Technology

“gridlock” happens in non-grid layouts too, the english name is just taken from american road patterns.

I said something about road hierarchies, you ignored it.

“show me…” no. YOU made a claim (that local information suffices, which is a VERY bold claim), so it’s on you to prove that local information suffices.

These systems are in operation. You claimed they lead to gridlock. What I get from the Chinese experiment here is that they collected data, threw an optimisation algo on it, and then adjusted local parameters, "err towards giving more green time in this direction" type of deal. They're still going to use the same type of adaptive, local-control system that's becoming increasingly common in the last decade.

roads are absolutely NOT “like wires”; they are like pipes. which is why civil engineers commonly use fluid dynamics to simulate traffic.

Vehicles travelling on roads constitute information travelling over roads. Are you trying to deliberately misunderstand what I'm saying. You do not need to look at the app of the parcel carrier to know that your parcel arrived, it's right there on your doorstep. That's information. Metaphorically, thus, package delivery trucks are wires.

“all the information is there” is not enough information to verify the claim; it’s a wild guess without evidence to back it up.

if shit where THAT simple, we’d have it figured out 50 years ago… it’s almost like this isn’t the simple problem you desperately want it to be…

50 years ago we neither had the sensors we have now, nor did we have the processing power to use it. Traffic light control was often still done electromechanically. "Adaptive" means a lot more than "pedestrians have a button and there's an induction coil to detect a car". Those systems actually solve the local problem optimally which, in the case of traffic management, means that the global problem is solved optimally because the problem has optimal substructure. Don't ask me for a proof of optimal substructure I just sat on a municipal traffic committee, I don't actually design those systems. Got annoyed at stupid NIMBY questions so I drowned them with smart ones. When you observe those kinds of lights in low traffic situations they're green for everyone because they switch as soon as they see someone arriving and noone else needs to be let through. In higher traffic situations they prioritise throughput, but make sure to not let waiting time for others get exceedingly long, or allow large backups.