Public transit in and around Los Angeles is not ranked among the best in the world (far from it, actually), and thus, most people who own a car seem to use it for everything. This is no secret, and known around the globe, conjuring up images of blocked sunken eight-lane highways and inadequate on- and off-ramps that lead to a lot of swearing and honking.
One answer would be to make the mass transit more competent, and bring people back out of their cars, though they may be unwilling to relinquish their use without serious incentive in that direction.
What they’ve actually done is to start making problematic intersections smart, and having an operator work the traffic lights manually (when needed) to avoid queues building up – it doesn’t require too much intervention over what the systems do automatically, but just adding five seconds of extra green can allow a lot of cars pass, particularly if these cars are already in motion at city speed and pass through quickly.
There is a chance that this technique, if used on a large scale, could free up side roads taken as shortcuts by those looking to bypass the gridlock – these smaller ways are usually clogged up rather easily, especially if they’re not designed to handle anything more than light traffic.
The video posted below, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, reveals the inner workings of these traffic control rooms, what they do, and how they plan to expand their operation in LA in the future. It is what they are doing as they say that the work that’s already been done allows for 16 percent more traffic to flow freely through the road network, compared to before the modernization.
By Andrei Nedelea
VIDEO