Timing traffic lights so traffic flows optimally in 4 directions has interested me since I was a little kid. I'd love to see the results of an empirical study on this.

From phys.org:


(Phys.org) —If you've been lucky enough to catch all the green lights as you drive down a busy street, you may have been benefiting from intentional synchronization called a "green wave." The green wave concept has been around in the US since the 1920s, but it doesn't always work as it should. When traffic gets backed up for some reason, "green wave breakdown" occurs. In a new paper, physicist Boris Kerner at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Essen, Germany, has modeled and analyzed the causes of green wave breakdown, and the results may lead to better coordinated green waves and more efficient traffic flow.

Kerner's paper, "The physics of green-wave breakdown in a city," is published in a recent issue of EPL.

Many large cities around the world, especially in Europe and the US, synchronize traffic lights on the busiest streets to create green waves. When a green wave works as intended, all vehicles within the wave can drive through a sequence of green traffic lights at a certain speed without having to stop at the signals. The timing of the lights can be controlled either by sensors or timers, and can be set up for traffic in one direction or both directions. Green waves have several benefits, such as allowing for higher traffic loads, reducing traffic jams, controlling traffic speed, reducing fuel consumption and emissions, and facilitating bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

The biggest disadvantage of green waves is that, when the wave is disturbed, the disturbance can cause traffic problems that can be exacerbated by the synchronization. In such cases, the queue of vehicles in a green wave grows in size until it becomes too large and some of the vehicles cannot reach the green lights in time and must stop. This is called over-saturation. As more and more vehicles stop, the traffic can cause a gridlock where vehicles can't move forward even when the light turns green because vehicles are backed up at the light ahead, which may still be red or turning green at the same time.

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