Urban congestion is a pressing challenge, driving up emissions and compromising transport efficiency. Advances in big-data collection and processing now enable adaptive traffic signals, offering a promising strategy for congestion mitigation. In our study of China’s 100 most congested cities, big-data empowered adaptive traffic signals reduced peak-hour trip times by 11% and off-peak by 8%, yielding an estimated annual CO₂ reduction of 31.73 million tonnes. Despite an annual implementation cost of US$1.48 billion, societal benefits—including CO₂ reduction, time savings, and fuel efficiency—amount to US$31.82 billion. Widespread adoption will require enhanced data collection and processing systems, underscoring the need for policy and technological development. Our findings highlight the transformative potential of big-data-driven adaptive systems to alleviate congestion and promote urban sustainability. Big-data empowered traffic signal control in China can reduce vehicle trip times, creating potential reduction of 31.73 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 emissions annually and US$31.8 billion benefits per year.
Interestingly, some lights are set up to deliberately slow down speeders. If you are above the speed limit, they turn red, just to slow things back down. Unfortunately, most of the people involved never put cause and effect together.
What annoys me is the road to work in the morning actually seems to do the opposite. It’s a 35 or 40mph road, but if you do 40 you’re not gonna make it through without stopping. But if you do 50-60? No stops.
Interestingly, some lights are set up to deliberately slow down speeders. If you are above the speed limit, they turn red, just to slow things back down. Unfortunately, most of the people involved never put cause and effect together.
What annoys me is the road to work in the morning actually seems to do the opposite. It’s a 35 or 40mph road, but if you do 40 you’re not gonna make it through without stopping. But if you do 50-60? No stops.
Once again though people don’t pick up on this.
how would that even work, if there’s no indication that driving too fast was the reason for the red light?
do these actually include some sort of screen that tells the driver they were too fast and that’s why the light turned red?
I’d imagine that this “feature” would only result in more frustration, and thus more speeding, instead of less.