just 6 minutes at a Dutch traffic signal
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- Fully-actuated traffic signal in Delft, South Holland, The Netherlands.
All directions include vehicle detectors far in advance of the intersection. Signal phases are combined based on the road users present in real time.
Kruithuisweg at Laan der Verenigde Naties
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Is this fully actuated control?
It's interesting whether it preserves signal group servicing order or not.
P. S. Don't you have red and yellow, green flashing signals?
Yes! It is fully-actuated control.
There is a default signal group servicing order. Signal groups are grouped into "blocks" of non-conflicting movements (basically signal stages). In this case they are:
1. East-West Through (along the main road)
2. East-West Lefts (off the main road) and North-South Rights (onto the main road)
3. Southbound Through/Left and Westbound Right / west side North-South Ped+Bike
3. Northbound Through/Left and Eastbound Right
When a signal group is served in its default location within the cycle it's known as a "Primary Realisation".
If there is no demand for a signal group during a particular cycle, its primary realisation will be skipped, and another signal group could take its spot (as long as it fits with the other primary realisations which did have demand). A previous primary realisation may be able to exceed its maximum green, or a signal group from the next block may be able to start earlier. Or, a signal group from a completely different part of the cycle may be served. This latter example is known as an "alternative realisation". Due to these alternative realisations, signal groups are often served in a different order than the default order.
During ordinary operation, Dutch signals only have solid red, solid yellow, and solid green. There are no flashing yellow, flashing red, red+yellow, flashing green, etc. The one exception is that pedestrian signals use flashing green to represent "yellow". This usually consists of 3 seconds of flashing green, and then solid red which includes clearance time based on a walking speed of 1.2 m/s.
However, while the signals are not operating (e.g. at night), they indicate flashing yellow in all directions, and right of way is assigned using yield signs placed at the intersection.
@@OntarioTrafficMan
Thanks for the reply. 🙂
In my country such kind of control is considered as not very efficient (benefit /cost ratio), coz it's effective only under low traffic + and requires a lot of detectors + it has quite sophisticated control logic 🙂
@@OntarioTrafficMan
BTW, why don't you use long green flashing for pedestrians - it's more convenient for them (they can be sure that conflict signal group will not be on while green flashing)? 🙂
@@__-de6he It is efficient in all circumstances, including heavy traffic. Even during the busiest hours, there will be cycles where the green duration for some signal groups can be lower than the maximum. Because green time distributions are designed based on the average traffic and there is always random variation. That time can be reallocated to other movements. There will also be some movements which never need the entire maximum time, such as right-turn movements and bicycle movements. Even during the busiest times of the day, there will typically be spare time which can be allocated depending on moments at which right-turning cars, pedestrians and bicycles arrive at the intersection.
It is indeed expensive to operate intersectios in the Dutch way, due to the large number of detectors. Though with improvements in image-recognition cameras, is becoming cheaper. For example, you could use 1 camera for all of the detection zones in all the lanes in a direction, instead of 8 separate in-ground detectors.
@@__-de6he All traffic signals give you permission to enter the intersection. They don't tell you anything about the amount of time it takes to cross the intersection. For example when you are driving, if you enter the intersection during the yellow light, you may still be in the intersection after it turns red. And that's fine, because traffic signals have red clearance time before the next movement gets a green light, with the estimated time it takes to clear that movement. We don't display a different red for the clearance time, compared to the red due to conflicting movements, because it doesn't affect the decision of the road user. Once they've entered the intersection, they obviously need to exit it. Nobody would stop halfway in the intersection and back up.
For pedestrians, the situation is a bit different because they move much more slowly than bicycles or cars, and because they don't necessarily need to know the rules of the road (and therefore don't necessarily know what a traffic signal means). For this reason, it may make sense to display the clearance time on the signal. In some Dutch municipalities, such as Helmond, there are pedestrian signals which show a countdown for the red clearance time during which pedestrians can still be within the intersection.
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Brilliant!
It seems to work pretty effectively!
That's so awesome! Never seen phase times this short in Poland, except for pedestrian signals
Yeah the Netherlands uses minimum green times as short as 4 seconds. In Ontario the minimum green is usually around 7 seconds for straight-through movements or 6 seconds for turning movements.
@@OntarioTrafficMan I did some research and here is what the polish law says:
- In timed traffic lights the green for vehicles should be at least 8 s (might be lowered to 6 s in special cases where the traffic is very low) and at least 7 s for public transport
- In adaptive traffic lights the green for vehicles should be at least 5 s
@@dk-gl I'm guessing the difference in minimum green durations is a actually for "actuated" phases, not "adaptive" phases. Actuation is when the phase duration is determined in real time based on current status of the detectors (like you see in the video here). Adaptation is where the maximum green durations are optimised based on average traffic volumes over a certain period (e.g. the last 15 minutes).
@@OntarioTrafficMan Oh, that's right, I couldn't find an English word :)
@@dk-gl No worries. Makes sense that the Polish guidelines aren't in English
This more advanced kind of VRI (Verkeers-Regel-Installatie = Traffic Management System) could prevent so many accidents abroad. Whenever you watch a dash cam video, there are always signals with green phases on opposite directions, including turning lanes... That is sooo stupid, and costs so much money in damages, and more important: mutilations and lives. I cannot grasp why on earth any traffic management organisation sticks to the at least half a century old fashioned garbage crossing designs...
Well, we do actually have quite a lot of crossings where there's not enough space for a left, straight through and right turn lane, so it gets a combined lane for left, straight ánd right turning traffic, where traffic from the other direction either gets a red light, or a green light and thus has to yield or has priority depending on the situation.
The main difference is that we ONLY do this when there is just 1 lane of traffic to deal with. Junctions with a dedicated turn lane and 2 lanes going straight through, will NEVER get the turning lane from the opposite direction to turn green at the same time, for them having to yield to all other traffic. Turning traffic will get their own dedicated light-cycle (or sequence based on detection like we usually do)
Yes we Dutchies are fun, we made from a swamp below sealevel a quite nice infrastructure in the last 500 years lol
I work evening shifts in Denmark so when I cycle to work at 14:00 the signal phases are not used (I think).However when I cycle home at 23:00 almost all traffic signals have detectors. Including the ecxlusive lanes for bikes. It is wonderful
One remark from a semi local. The main road has red light/ speed cameras in both directions. Which nearly everyone is aware of looking at the speed
best 6 min 24 seconds ever spent
The only issue I see is that for this to work properly you have to have separate lanes for left, straight and right turns, which isn't normally a problem on wide roads, but on the feeder roads and in dense urban areas it just takes up a lot of space. But I must admit even if the used traffic lights this sensitive with such short "all red" times it would be a huge advantage to everyone (including pedestrians) even if you can't have every direction separate.
I think it's definitely do-able elsewhere in the world, they just don't have the motivation to do it and it seems that there are no dictated standards for traffic light controllers so most of the ones being installed aren't "smart" enough.
You'll see some of the traffic lights in dense urban areas are more similar to those in other countries, often with left or right turns required to yield to oncoming or bike/ped traffic, but they still have lots of improvements because it's the Netherlands so of course they do.
In theory it could be possible to have multiple directional phases on shared-lane approaches, by having cameras discriminate between vehicles indicating left and right turns, so that a call on the appropriate phase can be placed.
But this assumes that the drivers actually use the indicators.
@@NewBuildmini Yes that's right but I think it would be unlikely considering that this relies on a camera being able to determine flashing indicator lights, which probably wouldn't be 100% reliable especially in bad sunlight. It would be annoying waiting at traffic lights that don't change for you because they can't recognise which way you are going.
It would almost be better to add transponders to cars that can transmit this sort of information to traffic lights, it probably wouldn't be that hard to do but would have a lot of benefits for traffic in general.
You might want to look at a video NotJustBikes made about "why traffic lights suck (but not in The Netherlands" or something titled like that. We use detection loops absolutely everywhere, including main roads that are single-lane.
Density-based timings are so much more efficient than fixed-phase timing, and it also stops people from wanting to jump a red because it takes to long because with fixed timings, there could be a risk that someone notices there's no traffic in conflicting directions and decides to risk it...
If we would not be convinced of the efficiency achieved by spending a little more and having someone with a good mind for flow-control program the systems for intersections like we do here, we definitely would not be doing it.
The Netherlands is, at some levels way to eager to want to save money, but with this we gladly implement features that make an intersection more predictable and more "fun" to drive up to.
@@Dutch3DMaster That is the video that brought me here. Maybe you don't realise but just about every country uses actuated traffic lights. Most places stopped installing timer controlled lights in the 80s. The differences is that for this dutch solution to work as well as it does, you have to have multiple detection loops for each approach lane, which in this case is 24 for the whole intersection. The standard in most countries is no right turn lanes and only 1 per lane, or 10 in total for an equivalent setup. Some places don't put detectors on the main road through direction, they just have the lights default to that state when there is no one else. Therefore they can get away with 6 for an equivalent set up. Maybe the dutch solution is better, but the fact that every other country in the world takes a cheaper approach, I would suggest says more about the lack of additional benefit of this system, rather than the alternative.
I do agree that I wish more traffic lights were built the dutch way, so I was trying to suggest reasons why it isn't done elsewhere. In my home country of Australia, there is an intersection like the one in this video, but the main road has 6 lanes (3 each way and 2 right turn lanes at the lights). It is partially actuated "the cheap way" but the problem is, they pretty much only operate on a timed cycle anyway because most of the day the intersection is just too busy, and there are always some cars at each direction. Only at night do you get it skipping cycles and working for efficiently. The light don't change in anticipation of your arrival, because the loop is only at the stop line, but they do change within a matter of seconds once you stop. I agree that I would prefer the dutch solution everywhere, but are those saved 5 seconds in the dead of night really worth the cost? If you could do it with AI detection cameras which I think is well within the realm of possibility, then great.
I didn't mean to sound dismissive of the technology, I'd vote for a dutch intersection here any day. I just think it's worth considering why that hasn't already happened.
Cutting down the clearance intervals, so they make sense like the Ontario traffic man suggested in another video, that's something I think every country can do now.
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There is this one car on the right during 4:50 to 5:50 that had to wait for a full minute. Poor guy.
Amazing you spotted that
That car came at the worst possible time and sat through the entire cycle, which was only 55 seconds long. That's remarkably short for such a large intersection. In North America an arterial intersection would have a cycle length around 80-90 seconds even during light traffic periods (120 sec during busy periods)
Sad most traffic lights here in Russia still operate on fixed-time phasing. In Moscow they're starting to implement actuated traffic lights though. (locally known as "smart traffic lights")
We've had these since at least the 90s.
Seattle, Washington, USA is the same way.. 😞
this is absolutly fascinating
As someone from the UK those phases are ridiculously short
The only problem with that is when people aren't paying attention. I'll never understand why people take more than 3 seconds to respond to a green light because they don't do what they need to do: start moving right away...
@@collectioneur The detector at the stop line typically remains active for the first ~8 s of green, to keep the light green at least until traffic is flowing over the detectors in advance of the intersection.
If the driver takes more than 8 seconds to react to a green light then they were probably drunk or texting...
@@collectioneur A lot of Dutch drivers first have to think about what a green light means, next they have to decide in what gear they need to shift. After that they must perform the all important, budget breaking action of stepping on the gas pedal. Since it doesn't matter that they are the only one who makes the light, most of them choose not to accelerate and blow their budget, but instead they let the car crawl forward on stationary rpms. It's called "the new driving".
@@OntarioTrafficMan I would also need 8 seconds when I pull up too quickly in a manual and then have to gather my thoughts and restart the engine and pull up again.
Which happens from time to time
@@williamgeardener2509 If you were taught that you were taught very wrongly.
Do you know the tankers at the busway crossing? I caught the local that comes for those tankers 3 times at the busway so far
Thats pretty close to my house
Huh, cool to know cars still terrify me after this video, some things in my life remain consistent 😌
Well the nice thing is that when you're walking or cycling in Delft, you don't encounter much car traffic, because it's mostly restricted to ring roads such as this one.
@@OntarioTrafficMan and the crosswaks are protected by red lights
@@burgerpommes2001 Yes, exactly!
Wow, so smart!
SO satisfying
Are you going to film any GO trains soon?
Yes, next week hopefully. Though I doubt you'll see any GO train videos for a while given how long it usually takes me to finish any video
@@OntarioTrafficMan Ok because I started going to the busway crossing because you inspired and I got some nice catches there including a CN local
@@TheNorthYorkRailfan Cool!
same signal phase like the US how does the pedestrian signal look like there
Maybe new US traffic lights but not the older ones. This dutch style light system is. Smart and these smart traffic lights are literally everywhere in the netherlands.
@@miles5600 I ment what do the pedestrian lights look like and what is their sequence
@@AllieThePrettyGator pedestrians have to push a button for green light.
@@AllieThePrettyGator Pedestrian signals have green, flashing green and red. Flashing green is simply a brief warning that the light will turn red (commonly 3 s). The duration of red clearance is enough for a pedestrian to cross the entire crossing (usually calculated at 1.2 m/s).
This is in contrast to American pedestrian signals which use flashing orange (red) for the duration for pedestrians to cross the street, plus a solid orange (red) during the yellow and red clearance times of parallel vehicle traffic.
And cyclists have a three color light depicting a bicycle. Cyclists can request green with the use loop detectors ànd push button in case you are riding a carbon bike. And if the traffic signal allows it, with an app.