BOSTON — Bostonians know the frustration of waiting at an intersection where the traffic light seems stuck on red.
Boston is the first city in the country to use artificial intelligence to calibrate the timing of traffic lights.
It is a partnership with Google called Project Greenlight.
“Project Greenlight is a way for us to save drivers time as they move about Boston,” said Boston Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge.
“Google collects data all the time as people move around, using Google Maps and other apps that they own, and they use this data to anonymously analyze all of the traffic signals that are functioning in Boston.”
More than one hundred of the city’s signalized intersections have been recalibrated so far.
One success story is the intersection of Beecham Street and Maffa Way, which is located in the Sullivan Square area of Charlestown.
By tweaking the timing of traffic lights by a few seconds, the intersection saw a 24% decline in traffic tie-ups.
Unnecessary stops plummeted by a third.
“By making an adjustment as to when this particular intersection made its shift in each part of the cycle, we were able to save more than 44,000 hours a year for drivers”, added Franklin-Hodge.
It’s a similar success story in the North End, where Richmond Street meets Atlantic Avenue.
Better timing there led to a traffic delay reduction of 24% and a 34% cut in unnecessary stops.
“On average, about a 13% reduction in delay at the intersections that have been optimized by Project Greenlight,” said Franklin-Hodge.
He added that although AI is good, traffic engineers still do site visits after Google flags an intersection.
“It still takes human intervention because in some cases the recommendation looked good to artificial intelligence, but when we looked at the actual intersection, we say wait a second, if we did this, it would negatively impact the pedestrian experience at this intersection.”
City officials estimate an average of 4,000 gallons of gas is saved at each intersection they adjust.
At the Sullivan Square intersection, the numbers to 14,000 gallons a year.
Google provides its traffic analysis at no cost to the city.
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