this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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In my little Southern US town the lights seems to work logically and traffic flows nicely, noticeably so. I'm never sitting at a light screaming, "Oh FFS turn!" or "Why did that light change and there are no cars?!"
Traffic only gets a bit thick on the main road in late afternoons. Not much to be done there, it's a major east-west thoroughfare connecting several towns.
Have no idea how they're doing this. Sensors I'm guessing? Seems like we're too poor for fancy civil engineering like that and I'm sure we can't afford what the article talks about.
Anyone know how that might work?
Look for a square or an X (or a square with an X in it) right Infront of the stop line for the lights. If it's there, that detects a car waiting.
There may be more of them further up the road to detect more cars waiting/arriving.
They are basically using big loops of wire to detect cars through magmatism.
They tend not to detect cyclists, so I often have to move to the side and wave cars forward so lights on side streets will change.
Sensors are cheap and have been around for a long time, but I'm going to guess the number one reason is the small part. Fewer cars = less traffic.
I've actually watched a city I visit regularly grow over about 20 years and it went from them having zero traffic to Los Angeles style traffic jams. This is despite their best efforts like making extra wide roads, using roundabouts, etc.
Sensors on a main road and well set timers after a few months of data can do wonders and be extremely low cost, but it requires some upfront spending and enough public will to put up with bad traffic until everything is tuned.