technologytraffic.com/2022/04/28/turning-to-data-room-to-gain-a-competitive-advantage-in-ma

A delicately woven together network of processes, smart technology for traffic assist transport employees motorists, commuters and drivers manage traffic flow and efficiency. Intelligent traffic systems can alter the mechanisms that control traffic, like traffic lights as well as freeway onramp meters, and bus rapid transit lanes. They also make use of advanced IoT hardware and routers with cellular technology, as well as cell networks. They also can forecast changes in traffic demand, and provide in-real-time information to road users.

Pittsburgh’s adaptive traffic signal system is a good example. When Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Stephen Smith installed his first few traffic signals that were experimental in a heavily congested area of the city’s East Liberty, he saw immediate results: Drivers travelled 25 percent more efficiently and spent 40 percent less time in traffic jams than they had before.

The system works by collecting data from sensors which monitor incoming traffic and adjusting their timing on the fly in addition to detecting pedestrians at intersections and giving them the time to traverse the street. Sensors then send their raw data to a central hub, where it’s processed by artificial intelligent and then dispatched back out to the intersections via 5G-enabled cell networks.

These advanced systems also allow for better, more accurate simulation of risk-reducing scenarios that a human traffic supervisor could not achieve and all in real-time. This is an important step toward Vision Zero, a goal of a safe, accident-free road in which motorists and pedestrians share the road with no collisions.