Green Light optimizes traffic lights to reduce vehicle emissions in cities, helping mitigate climate change and improving urban mobility
This doesn’t appear to be anything new. Traffic engineers have been optimizing lights in large networks for decades.
They just have access to all the data they’ve been collecting on you, which is way more than the traffic meter cords can provide.
I imagine Google has more traffic information both in aggregate and in real time than any traffic engineer just because so many people have Google maps or Waze installed.
Personally I really like it when I get rerouted around traffic jams and that is just because Google can tell that there are a lot of cars moving slower than normal. I’ve gotten notifications on my phone warning me of traffic problems on my way to work before I leave the house.
There’s no way any civil engineer would have access to that kind of data. If that information could be used to improve traffic lights why wouldn’t that be a good thing? How many times have you idled at a red light with absolutely no cross traffic?
I’m not trying to say that Google’s some magnanimous gift to humanity but it also isn’t a malevolent villain trying to destroy humanity.
I can’t wait to get green waves through watching youtube ads until the project gets finally killed causing massive traffic problems for the participating cities.
I’d never trust google with anything, yet alone letting it run vital public infrastructure.
The article says it makes suggestions that someone has to accept before it’s changed. It’s safe from the lights not being able to talk to each other because they’re not all talking through the same google messaging service.
My concern is this means traffic light removal which will impact public safety.
I think this is more about having the lights change more intelligently. I could be wrong though.
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I feel like you’re conflating two separate issues. If you want to “get rid of” cars and replace them with public transportation then you have a mighty big task in front of you and, in my opinion, that has nothing to do with optimizing traffic lights to minimize pollution due to idling. As for pedestrians I imagine it would be the same as it is now. If you think they could improve it then you ought to consider contacting the development team maybe they can answer your questions or implement some of your ideas.
