21–30 of 190 posts
I think it would actually be better if they refuse to integrate with the large apps, and instead use the green activation as a feature to entice people away from those apps.
This is solving the wrong problem. If a traffic light can turn green at a whim, for any arriving app user, the intersection is not busy enough to have a traffic light. Then the traffic light should be removed or switched off for those times, instead of getting a very expensive (I presume) upgrade. If the intersection is busy enough so that people are waiting on all (or most) stop lines, then simpler traffic density s…
…which in practice tend to be more expensive to implement and maintain. Systems like this one can work because they take advantage of highly available commodity infrastructure.
I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively. Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically…
The article says that the they just ned a relevant app running on their phone when they're approaching an relevant traffic light, and there's no mention that users need to actively do anything.
Also please have a read through the HN guidelines regarding your punchline "is categorically moronic."
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I think it would actually be better if they refuse to integrate with the large apps, and instead use the green activation as a feature to entice people away from those apps.
I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively. Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically…
This is a system to detect "in 32 minutes, twenty-five cars will come from the south, crossing sixteen cars from the east. By pausing the western traffic lights for three seconds, both streams of cars can drive past each other without clogging up the main intersection".
Users don't need to press buttons on apps, they're just using their existing navigation apps which are already providing them with directions (or in the case of Flitsmeister, speed cameras). Similar apps also exist for pedestrians and bikes in my country. My biking experience certainly has improved by having lights on empty/near empty intersections automatically turn green when I'm approaching.
I'd rather see more roundabouts rather than the badly scheduled traffic light system my city has, but the system works for me.
There's the ever-present privacy threat of sharing your (aggregate) location, of course, but in this case we're talking about the government, which pretty much has a live map of what phones are moving where already.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems an over-engineered, highly expensive and complicated to maintain on a road-lifetime scale system
Taxi drivers might have said the same thing about Uber. These days, many dishwashers, refrigerators, coffee machines etc. routinely connect to the internet. The tech is well established, and projects like this become possible precisely because they’re not that complicated to build or maintain. They take advantage of common infrastructure, and can often be cheaper than supposedly “simpler” alternatives.
I wonder what technology they're using to back this. The Netherlands has a system not too dissimilar to this (seemingly mostly marketed towards bikes) with wide scale deployment in cities: https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFI... I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong. Packaging this in ap…
The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists.
As far as I know, almost all traffic lights in the Netherlands work with magnetic sensors under the road for presence detection. Then there are a few optical cameras for congestion detection at specific intersections.
The magnetic sensors don't pick up ultralight or carbon road bikes, but bikes usually have an additional push button anyway.
"We want to be present on the apps that people already use" How can they not see that an app for traffic lights is clearly the wrong approach? Smart traffic lights are working great in many countries without needing an app for them to work.
Everyone wants you to install their app these days. Install my app to turn on the lights, install the app to see the menu at a restaurant, install the app to read information about an archaeological site, install an app to open the automatic doors. As you said, it's 100% the wrong approach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that here they are working via phone apps, so if you are navigating with a local navigation app like Karta GPS, Flitsmeister or Sway, these apps can let the lights know you are heading that way and will be there in X minutes. Therefore this approach is not _really_ car centered and also works for bikes or any alternative form of transportation. If I read between the lines of the article, the system was developed…
That seems an over-engineered, highly expensive and complicated to maintain on a road-lifetime scale system
The smart traffic light management systems are already in place in many intersections already, this is just hooking another source of traffic information into the system without having to dig open concrete or asphalt.