OK all you thinkers out there... here is a job for AI...
I am not a climate crazy, but I do think that we are to tend the earth and not harm it. We can talk for years about changing to electric cars to reduce carbon emissions, but then how do we generate all that electricity??? (Mostly by burning coal and natural gas!)
It seems simple: just time the lights! In Denver, over the years there have been a few "timed" streets, like 14th and 15th near downtown. I remember my dad hitting just the right speed so that he could sail a long ways before he hit a light! So there ya go! Time 'em!
Well... not so quick... even a grid of 4 streets, 2 NS, 2 EW is not trivial to time. That creates 12 individual segments, times 2 for both directions... not even talking about turns. Add more so you have 3 NS and 3 EW and it gets very complex, even with all the same speed roads! Add different speed roads, diagonal roads, short roads! It is very quickly a non-solvable problem.
Well, hey... I thought that is what AI does best! Set up each street with cameras that see the approaches and intersections, know all the speed limits (as if humans do those), know how many cars are waiting, know the priorities, know how to weight the priorities as people wait longer... simple, huh?
Now, let the AI monitor all that and control all those lights! If a busy street is not busy at 9:30 Sunday evening, and I approach on a side street, let me go! If I am cruising on a fast road and there are a couple of cars waiting on an access road for a few minutes, let me go!
Can you imagine all the gas and break pads that would be saved??? Remember, all that gas puts kinetic energy into those cars. When the car stops, all that energy is converted to heat in the road, tires, and brakes! Then, we accelerate again! Please mister AI - Help us!
AI will probably tell us to all have electric cars that it drives.... Ragh, rogh, ragh!
Nois
