Smart Technologies for Traffic
Cities are turning to smart traffic technologies to cut down on energy consumption and improve road safety, as traffic congestion in cities is becoming more frequent. This helps both drivers and passengers save time, cuts emissions and delays in traffic.
The technology behind this is based on two principal components: hardware and software. The former is the executing subcomponent, and the latter is the command and control center. Both are enhanced with modern sensing technologies and processing, such as ANPR (automotive plate recognition) which collects data about the movement of vehicles and detects road signs.
Depending on the solution, smart traffic lights can process data on the device or send it to a cloud. This is a way to perform more sophisticated modeling and analysis to reduce traffic congestion and align the schedules of public transportation. In this way, they can reduce the average travel time by 25%, shorten the wait times for signals by 40%, and reduce emissions by 20% according to Carnegie Mellon University.
In addition to the reduction of traffic signals’ control delays, a smart traffic light system will also enhance the flow of pedestrians as well as micromobility vehicles like e-bikes and e-scooters. They’re not able to adhere to the traditional traffic law regarding preemption of signals. In London for instance, e-scooter crashes increased 2800% in the initial half of 2021, and so it is important to consider them when determining traffic light controls.