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On the traffic light issue... There is a large cost for more intelligent lights as they need to talk to each other. There is some engineering expense associated with programming them and modelling the traffic flow. If you look at some of the math models for traffic a lot of it comes down to managing it all as a system and the green light of an individual comes last to that.
In other words, you're just an individual car in a big system and you don't matter. It would appear that you'd be better off with a green light in this otherwise empty intersection but the traffic system still has to be generalized enough to work in more than one case - multiple cars.
I like the idea of hybrids that shut themselves off at intersections. It uses the existing infrastructure but still solves the idle pollution problem.
-Michael
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