One thing that I noticed about traffic lights in CA -- there will be like 4-5 cars who are driving on the major road and approaching the traffic light. Then a car arrived from the small road at the intersection. The traffic light will then turn red for cars on the major road, so all 4-5 cars will brake and stop at the light. The small car proceed to turn left into the major road. A few seconds later, the light for the major road turns green again and the 4-5 cars proceed.
I have seen this so often that I sometimes wonder if it'd be more fuel efficient to let the 4-5 cars on the major roadway proceed (the traffic lights have cameras anyway) while letting the one car from the small street wait slightly longer or wait for a fixed amount of time.
I wonder if there's any traffic engineer on HN from California and if so, I'd love to hear an explanation/rationale behind the current approach.
I live in BC near a highway intersection and in my experience they seem to do what you suggest.
I approach from my street and if the highway is empty, almost instant green. Otherwise I have to wait some time until the road clears. During peak hours when the road doesn’t clear, it just seems to go green after a fixed time.
My son and I observed similar behaviour at a puffin crossing on the way to his school, and we’re buildng a model of it using an Arduino Uno with a RCWL-0516.
I'm in the US and I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out why a bird that can fly needed a special road crossing. I mean, a penguin crossing might make sense in a few places (but not Antarctica because there are no cars or streets there). Where do they have puffins that need to walk across a road?
Did you know we have bat bridges in the UK? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdPZ4z1OS0E" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdPZ4z1OS0E
I used to live in a south Florida (Miami) suburb and the traffic lights there function like what you suggest too. So after moving back to southern CA, it's something I had to adjust (and the traffic light behavior difference became obvious to me).
programmertote · · focus · HN ↗
I have seen this so often that I sometimes wonder if it'd be more fuel efficient to let the 4-5 cars on the major roadway proceed (the traffic lights have cameras anyway) while letting the one car from the small street wait slightly longer or wait for a fixed amount of time.
I wonder if there's any traffic engineer on HN from California and if so, I'd love to hear an explanation/rationale behind the current approach.
HnUser12 · · focus · HN ↗
I approach from my street and if the highway is empty, almost instant green. Otherwise I have to wait some time until the road clears. During peak hours when the road doesn’t clear, it just seems to go green after a fixed time.
jackgavigan · · focus · HN ↗
dreamcompiler · · focus · HN ↗
Duh. Cultural differences in English are amusing.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin_crossing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin_crossing
jackgavigan · · focus · HN ↗
programmertote · · focus · HN ↗