> A simple example: at night, a main road mainly displays green, the side streets only get green for a very short time. If you arrive with the app from a side street, you can get green immediately, provided there is no traffic on the main road.
In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night! All traffic lights already have yield/stop/priority signs as a fallback, so those take over. The yellow lights on the side street will usually flash as an additional warning so you don't overlook the yield/stop sign.
I don't understand why they need apps for this either. The infrastructure should be in place to detect cars approaching from the side street. Once they have the ability to detect cars, it's simple to assume everyone would be requesting a green light.
Presumably the app would be able to signal the presence of an approaching car from a much longer distance than the inductive loops you typically see these systems, ensuring cars don't even need to slow down when approaching the intersection. (Saving gas, brake/tire wear, and time.)
It's also probably cheaper than the extra physical infrastructure needed for inductive loops, given that all the necessary equipment (phones, GPS, cell infrastructure) is already in place for most people.
> The infrastructure should be in place to detect cars approaching from the side street. Once they have the ability to detect cars, it's simple to assume everyone would be requesting a green light.
Historically, traffic control systems detected cars with sensors embedded in the road. The cars had to come to the light to be detected.
It's the most reliable method, but it requires the car to nearly come to a stop first to get to the right spot.
It's easy to imagine more complicated computer vision or radar systems detecting cars. These are orders of magnitude more complex, though. When cities install traffic infrastructure they want to leave it alone and service it as infrequently as possible. It also needs to last for decades before replacement. Modern systems that are cheap, robust, and can detect traffic from a distance throughout different conditions like rain, snow, dark, and fog reliably are a recent invention. It's going to be decades before these are widely retrofitted to long-standing infrastructure.
We've had traffic lights like that in the UK for ages. Where I am in the States these days, they're very common. There's one very effective one that manages my turning from the residential street onto to the main road. I was getting irritated at the weekend because I came across some lights that didn't have sensors. 5 cars stuck waiting at the lights for literally no one.
Of course, the other thing they do in the UK is use small roundabouts, that can handle a fair amount of traffic nice and smoothly.
You would be amazed how bad drivers are at actually hitting the correct stopping position for the inductive loops in the ground that sense cars. When I'm on my bike stopped on a small side street I often try and gesture for drivers to pull up so their car is over the vehicle sensor in the pavement and the light changes faster. Drivers have gotten angry and yelled at me for giving them a little "inch up" hand gesture.
A city nearby here in America also does something similar.
After 10:30pm through 6am, the main road's lights go blinking yellow, and the side road's lights to blinking red.
Its basically easy to get around, since most lights are now a yield or stop. No app goofiness or any of that. And it has been implementable for decades.
I was looking for this response! I am in one of those parts of America where the complete absence of other cars is interpreted as a green light, even if nobody bothers to set them to turn to blinking red/yellow during the low traffic hours.
This is more or less how it worked in the small town where I grew up in the US as well. At night, almost all the lights would flash yellow from around 1AM til 6AM? I think. It's been a long time since I lived there.
I know several intersections in America that do this. They go to a flashing red light because we do have an occasional problem with citizens who don't know that a traffic light that's not operating is an all-way stop sign, but the theory is the same.
I remember learning in primary school about 25 years ago about this new-fangled technology where they embed sensors in the road surface that allows the traffic light to change its cycle based on the traffic patterns.
This is only done when traffic is light enough so you can normally cross without any danger. But now that you mention it, there is one of these lights nearby with buttons for pedestrians, next time I'm there after 8 pm I could check if it comes back to life when you press a button...
They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.
Right. The government facilitates the commercial apps to communicate using the ETSI ITS standards with the traffic lights. For these protocols, lots of privacy discussions have taken place, like using different IDs at every intersection, and even hiding the line number of a bus. This make doing analyses like routing decisions pretty hard using only the public data. But the commercial apps have access to everything...
That is crazy and at the same time so Belgian. Belgians have 0 understanding of anything to do with cars. Their roads are horrible, they are horrible drivers, it is crazy.
When I lived in Brussels all traffic lights of intersections would go green at the same time and red at the same time. So lights for pedestrians AND cars in ALL directions. People just can't drive at all, they can only honk their horn. Potholes in the highway are filled with pebbles and sand, etc
My theory is that it has to do with how they learn to drive:
It used to be super easy to get a drivers license in Belgium back in the day. Basically you'd just go to the town hall and buy one. They now have a system where you get a special permit to driver with an 'experienced' supervisor. Usually one of your parents for a certain number of months before going to an exam to get your license.
Let's say that a professional driving instructor can get across 80-90% of their knowledge of driving cars to someone. Now imagine how poorly an amateur would do, 50%? 30%? So you learn 30% of someone who learned 30% of someone...
In general though, it just shows how unimportant the average Belgian finds cars or properly learning about driving them and traffic, etc. So maybe the learning how to drive is just a symptom of an overal lack of caring with regards to driving properly. As this strange pay-to-win driving schema also shows.
> these are apps of commercial data-sharing/selling businesses, not some 'official' gov app for the benefit of the citizens.
While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps.
> Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights?
The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights.
> And due to the inherent red-queen arms race
What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation.
Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.
"The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights."
While milking their data with gov backed incentives. Pay us with your data, and we will provide you tweaking traffic lights. What exactly are you running defense for?
"Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation"
Have you driven in Belgium? It is what it is, not what it "should" be.
Very glad to hear that. If the apps are made by commercial entities then presumably I get a choice of which one to use, which means in the absence of any artificial barriers I can choose one that respects my privacy (possibly something open-source).
If it were a single, government-made app then there would be no such choice.
You can dream of better yet! If the spec was required to be open source for the government project, then you could have commercial choices and some less feature rich open source version.
I have no idea why the app is required here. Cars & bikes are massive, hot, & mobile objects. They're perfect for a modest-cost IR sensor atop the traffic light to detect them and adjust the lights accordingly. This type of system is commonplace in cities in the UK and works effectively.
Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.
This isn't a system to detect if there are cars at an intersection. Wire loops and other systems already can and do measure cars like that.
This is a system to detect "in 32 minutes, twenty-five cars will come from the south, crossing sixteen cars from the east. By pausing the western traffic lights for three seconds, both streams of cars can drive past each other without clogging up the main intersection".
Users don't need to press buttons on apps, they're just using their existing navigation apps which are already providing them with directions (or in the case of Flitsmeister, speed cameras). Similar apps also exist for pedestrians and bikes in my country. My biking experience certainly has improved by having lights on empty/near empty intersections automatically turn green when I'm approaching.
I'd rather see more roundabouts rather than the badly scheduled traffic light system my city has, but the system works for me.
There's the ever-present privacy threat of sharing your (aggregate) location, of course, but in this case we're talking about the government, which pretty much has a live map of what phones are moving where already.
Is that level of complexity actually necessary? The way that the UK system appears to work (as a user) is that the IR sensor detects a vehicle approaching the intersection from the minor road and, if there are no vehicles approaching on the major road, it gives you a green light by the time you actually reach the junction.
I agree that the app-based system would theoretically be slightly better in that it has more information to work with, but given that we're basically talking about a stochastic process then it feels like the IR system should really be good enough.
Predict the exact traffic situation 32 minutes in the future? Where would the information come from? The actual system in Flanders predicts about 1 minute, and that only for the main arteries. And the system barely uses the info from the vehicles, the main source is induction loops. Only a small percentage of the vehicles send their location, and hardly any cyclist and pedestrians. Vehicles don't send their destination, only the 'turn-intention' on the next intersection. But even that is unreliable, so typically not used.
Cyclist aren't massive nor hot, on a hot summerday they will be cooler than the road surface. I think a camera with object recognition or something similar should be able to do it.
It's not the first time apps are being shoved where they shouldn't belong by the Flemish Government. They made a cooking app of half a million Euro [1] and there were trials where you could use an app to to get the deposit back on plastic bottles by scanning the bottle and your wastebag [2].
I'm not sure if it's incompetence, trying to look modern or just plain old corruption.
> Cyclist aren't massive nor hot, on a hot summerday they will be cooler than the road surface. I think a camera with object recognition or something similar should be able to do it.
I don't know the technical details on how it's done here in Stockholm, even less in the suburbs where I've lived but it feels like magic that in some traffic lights in busier intersections they'll just trigger by themselves with enough distance that when I arrive with the bike at the intersection the lights are turning green for me.
I have looked for cameras but couldn't find them, it's even more puzzling in a specific intersection close to my house where I bike along a 4-lane road with only fields of wheat and grass, and the intersection I cross leads to an industrial area, there are only the posts for the pedestrian/bike lights and those still turn green, no cameras in sight, no detection trap on the pavement.
Indeed, here in Linz the few intelligent traffic lights we have are mostly for cyclists and the detection works great. On the three bridges there are counters that differentiate between trucks, cars, cyclists and pedestrians and they also work great.
That's not how it works - the idea is your navigation app signals the lights in advance. If you will reach red lights in 1km, the app signals this and the lights will be green before you're there, so you don't need to slow down.
I actually assumed that this is because the system tries to figure out where you will be by your planned route.
so seeing the bike coming up is much later - for example when the bike will be coming around a corner
Do bicyclists and pedestrians really require the use of sensors? There are a lot of paths around me that cross busy roads with traffic signals. We just press a button. It speaks after you press it for visually impaired users and shows a red light after you press it for audibly impaired users.
Do pedestrians need automatic detection? Not necessarily, although a beg button adds unnecessary friction.
Do cyclists need automatic detection? Yes, absolutely. If you think otherwise, would you want to park and exit your car every time you want to cross an intersection? It's no different for a cyclist.
Many cities use TPMS monitoring/fingerprinting on highways to gauge traffic levels. Wouldn't be shocked if they started using that for traffic light timings
> Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.
The article says that the they just ned a relevant app running on their phone when they're approaching an relevant traffic light, and there's no mention that users need to actively do anything.
Also please have a read through the HN guidelines regarding your punchline "is categorically moronic."
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Here (switzerland) lights turn red on purpose to slow down traffic. The idea is that if you see a green light in the distance, you are motivated to speed up to catch it before it turns red. If it is red in the distance, you slow down because you eventually have to stop, and when you are like 20m from it, detectors will see you and turn it green.
My experience as a cyclist contradicts that: many motorists will still (riskily) overtake you just to reach the red light sooner. Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them. See also: people passing by you on a multi-lane highway and then promptly slowing down once they have returned to your lane...
I don't understand this. There is a red light. You will have to stop. Why do people still cross a solid line (which will get you a fine if police sees you) to overtake me and then stop directly in front of me? It makes no sense.
It's even worse when they overtake me and stop in front of me at an intersection with two lanes where they could just stay in the fucking lane they used to overtake me.
I swear some driver are doing it on purpose because they hate everyone else on the road.
The faster you get your car to the inductive sensor in the road, the faster the lights change.
And plenty of turning lanes in New Zealand will not trigger the green turning arrow unless a car is waiting. If you don't get onto the sensor before the phase completes for the cross traffic, then you need to wait a full phase of lights before the green arrow is enabled (which can be quite a while, depending on pedestrians and other turning lanes etc).
It depends on time of day and wether cars coming the other direction are waiting to turn.
A few intersections are very cycle unfriendly, because they separate induction sensors for cycles are not installed for all lanes.
Not saying that your explanation is wrong, just saying that in some circumstances, hooning up to the light can reduce wait times for drivers.
The same thing can happen when walking (pressing the pedestrian cross button in time can reduce the waiting time before you can cross), or cycling (sometimes you need to get onto the cycle induction sensor to get the green cycle lights faster).
>My experience as a cyclist contradicts that: many motorists will still (riskily) overtake you just to reach the red light sooner. Some people apparently just can't stand to have anyone driving before them.
???
Seems like the far more plausible reason is that drivers don't want to be held up by a cyclist traveling at 10mph in front of them? Moreover if it's really true that lights only turn from red once a car reached them, then it makes sense to maintain speed (including overtaking any bicycles), because getting to the light faster means it turns to green sooner.
Sounds like they never heard of Goodhart's law. They rigged a system which measures behavior (distance of approaching vehicle) and tied it to decision making (controlling a traffic light) in order to create an incentive toward a certain desired behavior. That's a prime example of something where people will learn the system and game it to optimize their own advantage instead of the desired behavior.
Thanks for explaining, because the OP made it sound like the red light tricked you into wastefully shedding speed instead of letting you stay at the speed limit. Their language makes it sound like they view slowing traffic as intrinsically good, rather than just trying to prevent speeding.
Flemish EMT here. There were a lot of privacy concerns for emergency services when this came out, and my service is in fact not using it on most ambulances. The same concerns were hand-waved away when it came to apps for regular drivers. It would not surprise me if that played a role for Google Maps/Waze not to support it. Or the market is too small here to be worth implementing.
In the US, there’s a thing called the Opticom. It’s just an extra light that is installed along with the normal light bar, and the traffic light recognizes the strobe pattern, and changes. https://www.fedsig.com/product/opticom/
But highly susceptible to unauthorized use. The app version can also alert drivers directly with an audible alert that an emergency vehicle is close by
The concern was related to being able to know where emergency vehicles were. If you build a system that announces to traffic light “I’m police/fire/EMS, coming through”, you also build an early warning system for criminals and terrorists who either want to avoid or target you.
At least in the UK ambulance crews are extremely tightly monitored (mostly for good reasons) so surprised there would be any privacy concerns for crew on the clock.
I wonder what technology they're using to back this. The Netherlands has a system not too dissimilar to this (seemingly mostly marketed towards bikes) with wide scale deployment in cities: https://map.udap.nl/app/viewer/subjects?subjectTypeId=TRAFFI...
I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong.
Packaging this in app form seems like an excellent way to permit someone to emulate a couple dozen installs, all traveling along the same path, tricking congestion systems into giving them priority over other traffic participants.
Thanks for sharing that link. The categories suggest that this system is mainly used to give priority to certain kinds of vehicles. Public transport and emergency vehicles already had a system to turn lights green, so this seems like an addition to extend the system to "milder" priority vehicles like construction without giving them access to the previous system.
The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists.
As far as I know, almost all traffic lights in the Netherlands work with magnetic sensors under the road for presence detection. Then there are a few optical cameras for congestion detection at specific intersections.
The magnetic sensors don't pick up ultralight or carbon road bikes, but bikes usually have an additional push button anyway.
> The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists.
It depends on the city, but unless you're on the highway or about to enter one, a traffic light here can be assumed to serve bikes.
I found that link a few years ago thanks to an app I used when I went to university: https://www.enschedefietsstad.nl/enschede-fietst-app/snel-gr... The municipality has an app that will integrate with the iVRI system to have traffic lights turn green faster for bikes. It doesn't do anything for cars, it's built purely to try to convince more people not to travel by car.
Of course, iVRI data providing information about incoming bicycles don't automatically reprogram traffic lights to give them priority. However, the information is available. I've had the Enschede app trigger a "this app requested X green lights during your ride" popup in other cities; I'm pretty sure it's just an iVRI integration, not one restricted by a specific municipality.
"We want to be present on the apps that people already use" How can they not see that an app for traffic lights is clearly the wrong approach? Smart traffic lights are working great in many countries without needing an app for them to work.
Belgium has intelligent traffic lights already. You can't use an app system like this without existing smart traffic light infrastructure.
This just allows for better traffic flow management by predicting influxes of traffic along long roads.
But, more importantly, it allows traffic planners to analyze popular sources/destinations on the road map. If 90% of cars turn left at a certain traffic light but only because the traffic light before it takes forever to turn green, they can tweak the scheduling to divide traffic more evenly.
The obvious downside, of course, is that this data will quickly show individuals when analyzing patterns in remote areas.
Everyone wants you to install their app these days. Install my app to turn on the lights, install the app to see the menu at a restaurant, install the app to read information about an archaeological site, install an app to open the automatic doors.
You will soon be unable to cross the intersection unless you manually turn the light green from your mobile phone or wait until another authorised driver does it, in order to protect the children
I think many in the comments are misunderstanding how this works, perhaps because it's not clearly explained, but my understanding is that they want to integrate with your navigation software so that they can predict (based on the routes of drivers navigating with a supported app) when certain vehicles will reach certain lights and adjust the timing so as not to cause traffic to have to slow down.
The only way to do this effectively is with a planned route, and hence why they need to use an app (the one you're using to navigate/route plan with) and why having the main navigation apps people tend to use (e.g. Waze, GMaps) is desirable.
Demand traffic lights using a loop sensor that can pick up a car through magnetism are nothing new. They can be a problem for cyclists because many bikes don't have enough metal.
There used to be a traffic light in Ithaca where if you were heading out of town via the South hill you could bypass South Aurora St and instead go up a residential street up a steep hill with very little traffic, hang a left and trigger the light and almost always get the light to turn red in front of the person who was in front of you on the main road.
Note that here they are working via phone apps, so if you are navigating with a local navigation app like Karta GPS, Flitsmeister or Sway, these apps can let the lights know you are heading that way and will be there in X minutes. Therefore this approach is not _really_ car centered and also works for bikes or any alternative form of transportation. If I read between the lines of the article, the system was developed for emergency services first, but is now expanded.
Readit News
In Germany, there's an established but much more low tech approach to this problem: simply turn off the traffic lights at night! All traffic lights already have yield/stop/priority signs as a fallback, so those take over. The yellow lights on the side street will usually flash as an additional warning so you don't overlook the yield/stop sign.
It's also probably cheaper than the extra physical infrastructure needed for inductive loops, given that all the necessary equipment (phones, GPS, cell infrastructure) is already in place for most people.
Historically, traffic control systems detected cars with sensors embedded in the road. The cars had to come to the light to be detected.
It's the most reliable method, but it requires the car to nearly come to a stop first to get to the right spot.
It's easy to imagine more complicated computer vision or radar systems detecting cars. These are orders of magnitude more complex, though. When cities install traffic infrastructure they want to leave it alone and service it as infrequently as possible. It also needs to last for decades before replacement. Modern systems that are cheap, robust, and can detect traffic from a distance throughout different conditions like rain, snow, dark, and fog reliably are a recent invention. It's going to be decades before these are widely retrofitted to long-standing infrastructure.
Of course, the other thing they do in the UK is use small roundabouts, that can handle a fair amount of traffic nice and smoothly.
Deleted Comment
Data.
After 10:30pm through 6am, the main road's lights go blinking yellow, and the side road's lights to blinking red.
Its basically easy to get around, since most lights are now a yield or stop. No app goofiness or any of that. And it has been implementable for decades.
Many American cities do this, too.
Well, they don't turn the lights off. They flash to distinguish this state from the power being off.
It's more common in smaller cities.
It totally makes sense as an approach. No point in having normal traffic light cycles on low-traffic streets at 2 AM.
That's often overlooked with ideas like this.
They are the products of https://ndrive.com/ , https://www.flitsmeister.nl and https://be-mobile.com/ .
They also focus on toll collecting and parking fees, so "pay to play" is in a sense already in their DNA. Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights? And due to the inherent red-queen arms race in this, not installing any of these apps will explicitly disadvantage you as the 'smart' traffic lights (already 1 in 8 and growing rapidly) do favor the app users.
When I lived in Brussels all traffic lights of intersections would go green at the same time and red at the same time. So lights for pedestrians AND cars in ALL directions. People just can't drive at all, they can only honk their horn. Potholes in the highway are filled with pebbles and sand, etc
My theory is that it has to do with how they learn to drive: It used to be super easy to get a drivers license in Belgium back in the day. Basically you'd just go to the town hall and buy one. They now have a system where you get a special permit to driver with an 'experienced' supervisor. Usually one of your parents for a certain number of months before going to an exam to get your license.
Let's say that a professional driving instructor can get across 80-90% of their knowledge of driving cars to someone. Now imagine how poorly an amateur would do, 50%? 30%? So you learn 30% of someone who learned 30% of someone...
In general though, it just shows how unimportant the average Belgian finds cars or properly learning about driving them and traffic, etc. So maybe the learning how to drive is just a symptom of an overal lack of caring with regards to driving properly. As this strange pay-to-win driving schema also shows.
While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps.
> Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights?
The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights.
> And due to the inherent red-queen arms race
What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation.
Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.
But it is not.
"The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights."
While milking their data with gov backed incentives. Pay us with your data, and we will provide you tweaking traffic lights. What exactly are you running defense for?
"Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation"
Have you driven in Belgium? It is what it is, not what it "should" be.
If it were a single, government-made app then there would be no such choice.
Having drivers reach for their phone when they're approaching traffic lights - common pedestrian crossing points - is categorically moronic.
This is a system to detect "in 32 minutes, twenty-five cars will come from the south, crossing sixteen cars from the east. By pausing the western traffic lights for three seconds, both streams of cars can drive past each other without clogging up the main intersection".
Users don't need to press buttons on apps, they're just using their existing navigation apps which are already providing them with directions (or in the case of Flitsmeister, speed cameras). Similar apps also exist for pedestrians and bikes in my country. My biking experience certainly has improved by having lights on empty/near empty intersections automatically turn green when I'm approaching.
I'd rather see more roundabouts rather than the badly scheduled traffic light system my city has, but the system works for me.
There's the ever-present privacy threat of sharing your (aggregate) location, of course, but in this case we're talking about the government, which pretty much has a live map of what phones are moving where already.
I agree that the app-based system would theoretically be slightly better in that it has more information to work with, but given that we're basically talking about a stochastic process then it feels like the IR system should really be good enough.
Seems like possibly it's a small enough region that you could cram it into a MILP solver?
It's not the first time apps are being shoved where they shouldn't belong by the Flemish Government. They made a cooking app of half a million Euro [1] and there were trials where you could use an app to to get the deposit back on plastic bottles by scanning the bottle and your wastebag [2].
I'm not sure if it's incompetence, trying to look modern or just plain old corruption.
[1] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2025/05/27/kookapp-van-vlaamse-...
[2] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/05/23/cordacampus-proefpro...
I don't know the technical details on how it's done here in Stockholm, even less in the suburbs where I've lived but it feels like magic that in some traffic lights in busier intersections they'll just trigger by themselves with enough distance that when I arrive with the bike at the intersection the lights are turning green for me.
I have looked for cameras but couldn't find them, it's even more puzzling in a specific intersection close to my house where I bike along a 4-lane road with only fields of wheat and grass, and the intersection I cross leads to an industrial area, there are only the posts for the pedestrian/bike lights and those still turn green, no cameras in sight, no detection trap on the pavement.
Do cyclists need automatic detection? Yes, absolutely. If you think otherwise, would you want to park and exit your car every time you want to cross an intersection? It's no different for a cyclist.
The article says that the they just ned a relevant app running on their phone when they're approaching an relevant traffic light, and there's no mention that users need to actively do anything.
Also please have a read through the HN guidelines regarding your punchline "is categorically moronic."
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's even worse when they overtake me and stop in front of me at an intersection with two lanes where they could just stay in the fucking lane they used to overtake me.
I swear some driver are doing it on purpose because they hate everyone else on the road.
It happens when they are yielding to someone behind that's going faster than them. It's quite common here in Europe.
And plenty of turning lanes in New Zealand will not trigger the green turning arrow unless a car is waiting. If you don't get onto the sensor before the phase completes for the cross traffic, then you need to wait a full phase of lights before the green arrow is enabled (which can be quite a while, depending on pedestrians and other turning lanes etc).
It depends on time of day and wether cars coming the other direction are waiting to turn.
A few intersections are very cycle unfriendly, because they separate induction sensors for cycles are not installed for all lanes.
Not saying that your explanation is wrong, just saying that in some circumstances, hooning up to the light can reduce wait times for drivers.
The same thing can happen when walking (pressing the pedestrian cross button in time can reduce the waiting time before you can cross), or cycling (sometimes you need to get onto the cycle induction sensor to get the green cycle lights faster).
???
Seems like the far more plausible reason is that drivers don't want to be held up by a cyclist traveling at 10mph in front of them? Moreover if it's really true that lights only turn from red once a car reached them, then it makes sense to maintain speed (including overtaking any bicycles), because getting to the light faster means it turns to green sooner.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave
Deleted Comment
No app required.
I don't think something like ETSI ITS can be implemented in apps like this, although ITS does seem to have a TCP/UDP transport so maybe I'm wrong.
Packaging this in app form seems like an excellent way to permit someone to emulate a couple dozen installs, all traveling along the same path, tricking congestion systems into giving them priority over other traffic participants.
The location of the lights doesn't exactly point to usage by cyclists.
As far as I know, almost all traffic lights in the Netherlands work with magnetic sensors under the road for presence detection. Then there are a few optical cameras for congestion detection at specific intersections.
The magnetic sensors don't pick up ultralight or carbon road bikes, but bikes usually have an additional push button anyway.
It depends on the city, but unless you're on the highway or about to enter one, a traffic light here can be assumed to serve bikes.
I found that link a few years ago thanks to an app I used when I went to university: https://www.enschedefietsstad.nl/enschede-fietst-app/snel-gr... The municipality has an app that will integrate with the iVRI system to have traffic lights turn green faster for bikes. It doesn't do anything for cars, it's built purely to try to convince more people not to travel by car.
Of course, iVRI data providing information about incoming bicycles don't automatically reprogram traffic lights to give them priority. However, the information is available. I've had the Enschede app trigger a "this app requested X green lights during your ride" popup in other cities; I'm pretty sure it's just an iVRI integration, not one restricted by a specific municipality.
This just allows for better traffic flow management by predicting influxes of traffic along long roads.
But, more importantly, it allows traffic planners to analyze popular sources/destinations on the road map. If 90% of cars turn left at a certain traffic light but only because the traffic light before it takes forever to turn green, they can tweak the scheduling to divide traffic more evenly.
The obvious downside, of course, is that this data will quickly show individuals when analyzing patterns in remote areas.
As you said, it's 100% the wrong approach.
Except that's not what they want here. What they want is for the apps that most people already use to add support for this.
The only way to do this effectively is with a planned route, and hence why they need to use an app (the one you're using to navigate/route plan with) and why having the main navigation apps people tend to use (e.g. Waze, GMaps) is desirable.
There used to be a traffic light in Ithaca where if you were heading out of town via the South hill you could bypass South Aurora St and instead go up a residential street up a steep hill with very little traffic, hang a left and trigger the light and almost always get the light to turn red in front of the person who was in front of you on the main road.
They retimed it so this didn't work anymore.