Boston's awful traffic might soon get better thanks to Google's AI

I live in Maine, which means that I often have to brave Boston traffic to do “big city stuff.” The Massachusetts metropolis’ age and dense population make it one of the most miserable places to drive in the country, worse than Los Angeles in many areas. The city is attempting to address the problem through a new partnership with Google’s Project Green Light, which leans on artificial intelligence to alter traffic light patterns in hopes of reducing congestion.

Boston’s chief of streets, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, told WCVB that the system “provides our traffic engineers with important data to tweak a signal by seconds, which can help reduce congestion along a corridor.” The city also said the tech should smooth stop-and-go traffic and cut emissions.

The partnership has so far been successful in limited early testing. Officials said, “At the intersections of Huntington Avenue and Opera Place, and at Armory Street and Green Street, stop-and-go traffic has been reduced by over 50%. Cities around the world that use Project Green Light have experienced a 10% average reduction in emissions.”

Boston consistently ranks among the worst cities in the U.S. for traffic. Earlier this year, CNBC noted that drivers lost an average of 42 hours sitting in traffic in 2023, so any improvement in commute times is a benefit everyone can get behind.

Google product manager Matheus Vervloet said, “Through Project Green Light, we are using AI to improve the lives of people in cities around the globe by reducing traffic and emissions. The success of Green Light is only possible thanks to the partnership we have with cities like Boston. We’re encouraged by the initial results we’ve seen in Boston and look forward to working closely with the city to scale this technology to more intersections.”

Project Green Light is still a new effort, with Seattle the only other U.S. city in its testing program. Google said that the project is live in over 70 intersections globally, impacting 30 million car rides every month. The company plans to expand to “hundreds of cities and tens of thousands of intersections in the next few years.”