California wants to reduce traffic. The Newsom administration thinks AI can help::Caltrans says AI can help generate recommendations so workers can take steps to improve the flow of traffic and potentially prevent accidents on the road.
California wants to reduce traffic. The Newsom administration thinks AI can help::Caltrans says AI can help generate recommendations so workers can take steps to improve the flow of traffic and potentially prevent accidents on the road.
Feels like this would only be a bandage solution to traffic. Roads and freeways can only support so many people before they get congested. Lots of LA is congested during peak traffic times and AI could at best help evenly spread out the congestion. Developing our cities to encourage public transit, walking and biking use is hopefully getting more priority as that will reduce pedestrian deaths. In terms of traffic, it would probably increase the number of people that get to their location, and reduce transit time, but I don’t think there’s realistically a way to make our roads free flowing.the reason being, people will always resort to cars if transit time decreases.
I feel like intelligent control of traffic lights could make a huge difference in how much traffic can flow. An AI with an overview of all traffic could adjust light timing on the fly to prioritize flow where it’s most needed and synchronize the lights on main routes so that you get all green lights if you stick to the speed limit. They already do that to some degree, but it’s nothing compared to what’s possible.
I think that mainly helps when streets aren’t over filled. Which is most likely to happen during rush hour. During rush hours, especially on streets, you can see where cars begin to just block each other and the light signals don’t matter as much. Cars just take up too much space per person, and where traffic is the biggest problem, there’s too little streets\roads for the number of cars that are trying to get around