There are two types of traffic lights: timed and tripped (pre-timed, semi-actuated, and fully-actuated). Timed lights are best in rush hour when a lot of traffic is leaving or entering the District. What is annoying is idling, wasting gas at a timed light with no cross traffic whatsoever. The 'topper' to that, no pun intended, is waiting for your light to turn green with no cross traffic and then waiting for the green left turn arrow of the oncoming traffic also of which there is none before you can go on your merry way. Imagine if all lights were 'smart' lights how much gas and time we would save. Even if that number were only 5% that would be significant. I think we would all be happy to put 5% less CO2 in the atmosphere every year. As a country we use 300,000,000 gallons of gasoline every day. Even just a one percent drop in consumption would mean saving 400,000,000 gallons every month. Making every light a ‘smart’ light would be an easy step in the process of going 'Green".

¶ 3:23 PM