University of Michigan Traffic System Cuts Oakland County Stops by 30%, Eyes National Growth

A traffic signal system built by University of Michigan researchers has slashed needless stops at intersections by up to 30% in Oakland County. Now it's pushing toward wider use across Southeast Michigan. The tech relies on GPS data from as few as 5% of vehicles to tweak signal timing based on what's happening on roads right now.

Birmingham, Mich. got the system first in 2022. That test run produced a 20% to 30% drop in wasted stops at traffic lights.

Thirteen signals got upgrades along Eight Mile Road in Farmington Hills and Twelve Mile Road in Royal Oak. Twenty-seven more intersections throughout the county are getting fitted with the tech.

"One corridor saw up to a 30% reduction in delay, and the other corridor was around 20%," said Zachary Jerome, postdoctoral research fellow at the Transportation Research Institute, according to The Michigan Daily.

The Road Commission for Oakland County teamed up with the research crew to roll out the program. The county oversees more than 1,400 traffic lights and has the most clogged roads in Michigan because population swelled—nearly doubling since 1960.

Old-school traffic signals run on fixed-time systems with pre-set patterns that need manual updates every few years. Sure, vehicle detectors and cameras give steady data, but they cost way more to put in and maintain.

"Oakland County has more than 1,400 signalized intersections that they manage; to install cameras at all 1,400 of those intersections is not feasible," Jerome said to The Michigan Daily. "We can use this data that's being collected continually to know — on a much faster timeframe — what's happening at each intersection."

The project taps anonymized GPS data from roadside assistance vehicles, navigation services and ride-hailing companies to model traffic patterns across the whole county. Xingmin Wang, an engineering postdoctoral research fellow who worked on predicting traffic delays, said the research group leads GPS-based approaches to signal timing, according to The Michigan Daily.

"We are really the pioneers of this direction," Xingmin Wang stated. "We are one of the first research teams working on this topic, and also the first Ph.D.s working on this topic."

Craig Bryson, senior manager of communications and public information at RCOC, said trimming stops could lower crashes from drivers blowing through red lights during rush hour.

The U.S. Department of Transportation funded stage one with a $1.45 million grant for development and rollout at 40 intersections. The research team is applying for a Stage Two Grant to enable broader implementation through the startup Connected Traffic Intelligence, as per The Michigan Daily.

"If we could get access to that data at low or no cost, that would make this a no-brainer to expand it county-wide and literally statewide, nationwide, worldwide," Bryson said per The Michigan Daily.