<story><title>Light Traffic</title><url>http://senseable.mit.edu/light-traffic/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>maxander</author><text>So a system that requires &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; vehicles on the road to have flawless sensor and communications systems can achieve some improvement over current-day technology (from the paper, approximately a &amp;quot;doubling of capacity&amp;quot; for intersections with this implemented.)&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;i&gt;profoundly uninteresting result,&lt;/i&gt; given the current-day technology in question is &amp;quot;a dozen lights attached to a timer.&amp;quot;  Add devices that are several orders of magnitude more expensive and &lt;i&gt;yeah&lt;/i&gt; you&amp;#x27;ll get something better- that they only achieve a factor of two improvement (in theory!) reads as a stunning failure of autonomous vehicle technology to pull their weight in this regard.  (Granted, more clever schemes might be produced that might get better results from this scenario- it&amp;#x27;s hard to prove that they &lt;i&gt;can&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; be effective.)&lt;p&gt;Better idea- instead of having the world pay for sensor&amp;#x2F;communication systems on &lt;i&gt;every car&lt;/i&gt;, have the same sensor packages installed &lt;i&gt;on the traffic lights&lt;/i&gt; so that they can operate in a smarter fashion.  Orders of magnitude less expensive, and quite possibly as effective in reducing traffic backup.</text></comment>
<story><title>Light Traffic</title><url>http://senseable.mit.edu/light-traffic/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rcarmo</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s been a marked tendency to replace intersections with roundabouts and shared spaces (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Shared_space&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Shared_space&lt;/a&gt;) in many places, including the outskirts of Lisbon (as well as a few legendary mazes in Britain).&lt;p&gt;There was even a BBC report on the latter (which I can&amp;#x27;t find right now, as usual, only a follow-up: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;uk-33303031&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;uk-33303031&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Drawing a (admittedly inaccurate) parallel with shared spaces (which are harder to navigate by sensory deprived humans than standard intersections), I&amp;#x27;d say roundabouts (which preserve crossings) would be a more sensible short-term approach overall -- especially considering the remaining human drivers.&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: I don&amp;#x27;t drive anymore. Gave it up decades ago because I prefer to do something useful with my commute times, and resort to public transportation or Uber whenever possible, which (ironically) allows me to arrive earlier to meetings than most of my colleagues (who need to hunt down a parking space).</text></comment>