Transfer some DOD funds to install smarter traffic lights,
Many lights can be altered between red/yellow/green and blinking yellow depending if it is rush hour or hours of little traffic.
Install vehicle sensors up the road to enable red light to change to green upon vehicle approach IF no vehicle is traveling where lanes are presently green.
I like these ideas and think our traffic issues need to be fixed! How much time and energy is wasted with millions of people sitting in traffic every single day?
I agree about the lights. Maybe in addition, change the law for red lights- you have to stop but if there is no cross traffic (at 5am in the morning) you can proceed through the light.
Also to go a bit deeper, our culture has been formed that going to work and sitting in traffic is just part of life! How can we change that, if you have a skill or passion for work, how can that be used closer in your community, so we are not traveling so much? Covid exposed that more of us can work from home and not travel, but we also need to look at the value to millions of people sitting on their computers sending email and such…? What is the value to that person’s life force, and what is the value to that person’s community and or tribe towards local self-sustainability.
Also, that we should be looked at in infrastructure and transportation; is the billions that is being spent on these split-level fly-over-passes, their efficiency and return on investment (while the road we are actually driving on, in the meantime of construction, is horrible and unsafe). Wouldn’t spending that money towards hyper rail and more public transportation be worthwhile? We need to change the culture of why we travel and the overall waste and value of now common travel practices.
If there is one 18 wheeler that flips on one of the those fly-overs, there is nowhere for anyone to go. I want to see the study on how these split-level-fly-overs solve traffic problems and not cause more?
To calculate the time & energy wasted first involves counting the number of vehicles in relation to their position in time; the two (2) quantities must then be expressed in a common term. How about monetary? Here is a copy/paste of what I wrote in 2016:
I’ve been told that time is money. So, I wonder “How much money is time worth?”.
To determine how much money time is worth, I propose that the amount of money earned by employed people during the time they are employed is important to answer the question. I only care about the answer in regard to the United States of America; for, the answer is essential in my desire to help develop smarter traffic lights.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States of America (USA) was – in the year 2016 – approximately $18.57 trillion. In that year, there were approximately 150 million workers; and these workers spent approximately 33 hours – on average - per week working.
So, $18,570,000,000,000 was earned in the year 2016. Multiplying the number of workers by the number of hours worked each week equals 150,000,000 x 33 = 4,950,000,000 hours per week.
Dividing the GDP by 52 weeks shows the total amount of money earned by the workforce each week in the year 2016. So, $18,570,000,000,000 divided by 52 equals $357,000,000,000; this is the weekly GDP earned by workers in the USA.
Therefore, $357,000,000,000/week (GDP earned) divided by 4,950,000,000 hours per week (worked) shows that – in America in the year 2016 - time was worth approximately $72/hour.
Next to consider, how much time is spent waiting for ill-timed traffic lights?