Cloudy with a Chance of Green: Measuring the Predictability of 18,009 Traffic Lights in Hamburg

Informing drivers about the predicted state of upcoming traffic lights is considered a key solution to reduce unneeded energy expenditure and dilemma zones at intersections. However, newer traffic lights can react to traffic demand, resulting in spontaneous switching behavior and poor predictability. To assess whether future traffic light assistance services are viable, it is crucial to understand how strongly predictability is affected by such spontaneous switching behavior. Previous studies have so far only reported percentages of adaptivity-capable traffic lights, but the actual switching behavior has not been measured. Addressing this research gap, we conduct a large-scale predictability evaluation based on 424 million recorded switching cycles over four weeks for 18,009 individual traffic lights in Hamburg. Two characteristics of predictability are studied: cycle discrepancy and wait time diversity. Results indicate that fewer traffic lights exhibit hard-to-predict switching behavior than suggested by previous work, considering a reported number of 90.7% adaptive traffic lights in Hamburg. Contrasting previous work, we find that not all traffic lights capable of adaptiveness may necessarily exhibit low predictability. We critically review these results and derive avenues for future research.