As the joke goes, sometimes it can take an hour or more to get from one point in Boston to another. But the city is hoping emerging technologies like artificial intelligence can help speed things along.
A study that came out this past summer found Boston had the fourth worst traffic in the U.S. and the eighth worst in the world.
Inside City Hall, the city monitors more than 800 miles of city roads looking for any signs of traffic troubles.
“Our job is to help people get around where they need to go as quickly and efficiently as we can,” Boston Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge said.
The city has its own systems to monitor traffic, and is also partnering with Google’s Project Greenlight.
Google uses AI to analyze Boston traffic patterns, coming up with ideal timing for traffic lights to minimize gridlock.
A review of traffic data led the city to determine bus and truck lanes on Sumner Street between Southie and South Station were not working as intended, opening up another lane each way for traffic.
“Tools that let us kind of work on the city as a whole and understand the flows of traffic better from place to place, so there is good experimentation that is going on and good results that we are seeing ” Franklin-Hodge said.
MassDOT is also embracing technology. Using around 1,200 cameras tracked inside a state-of-the-art command center in Boston, these operators are able to see things nearly as it happens.
The agency's State Highway Operations Center in South Boston is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. AI and other technology continually analyze video feeds, alerting them to things like a minor accident, or traffic stop, so they can react.
The faster they can fix the issue, the less impact to traffic.
“There is so much information it is now hard to pinpoint what is important and using tools like AI that are emerging now really helps out a lot,” MassDOT Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver explained.
And drivers, stuck in traffic, are part of the solution as well.
Both MassDOT and the City of Boston have partnered with Waze and other navigation apps, providing them real-time data.
AI is also helping shave off significant time on major construction projects, another huge source of motorist misery.
So while traffic may be here to stay, big tech may help us map the best route forward.
