Comment on A new study found adaptive traffic signals powered by big data reduced peak-hour travel times by 11% in China’s 100 most congested cities – saving 31.73 million tonnes of CO₂ annually.

Eiri@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  No they aren’t. They’re saying smarter traffic systems are an improvement over what we have now. I’ve looked in the article and nowhere do they say cars aren’t a problem, or that emissions is down to traffic lights not cars.

  I see so many examples on here and on Reddit of people letting perfect be the enemy of good.

  Whether we like it or not, cars will be around for a while. It makes no sense to put zero effort into improving efficiency in the meantime. You don’t have to be so all-or-nothing.

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  • deltamental@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yes, and such intelligent systems can also optimize for pedestrian traffic, reducing the time waiting for a walk light, monitor bike lane usage, track dangerous intersections, improve emergency response times, prioritize buses and trams, etc. It’s good for people to be gathering this data and trying to make things better.

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    • DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yes, and such intelligent systems can also optimize for pedestrian traffic,

      In the US, these types of “intelligent” systems almost always degrade pedestrian traffic quite severely.

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  • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    And next year the congestion will be the same as before, except with even more cars and even more emissions.

    This is equivalent to building another lane on a highway to increase throughput and decrease traffic jams. In the beginning, emissions will be reduced since traffic jams occur less frequently. And then, through induced demand, there’s congestion again.

    Improving car throughput directly leads to increased emissions with a small delay.

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    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Doesn’t go against my comment at all.

      Like they said, it could lead to more people driving. Not only are they uncertain, is it likely to be by an amount that would be more than the emissions saved?

      Let’s look at this from another angle. What do you think we should do? Every government on Earth suddenly decides to destroy every car on the planet within the next few months?

      Like I said, cars will continue to exist for a while. It makes no sense to put your hands up and say “well, cars are bad. But if they can’t be eliminated completely then we shouldn’t attempt to reduce vehicle emissions at all”.

      This change is a good one. I’ve said it already, but you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good.

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      • Nalivai@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        It makes no sense to put your hands up and say "well, cars are bad.

        Nobody is doing that. We’re saying “cars are bad, let’s put money and effort to alternatives so people use less cars”. Putting effort into squeezing more cars on the roads is literally the opposite of that goal. This change, like many other one-more-line-bro changes might look cool, but will make situation worse, if the change will even happen at all.

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      • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Yes, if the induced demand results in similar levels of congestion - which it very often does - there would be more emissions in the end.

        And you’re right, cars will exist for the forseeable future. I do not however want the government subsidizing car dependency since it is destructive to the environment and to everyone’s health and safety.

        A couple of possibilities to drastically reduce traffic:

        • turn all multi-lane streets within cities into single-lane streets for cars with exclusive bus and bike lanes to treat all forms of traffic equally
        • reduce all speed limits to 30 km/h to reduce car noise, emissions and increase pedestrian safety
        • traffic lights should prefer public transit, pedestrians and bicyclists instead of cars
        • stop subsidizing parking spaces for cars with city money and drastically reduce on-street parking as cars take away massive amounts of space
        • put toll roads onto highways as their cost is massively higher compared to fuel taxes. After all, trains have to pay a costly fee to use train tracks already - why should cars have this privilege?

        There’s a lot more I could write here but you get the gist. Making car traffic more efficient does not reduce emissions in the long term in the slightest. Making car traffic less efficient reduces emissions instead because people will not use cars as frequently.

        And keep in mind, I’m not talking about Bumfuck Nowhere (population: 725) when mentioning public transit. Cities have insane amounts of car traffic which can be massively reduced with just a couple of decisions. This would make car traffic less efficient as right now it enjoys many privileges over other forms of transportation.

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• CricketGreen@feddit.uk ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Exactly all this does is create more road capacity which will inevitably lead to more cars and the increased congestion.

  This is the big data equivalent of “one more lane”.

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• CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It‘s even worse. You need mass surveillance and strip away human rights to do it the way China does it. And I am sorry, but that‘s not worth it. There are countless better ways to deal with climate change because in the end of the day it‘s still a self serving mission for the most part.

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  • Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Which human right does this strip away?

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    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Privacy obviously. They collect everything about their citizens and use it in every system. They‘re not some super advanced country that simply does tech better than everyone else, they just hoard more data than anyone and use it carelessly everywhere.

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  • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Your take is that changing traffic management is a violation of human rights?

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    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Your bad faith argument aside, they absolutely do use technology that violates human rights and integrate it in this system. Think about why smart cities are controversial and amp it up to 11. That‘s China managing their population. Point systems that prevent you from air travel because you dared criticize the almighty government do violate the basic human right of free speech and control traffic at the same time.

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      • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Point systems that prevent you from air travel or entering other provinces because you dared criticize the almighty government

        That’s… just not real… Your understanding of Chinese policy comes from curated western sources with vested interests in putting a dystopian and totalitarian understanding of China and its government in our countries’ people (we’re both westerners). There are systems in place to prevent certain convicted criminals from freely moving around there country, but that has little to do with criticising the party.

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• yunxiaoli@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  China has more public transit of every type than the rest of the world combined at this point, and most of their cities are quite pedestrian centric.

  Cars are a luxury outside the rural areas, and they’re a problem, but this is unrelated to that.

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