LA In Sync: Traffic Signals To Cut Travel Times

Post by chriskelley » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 12:11 AM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #38

chriskelley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little over 9 miles, all surface streets. Marina del Rey to Beverly Hills. For what it's worth, I canvased about five people today and asked them the untainted question "Did you notice anything about your commute today?" and all of them said it was notably faster than usual.

Hmm. Do you actually travel in the city of Los Angeles on that trip?

Post by w4y2 » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 2:32 AM UTC

nilsbunger wrote: post #40

It's actually a fascinating problem. Naively, it seems you can't sync traffic in both directions of a 2-way street at the same time -- e.g. eastbound and westbound. Two things I've thought of that would work for both directions: 1) if it's a square grid, you could pick some streets that are optimized westbound, and some eastbound, for example. And then carefully arrange those so the north-south streets also mesh with…

Post by wj » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 5:39 AM UTC

chriskelley wrote: post #41

waterlesscloud wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Do you actually travel in the city of Los Angeles on that trip?

90% of that drive is through LA... I go from Pacific/Washington to approximately Robertson/Wilshire. BH starts between Olympic and Wilshire, and MDR ends just after Wash/Lincoln. Currently working on the south-east end of BH.

Post by stevek » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 12:16 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #27

purplelobster wrote: post #6

Something that puzzled me when I came to the US was that traffic lights (including a majority of pedestrian lights) just cycles through a certain schedule. Where I come from, traffic lights have sensors in the ground that manages the traffic. Also, all pedestrian crossings have very responsive buttons that truly work. The crossing light won't come on unless someone presses the button. In the US, I can rarely tell if…

This will be highly variable from place to place. I've observed them in many places in the US, but that's anecdotal too, and I was unable to find anything online. On arterial roads in LA, there will be inductive sensors (identifiable by the circles of cut-and-resealed asphalt near the stop line) at every approach to every stoplight. Some lights will not change unless you are at the correct place. If you creep too far…