How many times have you been stopped at a red light in a completely empty intersection? No traffic going either way, just you grumbling over the useless waste, your car idling unnecessarily at a stoplight. Or, worse, how often have you been stuck in such heavy traffic that you’ve watched the light change multiple times, horns honking, tempers flaring? Getting stranded in a logjam of barely moving automobiles day after day is one of the most stressful situations the average person endures.
And when the media covers traffic congestion — if traffic gets covered at all — it focuses on the inconvenience. We’ve all read the headlines: Vancouver has some of the worst traffic in North America; Toronto is not far behind; smaller cities are getting worse by the day. We get a litany of statistics detailing the delays, the cost of time wasted and the psychological stress of sitting in gridlock. But rarely do these stories address the important issue of wasted fuel and added emissions.
We ask automakers to build more efficient vehicles, urge commuters to take public transit, and subsidize electric cars as though they will be the panacea that cures all. But precious little is done to ease traffic flow in Canadian cities, where fuel consumption continues to climb and we’re using more gas to move less. (An ad hoc simulation I conducted shows that a Toyota Camry consumes three times more fuel in stop-and-go traffic than at a constant 50 kilometres per hour.)
Yet it doesn’t have to be this way.
The sad thing is, technology to relieve all this fuel waste and unnecessary stress is available today. Simple synchronization of traffic lights, or integrating new Adaptive Signal Control Technologies (ASCTs), dramatically reduces fuel consumption and green house gases (GHGs). However, most Canadian jurisdictions lump traffic flow management in with their public transit initiatives. And why wouldn’t they? There are no federal or provincial regulations governing traffic management and precious little incentive encouraging them to do so.
Canada lagging behind
Projects stewarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation have shown that reducing traffic congestion has manifold benefits. The SURTRAC adaptive traffic control system implemented at some 20 Pittsburgh intersections has reduced travel time by 25% and reduced GHG emissions by 21%. Canada, which seeks to reduce its 2005 GHG levels by 20% by 2020 — with vehicles accounting for 13% of those levels — has nothing, or nearly nothing, like it.
In researching this report over the past two years, we were met with almost total indifference. The federal government pointed out that road transportation falls under provincial jurisdiction, while provincial transport departments argued that urban road networks were municipal problems, emphasizing instead their public transit initiatives. Transport Quebec considers urban traffic flow a blip on the environmental radar screen, referring to the 2009 Moving Cooler report, which claims that traffic management would reduce GHGs by a mere 0.035%, putting it near the bottom of some 50 GHG-reduction measures.
And as our governments pass the buck, alluding to the theory of “induced travel” (if there is less gridlock, more people will drive, which is counterproductive), our cities talk about budget constraints and priorities.
Indeed, even discussing ways to reduce traffic congestion seems taboo in Canada: Why make drivers’ lives easier when we want more people to use public transportation? Of course, that ignores the fact that, despite growing congestion and soaring fuel prices, 82% of commuters will always drive to work (StatsCan, 2010). We know traffic signals have an impact on our everyday lives, that “because they are a public investment, jurisdictions have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain and operate them at a high level,” says the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). But why is so little being done?
Canada has the worst traffic
Everyone thinks “their” traffic is the worst, but Canadians might have a right to claim the crown. TomTom’s 2013 congestion index ranks Vancouver the most congested among North American cities, ahead of L.A., ahead of Chicago, and, yes, ahead of New York.
Toronto, which was seventh in TomTom’s list of most congested cities, was among the first in the world to try real-time detection in the early 1990s. The city’s Split Cycle Offset Optimization Technique (SCOOT) system was installed on 350 lights (mainly downtown and in North York) at a cost of up to $30,000 each.
However, many describe the system as a black box no one can figure out. Myles Currie, director of the Toronto’s Traffic Management Centre, admits that SCOOT is starting to wear out; the system is complicated and the detection loops are easily broken. As well, Toronto’s 2,000 other non-SCOOT traffic lights need to be re-synchronized. A few — in the Adelaide-Richmond, Kennedy and Bloor corridors — were recently re-timed. Stop-and-go traffic decreased by 12% and fuel consumption and emissions dropped by 8%, but most lights are still out of step with current traffic flows. It would take another five years to complete the task.
With nearly as many traffic lights as Toronto, Montreal (10th in TomTom’s index) has the advantage of being so behind that it can leapfrog into the modern era without having to replace obsolete technologies. City of Montreal traffic engineer Daniel Beaulieu compares this to going to Netflix from VHS, bypassing DVDs and Blu-Ray altogether. But catching up takes time: an initial $20-million was announced in 2006, barely 100 cameras have been installed since, and the monitoring won’t be operational before 2017.
Until then, Montrealers have to deal with traffic lights that stop traffic at bike-path crossings — even in winter.
One city that seems to have done things right is the nation’s capital. For 25 years, Ottawa has manufactured, maintained and managed its 1,120 traffic lights. All the lights (and 200 cameras) are linked to the Loretta Street Traffic Control Centre, one of the most advanced centres on the continent, where technicians monitor some 30 screens and computers, optimizing traffic signals in real-time based on traffic disruptions. Few other North American cities have adopted an in-house system (L.A. being one of them), but director Chris Brinkman is adamant that Ottawa has proven it works.
What about Vancouver, which, according to TomTom, is North America’s most gridlocked city? It has chosen not to invest in improving its 800 traffic lights, believing the new ASCTs would be too disruptive to the cross flow of traffic. Rather, it is working on getting commuters out of their cars in favour of walking, biking and taking public transit, even if statistics say drivers won’t stop driving.
Fine-tuning, every three years
Synchronizing traffic lights is an art. The urban road network is a complex web that needs to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses and emergency vehicles — all jockeying for space on the road. Who is made to wait? When? And for how long? With new big box stores and residential developments, traffic conditions change. And most importantly, lights desynchronize over time. According to the ITE, this is why cities need to re-synchronize their traffic lights every three years, an operation that costs roughly $3,000 per intersection.
Unfortunately, few municipalities have a traffic department and even fewer conduct performance studies or periodic checks. Instead, they respond to problems — when reported — with their corrective measures often doing more harm than good.
Traffic decongestant
Better than re-timing, however, are the new Adaptive Signal Control Technologies (ASCT) systems, popular in the United States and “one of the most cost-effective means to improving transportation system efficiency,” says the ITE.
Such adaptive systems fall into two groups: supposed “self-learning” systems (such as the University of Toronto’s Marlin system being considered for Burlington, Ont.) and “real-time” technologies that react instantaneously to changes in traffic flow. According to Stephen Smith, researcher at Carnegie Mellon University (developers of the real-time, SURTRAC system), self-learning systems are at a disadvantage because it takes them longer “to respond to disruptions than it does for the disruptions to resolve themselves.”
The problem, in either case, is cost: the SURTRAC comes in at US $17,500 per intersection, double if cameras, radar or detection loops are also needed.
Costs are precisely why Ontario’s York Region took a step back; its 800 traffic lights cover an area that is three times that of neighbouring Toronto. “At around $1 million for some 10 intersections (Kennedy Street), the benefits do not outweigh the costs,” explains Steve Kemp, director of traffic management.
The sole Canadian city that has adopted ASCT, Surrey, B.C., where the population is expected to exceed Vancouver’s within two decades, shows positive initial results. Where a $500,000 pilot project took place on 72nd Avenue, travel times have been as good as if the traffic lights had just been re-synchronized. “What at first seemed expensive should pay for itself in barely two years,” says traffic operations manager Sinisa Petrovic.
Progress at a standstill
Easing traffic flow, of course, does have its limitations. “Only so many vehicles can use a traffic lane per hour, regardless of technology,” explains Beaulieu, from the city of Montreal. That said, the new adaptive traffic lights should ease traffic as much as possible, pushing back the need for building — and funding — new roads.
Except the message isn’t getting through. Unlike in the United States, where the federal Department of Transportation has a website listing the benefits, costs and lessons learned from various systems, our federal and provincial departments of the environment and transportation are strangely silent.
Government subsidies are needed to fuel development. Software exists for measuring GHG reductions when traffic is better managed. Indeed, our southern neighbours calculate subsidies that are in line with the environmental gains attained. In Canada, the gas tax fund could be diverted for municipal initiatives.
Even something as low-tech as the re-synchronization of the 25,000 traffic lights across the country wouldn’t be prohibitively expensive: $75 million over three years. Compare that with the $121-billion cost of traffic congestion (admittedly, in the United States, where such statistics are measured) in 2011 alone.
Unsynchronized traffic lights: a bygone era?
The traffic light was invented in England in 1868, before the automobile was a gleam in Gottlieb Daimler’s eye. Since then, traffic lights have advanced considerably with electrification, the addition of a yellow light and automation. By the mid-20th century, mechanical controllers were programmed for simple morning, evening and rush-hour sequences; in the 1970s, “modern” traffic lights started fine-tuning their synchronization with detection loops and, more recently, cameras.
And yet, most traffic management still requires laborious manual counts, specialized simulations and control by technicians at a traffic centre. The task is so complex that, in order to keep on top of its 2,300 traffic lights, the City of Toronto would have to hire 30 or so full-time engineers.
More modern ASCT traffic lights, gaining momentum in the U.S., use artificial intelligence to deliver a real-time response. What happens after an accident, during a snowstorm or in a construction zone? The lights re-synch themselves, intersection after intersection, accommodating disturbances any time of the day (not only during rush hours) and rendering the laborious — and often ignored — job of re-timing traffic lights obsolete.