Idea for government: Traffic Light Timers

[Peakster]

I wonder... maybe someone should design 'runway lights' at the curbs of the road where if you follow the light as it travels down the road, you'll always hit a green-lighted intersection.

Sort of like movie theatre stairway lights, only the lights would 'travel' down the road.

Ah, heck. Let's just go all out and get conveyor belted roads. Like the Jetsons' sidewalks.

[trebuchet03]

Originally Posted by Peakster

I wonder... maybe someone should design 'runway lights' at the curbs of the road where if you follow the light as it travels down the road, you'll always hit a green-lighted intersection.

Sort of like movie theatre stairway lights, only the lights would 'travel' down the road.

Ah, heck. Let's just go all out and get conveyor belted roads. Like the Jetsons' sidewalks.

That - would be totally awesome Actually, I've seen something sorta like that (for a different purpose). Somewhere in S. Florida - there's a 90 degree turn at the end of a highway offramp. There's an optical sensor and light up road reflectors that follow a curve... It looks really cool - and effective as the concrete at the end of the raised offramp has been "used" a few times...

Hrmm... giving it a few more instances of thought... I'm not quite sure how to program that without being confusing given that the speed needs to change for vehicles behind you...

[newtonsfirstlaw]

Originally Posted by trebuchet03

Rather than tell people how long they have to hit a green (resulting in people laying down on the gas)... Tell them how fast they need to go to hit a green

I'm not sure what you are getting at... there's a window of time for a green light, so a motorist would need to know the maximum speed (it would be an MIN(speedlimit, maxspeed) - so as to not cause speeding), so that they could go up to that speed before they will hit the red light before it changes. The motorist would also need to know the minimum speed so that they made sure not to coast too much and go under that speed limit, missing the light.

At the moment the motorist faces a quandry - go the full speed and hit the red light, or go slower and maybe miss the green light before you get there. As it stands, sometimes I go too slow because I don't want to waste kinetic energy unecessarily, and if I don't make the light, I end up causing someone else to waste their fuel idling.

If given both speeds, the motorist can judge it himself.

[Lazarus]

Timers would be nice. Posted right on top of the light where they put the cameras but I think that education is the key. Like the website with the traffic waves. Not to get the thread to OT but how many people still speed by you as your coasting to a red light that has been red for a long time just to slam on the brakes. People just don't pay any attention to what's going on around them. All the info in the world to the driver(which is most) that doesn't understand about kinetic energy and it's affect on FE is lost.

[MetroMPG]

Posted a new thread related to this one: Technique quandary: gliding toward a stale green light

[newtonsfirstlaw]

I'm not sure if people are understanding the idea. The traffic light timers are well before the lights, probably just after the previous intersection or on top of a blind corner/hill. And they would be a min speed/max speed indicator. This gives a constant speed range at that point, which if they stay in, they are guaranteed to make the green light. Since there are an infinite number of such ranges, only the range with the largest values are used.

So you have:
Min speed/Max Speed Indicator <---> several hundred metres <->traffic lights

[SVOboy]

While that idea makes sense, it could create the problem of changing the light for someone who wants to turn right, which (in the US in many places) is a legal turn to make on red. In the case of small roads merging with larger roads with more traffic it might have the effect of stopping the larger flow of traffic to make little difference for the right on redder...

I hope this comment makes sense. If I could animate some gifs I would do something worthwhile.

[roflwaffle]

Some places in LA have something similar in that there will be several blocks of lights that tend to all go on and off nearly simultaneously. The crosswalk countdown can be used to figure when to get on and off the gas.

[metroschultz]

Schultz here, I lived in Europe for four years, Bremen, W. Germ., and they already were using a form of light timers. It is (was?) illegal to idle your "auto" for more than twenty seconds at a time. If you were coming to a green light , The light would flash for five seconds before going to red. That gave you (the driver, the one on the pedal, the one presumably with the intelligence to make a decision) time to choose your course of action. Speed up? Slow down? Your choice. If you chose to stop, the government expected you to turn your engine off. When the red was ten seconds from ending the light would begin flashing again so you could start your car. And they inspected your car for emissions as well as safety, during the inspection they also tested your ability to start easily. All was covered by G. regulations. I am sure a similar program would work here. It will all fall into place when fuel is > $5 a gallon. S.

[newtonsfirstlaw]

Originally Posted by metroschultz

I am sure a similar program would work here. It will all fall into place when fuel is > $5 a gallon. S.

That would probably work well within the existing infrastructure. I like the idea of the fines for idling.