Re Pittsburgh's new artificially intelligent stoplights could mean no more pointless idling

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Libert, Tim* <tlibert () asc upenn edu>
Date: Sunday, October 23, 2016
Subject: Re Pittsburgh's new artificially intelligent stoplights could mean
no more pointless idling
To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>


Other complaints notwithstanding, the CEO is a research professor of
robotics at CMU, long way from the sales dept... http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sfs/
_____________________________
From: Dave Farber <farber () gmail com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','farber () gmail com');>>
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2016 7:08 PM
Subject: [IP] Re Pittsburgh's new artificially intelligent stoplights could
mean no more pointless idling
To: ip <ip () listbox com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','ip () listbox com');>>





Begin forwarded message:

*From:* John Gilmore <gnu () toad com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','gnu () toad com');>>
*Date:* October 23, 2016 at 6:19:41 PM EDT
*To:* dave () farber net <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dave () farber net');>
*Cc:* "ip" <ip () listbox com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','ip () listbox com');>>
*Subject:* *Re: [IP] Pittsburgh's new artificially intelligent stoplights
could mean no more pointless idling*

Steel City now boasts 50 intersections whose stoplights are running

artificial intelligence software known as Surtrac that reduces wait

times on empty or lightly-traveled roads.


Since Surtrac was first introduced in 2012, the Rapid Flow team

estimates the AI stoplights have cut emissions by 21%, travel times

by 25%, and idling times by 40%.


Clearly there is a disconnect here for numerate readers.  You can't
improve any emissions, travel times or idling times on empty roads.
There aren't any emissions, travel times, or idling times there.

And on lightly traveled roads, even a massive improvement there only
improves overall travel by e.g. 1%, since most of the traffic is not
on lightly traveled roads.  So they are either mis-describing the
method, or presenting bogus statistics.

It's been pretty standard for decades in many cities to use
sensor-driven stoplights that keep the main road flowing unless and
until a few cars stack up waiting to cross the main road.  That can be
done with artificial stupidity, with no need to deploy the expensive
artificial intelligence buzzword.

the other stoplights use a proprietary set of algorithms to adjust

their timing accordingly.


Proprietary is not the same as better; usually the reverse.

The magic of Surtrac is that it bundles each stoplight into an

intelligent network "that moves all the vehicles it knows about

through the intersection in the most efficient way possible," Rapid

Flow CEO Steve Smith said ...


Yeah, it's "magic" and there is NO more efficient way to do it other
than to buy their proprietary software.  They have found the one
absolutely most efficient way -- there are no improvements that can be
made to their system.  Let me guess, their CEO came up through the
sales department, not through engineering.

   John

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