[WalterBright]

I'm sure those are not insurmountable obstacles. For example,

> First, the vast majority of signals aren't networked, they're on simple timers.

Doesn't matter. Even doing the ones that are networked would be a big improvement.

> And you can't just put them on the internet for hopefully obvious reasons.

But you can put every neighboring building on the internet with their security cameras? It's not like you need hires or high frame rates to detect large moving blobs, count them, and estimate their speed & distance.

The problem is, the city has no incentive to do this, as the cost falls on other people.

[xxpor]

The internet issue is a security one. Imagine what would happen if someone could make lights green in 2 directions.

To the first point, the networked lights are already in this mode (it's the reason why they added it in the first place). I can't find the report right now but upgrading all of the signals on 2nd from Denny to Yesler cost something like 30 million bucks.

The upgrade in the Mercer project area isn't exactly a glowing success:

https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/09/06/eleven-ways-adaptive-...

[WalterBright]

> Imagine what would happen if someone could make lights green in 2 directions.

I didn't consider it because the solution is obvious. An interlock that makes it electrically impossible to have 2 greens, like an airlock has a piece of hardware that prevents both doors opening at the same time. I suppose I should also mention the obvious that if the internet connection goes down, or the camera lens gets iced up, etc., it should automatically revert to egg-timer mode.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

> I can't find the report right now but upgrading all of the signals on 2nd from Denny to Yesler cost something like 30 million bucks.

Somehow the money is always found for internet connected cameras to spy on us.

> The upgrade in the Mercer project area isn't exactly a glowing success:

These are solvable problems. Except point 11, which is ironically complaining about it working successfully at what it was supposed to do.