World Moves To Ai Traffic Lights While Cape Town Crawls In Congestion

As artificial intelligence transforms traffic management in cities across the globe, Cape Town remains on the sidelines, yet to implement a system that could ease its worsening congestion.

The Mother City, notorious for gridlock during peak hours, controls its 1 750 intersections using a mix of fixed-timing robots and sensor-based systems. Some traffic lights change at pre-set intervals, while others respond to vehicle pressure pads to adjust signal timing. However, with road congestion reaching critical levels, new AI-powered solutions are proving game-changers elsewhere.

Tech giants like Google and Alibaba have developed AI-driven traffic control systems that analyse vast amounts of real-time data to optimise signal timings. A Nature study published in February showed that implementing such systems in China's most congested cities reduced peak-hour travel times by 11 and off-peak times by 8. The estimated cost of 1.5 billion R27 billion per year was far outweighed by 32 billion in benefits, including time savings, reduced carbon emissions, and improved fuel efficiency.

Google's Project Green Light, now operational at 70 intersections in cities across four continents, has already demonstrated significant results, as per News24 . The system, which uses AI and Google Maps data to track traffic movement , has shown a potential 30 reduction in stops and a 10 drop in greenhouse gas emissions. Google began exploring traffic light optimisation five years ago, recognising that stop-and-go traffic at intersections is a major contributor to urban pollution.

'Road transportation is responsible for significant global and urban greenhouse gas emissions,' Google explained in a blog post. 'At intersections, pollution levels can be up to 29 times higher than on open roads, and about half of these emissions come from vehicles accelerating after stopping.'