circles and eliminate the lights and the need for all the control circuitry completely.
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I HATE fucking traffic circles.....ugh!!
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I HATE fucking traffic circles.....ugh!!
After spending some time in Davis CA, where there are a whole bunch of them, I have grown to really like them. When everyone in the city is used to them, they do make for really nice traffic flow in virtually every place where 4-way stop signs would normally be used, and for many places where traffic lights might go.
With that said, I can understand the dislike many have for them. Their negative aspects get dialed up to eleven when combined with even just a few drivers for whom they are an novelty.
Maybe I sh
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That might be so, but the one they installed closest to me seems to have increased the rate of accidents at the formerly 4-way stop, and without significantly increasing the traffic flow. Part of that might be the stupid landscaping plantings they put in the middle of the circle to "beautify" it, since
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I think I have seen stats showing a huge decrease in serious accidents (t-bones are virtually eliminated) but I can certainly believe that other ones might increase. Carmel seems to have had an almost unbelievable decrease in pedestrian deaths (from 12 down to 2 per 100,000).
In your case, the one closest to you being the only one around probably doesn't help due to it being unique, and the landscaping probably makes things even worse.
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I HATE fucking traffic circles.....ugh!!
They work fine in every country that isn't the USA.* They work on big wide roads in Canberra, Australia. They work on small narrow roads in the UK. In case you think I'm cherry-picking examples from countries that drive on the left, they also work in Europe :-)
The feature of a traffic circle (or "roundabout" depending on regional dialect) is that in light traffic, nobody has to come to a complete stop. This has massive benefit for traffic flow, fuel consumption, noise, wear and tear on roads and vehicles. T
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Buyer Beware (Score:2)
Sounds like something they will sell hard to municipalities, then jack up the prices which will then just get passed on to the taxpayer, with questionable benefit. No thanks.
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Nah, this is Google. They'll offer it for free until everyone is depending on it, then kill it because it doesn't make any money.
You know, like they do everything else.
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This is one of the few Google products that has a clear market and route to profit. Governments will see a decent return on an investment in this technology, and typically have massive transport budgets to spend on improving roads and traffic flow.
Google's issue is that most of their 20% projects don't have a clear market, and hope to generate revenue through ads.
Roundabouts (Score:2)
And not your crappy "traffic-lights posing as a roundabout".
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Re:Roundabouts (Score:4, Insightful)
The 4-way stop sign is a thing that should never exist. Anywhere that it exists, one of 3 things should happen:
1.One road has its stop signs removed (with the other road being downgraded) turning it into a 2-way stop
2.The intersection gets upgraded with traffic lights if the traffic is there.
or 3.The intersection gets converted into a roundabout.
Roundabouts are better than 4-way stops because they reduce the severity of traffic accidents.
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Hail, fellow Austinite. Not just four way stops converted to roundabouts, but speed bumps on all roads, which caused road rage, and makes it impossible to get onto roads because people are accelerating, slamming brakes, and are usually jammed together due to one slow car. Not to mention how those things tear up vehicle suspensions.
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Hail, fellow Austinite. Not just four way stops converted to roundabouts, but speed bumps on all roads, which caused road rage, and makes it impossible to get onto roads because people are accelerating, slamming brakes, and are usually jammed together due to one slow car. Not to mention how those things tear up vehicle suspensions.
Yeah, we have those too. I live in Canada, but stupidity is universal.
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Or you can just replace them with roundabouts.
Haven't seen how Americans drive, have ya? People don't know how to act at a red light. Having them navigate a circle is asking for leaps of competence.
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Tend to agree here. Had quite a few close calls at roundabouts with entering cars who seem to be a bit unclear on the concept of right of way. I've had a number of them lay on their horns, apparently annoyed that I "cut them off" when they were supposed to be yielding to me. Then there's the numerous people who, shortly after they put in some new roundabouts near me, drove straight across the center of the roundabout.
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Roundabouts - real roundabouts, not "traffic circles," which aren't nearly as good - work well.
If you have the real estate for them. They take a lot more space than a 4-way light, or even a cloverleaf ramp system on interstates, for the same amount of traffic.
Here in Southern California (where freeway widening projects cost a billion - with a "b" - dollars a mile), the cost of real estate (and the fact that what you'd need is already owned by someone who has more money for lawyers than the government) makes
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We've got a number of roundabouts in my area. And a couple of new ones going in a few blocks from me. They work well.
I don't think I've seen a traffic circle as defined here [roundaboutresources.org].
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I don't think I've seen a traffic circle as defined here [roundaboutresources.org].
Hmm, the post you are responding to says that "real roundabouts" take more space that traffic circles. But your link says that they take less space than traffic circles, by design.
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But your link says that they take less space than traffic circles, by design.
Seeing as how that link appears to be promotional material in favor of roundabouts, some claims may be taken with a grain of salt. I'm only relying on their functional description.
However, requiring entering traffic to slow down would minimize the real estate needed for roundabout approaches. So maybe they are right.
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Hmm, you say a roundabout takes more space than a 4-way light *for the same amount of traffic*.
If that's true, it implies that roundabouts aren't that good after all? Since I thought their advantage was handling a higher volume of traffic. Like for example, if you put a four-way intersection with traffic lights it can handle an average flow of ten cars per minute, but a roundabout could take twenty cars per minute. In other words, greater throughput. (I don't know what the true numbers are.)
Perhaps the
And outside of rush hours use flashing yellow/red? (Score:2)
Too many intersections are on timers with near zero cross traffic 8pm-6am.
But what about the carbon footprint for machine? (Score:2)
Sure, the vehicles may have not produced that much carbon.
How much carbon was produced powering the machine that created those results, though?
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What about the people hyperventilating about whataboutisms?
Real time traffic data (Score:4, Insightful)
The system would work better if green lights were timed based on real time traffic information from Google maps to reduce congestion as-it-happens, than based on "machine learning". The problem with ML on traffic patterns is it will fail to account for random acts of random... things like construction, or some kind of accident, or a parade route, etc.
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Or, instead of timers put in a small computer and add local machine vision to detect traffic - to estimate the queue length at reds or the time until the next vehicle arrives at a green.
With that level of 'smarts', you could have a light do things like switch as soon as you approach a red if there is no traffic on the crossing street... but not if there's a lot of approaching cross-traffic and you're the only car waiting.
Maybe have each intersection talk to the nearest adjacent intersections to estimate inb
Re: Real time traffic data (Score:2)
Sure but that's an insane amount of hardware, software and expense to replicate something Google can provide you already with an API call.
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Except Google can't do that.
Believe it or not, not every car has a device in it reporting real-time location and velocity data to Google.
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The system would work better if green lights were timed based on real time traffic information from Google maps to reduce congestion as-it-happens, than based on "machine learning". The problem with ML on traffic patterns is it will fail to account for random acts of random... things like construction, or some kind of accident, or a parade route, etc.
My experience is that it's not the traffic lights that end up being poorly timed, it's the people at them.
Here in the UK, the amber light flashes before it turns green, that's a sign to stop fucking about, get your car in gear and ready to go. However we still get people sitting at green lights because they're too busy fucking around on their phones (and if you beep them, somehow you're the arsehole). After they take their sweet arse time stowing their phone they take off at a pace a snail would be asham
Pedestrians? (Score:4, Insightful)
If your machine learning optimizations for vehicles make the intersections worse for pedestrians (and optimizing roads for vehicles usually makes them worse for everyone else), then those pedestrians will opt to take cars, negating the benefits you were trying to achieve. Speeding up traffic a tiny bit might turn a pedestrian into a driver.
Any AI traffic optimization needs to train on data reflecting how people choose their mode of transport, and how a proposed change affects that choice. Then, the model should optimize for *people*, not vehicles. Just don't be surprised if it tells you to close the roads and make people walk or bike in order to fix car traffic.
Remember, if your algorithm gives you an answer you don't like, it's usually because you didn't ask the right question.
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The linked articles did not mention any consideration for pedestrians. All the metrics they were trying to optimize for were vehicle-related.
Cycles are also vehicles, but I didn't see them mentioned either. Or public transportation, or cargo delivery. The system seems to be completely centered around private-owned gas-powered cars. This may work in the States, but will not in Europe.
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Given it has been rolled out in Hamburg which is an incredibly pedestrian and cycle friendly city I'm going to err on the side of them having taken this into account and that this system is more complicated than a short Slashdot post.
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We are currently in the early research phase.
There you will find no mention of any kind of trafic besides private cars. What you would leard is they are working with single intersections, and the output is just recomendations based on Google Trends. So, maybe it would be more correct to say that it "has been tried" rather than "rolled out".
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In defence of Google, 11 of the chosen cities effectively have a traffic design policy of "pedestrians can go fuck themselves". But since they rolled this out in Hamburg I can only imagine it has taken pedestrians into account.
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I guess that, as it is most of the time, the effects of this technology won't come from the way it was designed, but from the way it is implemented.
Another one of the stupid things in life (Score:1)
The solution to all these problems is simple, yet again.
Get rid of traffic lights and replace them with roundabouts.
The traffic lights cost 400K to implement and slow down traffic, create hazards, and kill people at a high rate because people are just dumb in general.
Traffic lights do moreâ¦. (Score:1)
The techbro version of "one more lane" (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way we will ever solve traffic is by investing massively in convenient public transit and moving away from private transportation and car dependency to encourage more compact compact and safer ways like cycling. Unfortunately that requires a lot more political willpower, money than just shoving AI at the problem - it's also a lot less popular and more expensive.
Big Deal (Score:1)
Over 50 years ago we in the Detroit area traffic engineers set the traffic light timing on Woodward Avenue, the âoeMain Streetâ running from downtown out to Pontiac so that as long as you maintained the speed limit you never hit a red light. It worked well.
Makes me wonder... (Score:2)
With all that saving resulting from timing of lights, how much better might things be if some of those intersections could be converted to roundabouts? I understand that would be anywhere from impractical to impossible in many built-up areas; but once you get used to the things they're really cool and keep traffic flowing nicely. Conversely, maybe what Google is doing puts light-controlled intersections into the same efficiency league as roundabouts?
My condolences to those of you who have terrible traffic e
Yes, please (Score:2)
I work in Eureka, CA and the lights on Broadway, which is what Highway 101 turns into when it runs into town because the leading lights of the area were too stupid to do a bypass back when it would have been affordable, are complete trash.
They do thankfully have sensors on the lights, but apparently absolutely zero coordination between intersections, so the sensors always win. And that means that one or two people leaving the mall during commute time can hold up a hundred people or more trying to get out of
stop at every light (Score:2)
My city would never use this, they seem to purposefully cause everyone to stop at every single light. Most of the time you cannot go more than 25 mph as you slowly roll from red light to red light. It is pretty crazy, takes 20 minutes minimum to go 8 miles.
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There are no bike lanes on the busy streets in my town. You'd be insane to bike them, or you'd have a death wish.
I hope Adblock works with cars (Score:2)
Just keep the lights green (Score:2)
subscription (Score:2)
Next, if you subscribe to Google Green LIght Prime for $30/mo, you get extended green lights in your travels.