Using google's data to improve traffic flow

[ivymike]

Maybe this is already done somewhere, but it occurred to me while driving home the other day that the stoplights near my office could benefit from a little awareness of commuting traffic patterns (so we don't have a single direction backed up for a mile while the other directions get useless green lights w/no traffic passing).

A method that came to mind for providing the awareness was to link a traffic light controller to a source of data about real-time traffic conditions (like google maps traffic data or waze info) ... with that data and the right algorithms, the lights in the area of a back-up could adjust the timing/duration of green signals to allow cars to flow more efficiently.

When the gov't employees across the street from my office all get off work at simultaneously at 5pm and flood into the neighborhood, the lights could bias to allow flow away from that spot for the next few minutes, preventing the ridiculous 5pm jam.

 

[IRstuff]

It probably hasn't been done that way because it's expensive, to begin with, and requires a host of warm bodies to monitor the entire system. Los Angeles supposedly has some sort of centralized traffic monitoring. The big issue isn't so much any individual intersection, but all the subsequent intersections that the bottle-necked one feeds. There's a big ripple effect that has to be considered.

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[JohnRBaker]

I live in a city, Irvine, CA, where the traffic signals are supposedly being controlled automatically based on the traffic flow, information about which is gathered from sensors imbedded in the streets. There's an overall program which controls the general flow based on the day-of-the-week and the time-of-day but it's supposed to be fine-tuned by the sensor readings. That being said, this does cause some issues, such as holidays when often it seems to think that there's more or less traffic than there actually is, but overall, it seems to work pretty good, preventing the really stupid situations like waiting for a traffic signal to go through it's entire cycle at 1:00am when you're the only person on the street.

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[ivymike]

...that's along the lines of what I had in mind - except I was thinking of getting the data via the internet instead of via sensors in the road (because we're all carrying location reporters these days). Should be easier to retrofit that way, especially if it uses a wireless connection for the data?

I'm thinking you could improve the performance of the stoplights around me without needed to calculate traffic flow for a whole network of them - if each light responded relatively quickly to its local demand conditions, should the "ripples" find their way through on their own?

 

[IRstuff]

"because we're all carrying location reporters these days"

Oh, yeah, the government gets to know where we are, and how fast we're going, 24/7; that'll go over well ;-)

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[JohnRBaker]

How do you think 'autonomous' vehicles are going to work, if they ever perfect the technology?

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[VEBill]

"...'autonomous' vehicles..."

That's A.I.

A.I. is hard.

They're being overly-optimistic.

 

[IRstuff]

They're unlikely to have a centralized system, since that would involve millions of vehicles of which only subsets of 20 or so are actually close to each other. Some sort of near-field comm to nearest vehicles could work without any sort of centralized intelligence. Birds have relatively feeble brains, and can handle swarm motions without too many issues.

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[ivymike]

ought to work for traffic lights too, eh?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Well it does work now for traffic lights, to a certain extent, where I live. This is not a new idea, just something that needs to mature and thus become more ubiquitous.

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[GregLocock]

One aspect of this is that cell phones are ubiquitous in SE Asia, so in addition to visual identification of targets pedestrians, cars will also be picking their phones up to track them.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[JohnRBaker]

Speaking of cell phones, my car actually has its own phone number as it's equipped with 'OnStar'. However, it does NOT use cell phone technology as it's actually a 'satellite' phone, which means that if I'm ever stuck where there is no cell phone coverage, I can always make a call using 'OnStar' (I've prepaid for an hours worth of connect time to cover just such a situations, which would be above and beyond using the 'OnStar' feature itself, which I would if it were a real emergency).

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[MintJulep]

Ever see the highway signs that display current travel time to an upcoming waypoint?

http://www.capecodtimes.com/storyimage/CC/20140412/NEWS/404120323/AR/0/AR-404120323.jpg

Know how they work?

They ping every phone that goes past. Wait for it to pass the next sign and measure the time.

Do that on a few thousand phones and average. That's the travel time displayed.

 

[MikeHalloran]

I keep thinking cellular automata should be effective.
... i.e. one stupid computer per light, having a fairly minimal awareness of the actual world, executing the same program as every other stupid computer running a traffic light, collectively expressing useful and apparently complex global behaviors all based on a small set of simple atomic behaviors.

I just found the FHA Signal Timing Manual and skimmed it, so now I'm an expert. It appears that the world's traffic engineers are moving slowly toward adaptive controls, but they're working within a top-down central control sort of universe. Cellular automata live in a different and largely disjoint universe.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[rowingengineer]

shouldn't we be trying to slow traffic down so more pleople try to use alternative means such as bikes and wheelchairs.

http://www.nceng.com.au/

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

 

[BigInch]

Faster traffic could also accelerate reaching your second goal.

 

[dgallup]

And then some old curmudgeon like me comes along without a location reporter or onstar or V to V communications in my 15 year old car and screws the whole thing up, running down pedestrians left and right.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[VEBill]

"...'OnStar'. However, it does NOT use cell phone technology as it's actually a 'satellite' phone..."

Really?

Which satellite network is it using?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Perhaps they're pigging-backing on the Sirus/XM Radio network of satellites.

John R. Baker, P.E.
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[VEBill]

Nope. SiriusXM are broadcast satellites, and they're not equipped to pick-up signal *from* your car.

Hint: OnStar uses the cellular network.