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Kochi, India has a pretty bad traffic problem it seems — bad enough for them to try a novel way to control the chaos. Police have recently begun installing remote controlled traffic lights in the most problematic areas. While every major city has its issues with traffic, I don’t think anyone has tried this before, and frankly I hope it works.

Apparently the police plan to use the system in order to direct traffic at peak hours.  Details are sketchy, but it seems that rather than relying upon standard traffic light automation, they will be manually releasing slugs of cars across a particular bridge bottleneck. In some cases they will be able to convert both lanes to send traffic in one direction to handle peak volumes.  I just hope they have some pretty skilled remote control wizards out there, or things could get interesting.

I am interested to see whether or not the system really helps, and if any other cities try it out. At first I was concerned about the ugly precedent for centralized control, but then I started to think that if an automatic light would halt traffic for no reason, there could be a certain efficiency here. And this certainly has to be better then the two officers with walkie talkies direct traffic by hand — which is what they do now.

Of course it is possible to remotely control many traffic lights here in the US using a MIRT. But unless you carry a badge or drive an ambulance, it’s also a federal offense and could land you in hot water.