How often do you suffer through traffic jams that waste time, money, natural resources, and effort? Now from the city with arguably the world’s worst traffic has come a civil engineer with a solution.
Samah Al-Tantawy has figured out a way to radically reduce congested traffic with a new system of stoplights that uses game theory and artificial intelligence to facilitate the flow of vehicles. Her “smart system” allows lights to send signals and data to neighboring intersections, which coordinate with one other to redirect traffic and undo gridlock. In tests in Toronto rush hour, it reduced delays by 40% and travel time by 26%.
Tantawy hopes to implement the new system in Egypt, where she plans to return, and estimates that the project will cost a mere $30,000 USD per year. Meanwhile, the 2012 PhD graduate from the University of Toronto has won awards from the institutes of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Operations Research and Management Sciences for her ingenuity.
For more info – University of Toronto news
