working on bringing some basic, banal bits of infrastructure management to real-world traffic issues.

I'm literally trying to fix broken junctions around me.

It's at the same time laughably easy, and wildly complicated.

I'm calling the alternative, correct junction a 'traffic bean':

https://josh.works/traffic-bean

It's relevant to software, sorta. I've got rather a lot of GIS/mobility-related data available here. It's just a rails app that renders a bunch of my strava activity data all at once: https://josh.works/mobility-data

The fixes are entirely accomplishable with nothing more high-tech than traffic cones. They can be upgraded to more permanent and pretty physical objects, but the key bit of the traffic bean finds traffic cones fully sufficient. No half-million USD traffic signals, no red/green/yellow light cycles. continuous flow. safety. peace.

Some stuff that's obvious in some domains, like "at high-throughput times, don't allow key bits of infrastructure be completely unusable".

Bringing this to american municipalities is like trying to speak a language with someone that doesn't speak your language, but demands that you treat them as if they do.

it's been a big, long-running project. Most tradition in the USA is really a fig leaf for supremacy, and people can smell that I'm coming for their supremacy a mile away, and they immediately begin deploying emotional defenses.

Or so it seems.