New York buses to turn stop lights green
In a pilot program starting the end of September, 300 Staten Island buses will be given transmitters that let them change traffic lights green. Okay, not instantly green, that would probably not be very safe. The transmitters turns the lights green seconds earlier and keeps it green longer if it's already green. It's not all lights. Just 14 lights with the receivers on a 2.3 miles stretch of the bus route. Buses in other New York boroughs will get them over the next five years.
The system is called MIRT or Mobile Infra Red Transmitter. It's used by emergency vehicles like ambulances and police to get through traffic easier in an emergency. The advantage for buses could be better fuel economy because they would not need to stop and idle as much. You can make your own stop light remote control but if you are caught, there is a maximum fine of $10,000 or 6 months in jail.
[Source: EcoGeek]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rgseidl 2:34PM (9/06/2007)
Maybe the bus would spend a little less time idling and provide slightly faster service. However, all vehicles in cross traffic will spend more time idling and suffer longer travel times.
The difference will almost certainly not be enough to coax driver to switch to public transport, but it will annoy them. Moreover, total CO2 and other emissions at these intersections will probably go up not down.
If you really want to save fuel on bus operations, you need to switch to a more efficient driveline technology, e.g. a hybrid.
If you want to save money on operations, either eliminate the unprofitable lines (usually, all of them :^x) or increase their utility by improving integration with other modes of transport, increasing service frequency and/or routing the fleet dynamically, increasing ride comfort, keeping the interior clean, reserving lanes for HOV vehicles even in city centers and most importantly, taxing the snot out of all on-road fuels. In addition, chip away at the problem of low housing density and long commutes to work for the next 30-50 years. Good luck with all that.
Experience in Europe shows that even very good and heavily subsidized public transport is mostly used by people who don't own a car. Even expensive fuel, sky-high ongenstion charges and exorbitant parking fees only do so much to curb private vehicle traffic. Basically, for public transport to really work, you have to price people out of owning their a (second) car altogether.
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mark 8:59AM (9/08/2007)
The bus would spend less time idling, and provide faster service. Also, while cross traffic has to wait longer, traffic in the same direction as the bus sees a benefit, that should on average cancel out that of the cross traffic. The bus however, being a larger vehicle, carries more momentum, so sees a much greater benefit to not have to stop and start again. Even as a hybrid, it's still better off this way rather than doing a mechanical-electrical-chemical conversion to regeneratively brake into the battery, then do chemical-electrical-mechanical.
I think if busses on average took the same amount of travel time as a car (they lose out on having to stop, but they might make it up again be getting all the green lights!), people would be more inclined to switch.
Even so, I think we need further legislation to encourage more efficient public transport. I'm sure that once you reach a certain percentage of travel being undertaken on public transport, it becomes much more convenient, and much cheaper. Are there any cities where this is the case?
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