Christchurch trialling traffic lights software

Christchurch is among only a handful of cities trialling out new software that tells drivers when traffic lights are going to change. Photo / iStock

Christchurch is among only a handful of cities in the world trialling out new software that tells drivers when traffic lights are going to change.

Part of creating a "futuristic" city in the rebuild following the 2011 earthquakes, motorists in the Garden City will soon be able to get around the city with greater ease, according to the makers behind the new technology.

The system - known as EnLighten - tells drivers whether to slow down because the light is about to change to red, or how long until the light changes to green when you're stopped at an intersection. EnLighten counts down the seconds until the green light, and 'chimes' a warning so you're ready to go as soon as the traffic lights switch from red to green.

Designed to "take the stress out of driving", EnLighten will be available to download as a mobile phone app, and has already been adopted by BMW to sync with your car's entertainment system, so it appears in the dashboard. The company - Connected Signals - is working with around seven car manufacturers to roll out this feature in other vehicles.

The system will be compatible with both iOS and Android devices.

Matt Ginsberg, CEO of Connected Systems, told NZME News Service the company was excited to be working in New Zealand.

"Christchurch called me," he said, speaking from the US. "I was ecstatic to get the call.

"They are for obvious reasons doing a lot of rebuilding there, and they found out about us, and they decided that it was sort of futuristic technology that they would want to include as they put things back together. And we've been working with them ever since.

"The state of things is that it's currently being used by somewhere around 10 people in Christchurch, sort of affiliated with the traffic lights group, while they evaluate it and make sure that it's safe and it works, and that the user experience is positive and so one and so forth, and when they give us the go-ahead we will roll it out to the public at large there."

The app works by interfacing with the city's traffic management system, combined with the car's GPS location, to provide a real-time prediction of when a light will change.

The current landscape of Christchurch city - still visibly ravaged by the earthquakes and largely a construction site in the CBD - had "not really" presented any challenges in developing the system, Mr Ginsberg said.

"I think the traffic lights are all working, and that's the stuff we care about," he said.

"When they change things - add turns or remove turns, or change what you can do at an intersection - we find out about it and we update things. So everything is pretty solid and I actually expect ... [that we're] pretty close to actually releasing it."

The Christchurch contacts had in fact suggested a "great idea" which has since been incorporated into the technology.

"Phones are distracting, and that matters to us enormously because we don't want to make that worse, but one of the things that the Christchurch guys recommended, and that we have done, is that we essentially turn the video off when the phone is horizontal," Mr Ginsberg said.

"So if you toss your phone onto the seat next to you you're not tempted to look at it. And we did that, it's a great idea."

The company is also working on a version of the app for Melbourne, which is currently at a beta-testing phase, and according to its website Auckland is also on the list.

"We'll be bugging you guys pretty soon," Mr Ginsberg said, adding the company would "love to" roll the app out to other cities across New Zealand.

"One of the nice things about Australia and New Zealand is you guys pretty much all use the same system, which makes it very easy on our end."

But it'll be a bit longer before drivers here can sync the app to their new BMW - because the system does not yet work on right-hand drive vehicles.

"You guys drive on the wrong side of the road and it's going to take BMW a little while to modify their version to support that," Mr Ginsberg said.

"But we are already talking to them about doing that. So that's coming relatively quickly."

The company was working with seven car-makers to develop similar compatibility, he said.

NZME pd