I live in a middle class city, in this city we have public transportation. Now were we live, something strange is going on. first of all, a couple years ago a ton of our seemingly perfectly working traffic lights were replaced, for no apparent reason. one thing that i am beginning to notice is that around where i live, buses seem to have extreme luck with getting green lights. i once followed a bus who got 7 green lights in a row. A BUS. now how does that happen. you see, these bus drivers now can somehow control the traffic lights. So they never have to stop and wait at red lights which uses gas. Now you all probably know that ifa bus driver is getting a green light, someone else is getting a red light. that someone else is we the people. This means that oil company's are making more money from us because we have to buy more gas, and the bus companies are saving money because they have to buy less gas. Remember when i said a bunch of our traffic lights were replaced? well i've been checking and only the traffic lights that were replace were the ones on bus routes. coincidence?

If they do, indeed, have such equipment to control the traffic lights, the ambulances and firetrucks have them, too. I know in the city I used to live in, the emergency vehicles could control the lights and it was common knowledge.

You think that because some of the city or utility vehicles can control have priority at the traffic lights there's some kind of massive conspiracy afoot by the oil and petrol companies to keep themselves in business or by the government to make more money in taxes???

I don't see it. What makes you think this is the case. Maybe they're just giving busses priority to cut down commuting times and encourage people to use them.

I don't buy it.

You'd have to know the name / coordinates for every set of traffic lights - bearing in mind that each intersection is made up of multiple sets (straight ahead lane, turning lane, bus / taxi lane - if you had that on each set, then you'd have 12 different subsets at each intersection), and program the individual sets into a command

or

you'd have to hit a button which sent off a signal to a gps twice to work out which way you were going, which was the closest set of lights, then relay that all back to where the lights are controlled and get them to change

and

still allow enough lead time for the other traffic to stop.

By the time you set up infrastructure like that on all of your buses as well as each of your sets of lights you'd be better off just paying for the gas. Or switching to a mix of ethanol and gas.

The city I live in has a big bus network, and there's nothing like that at all - not for emergency services either. I've worked with the traffic light controlling servers in both of the data centres here and they're not that complex. They're actually pretty old servers to be honest - and they would not be what I would call cutting edge in the telecommunications side of things either.

Emergency services have sirens anyway. Why bother with the remote? Just get all your lights blazing.

Why call it a government conspiracy? Most if not all public transportation are private companies now, certainly in europe since the european union kinda forced states to privatise the public transportation system. Apart from that, i dont see why it should be a problem.

Problem : cities are full of cars and thus traffic jams.

Observation : most cars only have 1 man/woman in it (the ones going to work)

Question : why dont they use the public transport ? Answer : cause its stuck in traffic too

Solution : allow em to get round traffic jams by giving em green lights, allow em passage through places cars arent allowed into, give em seperate lanes where possible, only for busses

In Holland for example, in city centers you'll see a road blocked by 3 'poles', those poles retract into the ground when a bus, ambulance, fire department truck needs to get through. they also have seperate lanes for busses on the highways they can use incase of traffic jams, they get priority on crossings (where possible), ect

All it does is help solve the traffic jam problem. I dont see why it should be a conspiracy lol. And what i dont get at all, and gets on my nerves is this.... People always complain about traffic, its too full, traffic jams everywhere, lost time = lost money, and the pollution comming from traffic jams is enormous. Fine, all true. But when they offer a possible solution like giving public transport priority so they're faster, ppl complain again because it is for public transportation they refuse to use. You cant just keep adding traffic lanes. You cant move building in a city to make room for another extra road. The reason government is involved is because the state is responsible for making the traffic laws and needs to provide infrastructure. But calling it a conspiracy because of that is a bridge too far imo.

I'm sure the technology exists to do this. An RFID tag on the vehicles and a small receiver or detector at the traffic lights. I can even see it would make sense for buses and emergency vehicles would be less likely to cause accidents if the lights could change to give them right of way.

The thing I don't see is the oil company conspiracy theory.

oh yeah, the conspiracy is too far for my mind.

but in any case - a tad more complex than that. you need to know which subset of lights at each intersection that you're changing. to do that means you need lead time. Even if it's only 10 seconds to get it all sorted and changed - it's still 10 seconds. WHy bother.

What happens when a bus traveeling north and a bus travelling east through the same intersection hit their respective buttons? Do they each have to pray to their oil god to get priority?

Lol, maybe the one with the lowest fuel consumption gets priority if the oil companies have a say in it. That way the higher consumption vehicle has to stop and start moving again at a greater cost.

They've been giving buses priority at lights in London for a long time. You can read all about it here. Conspiracy? Only if you're a car driver in a hurry!

Edit. My link disappeared - not sure why.... so I put it back.

I agree there is some merit to the observations in the o.p. about bus priority, they also don't mention anything about oil companies though.

Only oil company 'conspiracy' i know of is the companies buying up patents for all sorts of alternative fuel sources and 'stalling' further development of em by not giving permission for others to use the technology they have the patent on. Goes for car companies too. I remember an experiment in california by, i think it was, GM with an electric car only to recall em all and shredding em to bits afterwards. If you wanna call those things a conspiracy, you have one, but i fail to see where traffic jams fit in a conspiracy by oil companies.

They recently implemented a system along a bus route near my parents house. They call it "bus rapid transit" and the objective is to keep the commute going.

You even buy your ticket a head of time so that you can just get on the bus and keep going. It's an honor system, and periodically they have someone check to make sure you have a ticket.

I think its a great idea because it cut the trip that used to take an hour down to 35 minutes.