Maybe you’ve muttered it to yourself, in a moment frustration, as you tap the steering wheel and stare at a persistent red.
在失望的時候,你或許會這樣自言自語,一邊用指頭敲著方向盤,一邊盯著一直不變的紅燈。
As Dr. Steven Smith points out, it’s literally true.
按照史蒂夫•史密斯博士所說,這種想法確實沒錯。
“The way conventional systems work, you preprogram those timing systems in advance,” he explains. “But as soon as you install them, they start to age. Patterns and flows are continually evolving.”
他解釋說:“常規(guī)交通管理系統(tǒng)的工作方式,需要提前對定時系統(tǒng)進行預(yù)編程。系統(tǒng)安裝好之后便已經(jīng)開始老化。但交通模式與流量一直在持續(xù)變化。”
Reprogramming a single intersection as population and geography shifts costs thousands of dollars—so some municipalities rarely get around to it. The signal patterns keeping you stuck in traffic may be three to five years out of date, if not more.
隨著人口與地形的變化,對一個十字路口進行重新編程的成本可能需要數(shù)千美元,因此,許多城市根本沒有考慮這樣做。那些令你陷入交通堵塞的信號模式,可能在三五年前便早已過時。
The resulting inefficiencies multiply into the broader economy. The Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report found that in 2011, congestion cost the U.S. an aggregate $121 billion dollars, up from just $24 billion in 1982.
由此產(chǎn)生的低效會擴展到整體經(jīng)濟。德州農(nóng)工大學(xué)交通研究所(Texas A&M Transportation Institute)的《城市交通報告》發(fā)現(xiàn),2011年,美國的交通擁堵成本總計為1,210億美元,而在1982年僅為240億美元。
Smith is hoping to change that. On top of his position as a research professor at Carnegie Mellon, he’s the head of Surtrac, a startup that’s applying cutting-edge artificial intelligence and planning to traffic management. Surtrac’s smart traffic signals rely on advanced sensors and powerful processing to update their patterns, not every few years, but every few seconds, in response to shifting traffic volumes and unexpected events like accidents or road closures. They’ve been deployed in a growing pilot study in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood since 2012.
史密斯希望改變這種狀況。他不僅是卡耐基梅隆大學(xué)(Carnegie Mellon)的研究教授,也是初創(chuàng)公司Surtrac的負(fù)責(zé)人,這家公司將先進的人工智能技術(shù)與規(guī)劃應(yīng)用于交通管理。Surtrac的智能交通信號依靠先進的傳感器和強大的處理技術(shù),每隔幾秒鐘就更新一次信號模式,而非幾年時間,以此響應(yīng)交通流量的變化和意外事件,如交通事故或道路封閉等。自2012年以來,該公司在匹茲堡的東利伯蒂社區(qū)進行了初步研究。
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