The Briefing Room
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Cincinnatus on February 20, 2013, 07:00:37 pm
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I can't imagine how this is going to work out in a massively sprawling city like LA, plus it's a government project, but good luck to them.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was expected to flip the switch on Tuesday on a final traffic intersection system that will result in the synchronization of all of nearly 4,400 traffic signals in Los Angeles.
KNX 1070′s Pete Demetriou reports L.A. is about to become the first major city in the world to synchronize all of its traffic signals.
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/02/19/la-in-sync-traffic-signals-to-cut-travel-times/
I have to admit few things irritate me more than to take off from red light at intersection A only to reach intersection B just as the light turns yellow. So this is a good idea if it works.
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Next door to Lost Angeles lies The OC, and some years ago they did a sync project on just a few major boulevards.
It worked pretty well. Highway 39, also known as Beach Blvd. moves well.
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Synching can work, but I think a lot of it depends on how the underlying street network is laid out. In NYC the lights on the avenues are synched, but the benefit really only goes one way - basically, if you're going downtown you can "surf" the lights as they turn yellow/red in the direction of traffic flow. However, because of the cross-streets, the uptown lights can't flow the same way, so you get much more of a stop-start effect.
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Does ANYTHING work in LA?