Istanbul Isiklarius traffic lights | Hacker News Reader

Istanbul Isiklarius traffic lights

artlebedev.com

119 pointslucianof67 comments

When it comes to Lebedev's designs, one would do well to reserve judgement until seeing the final result.

For example, Lebedev designed bus stops for the city of Perm with tremendous fanfare, see here: http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/perm/bus-stop/ . There were hundreds of press articles about it, which is surely unusual for a bus stop design.

It then turned out that the bus stops could not be built with rounded corners with the specified materials (http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/000220ap/), and that lighting couldn't be connected to most of them, and that the benches are too high and narrow (http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/0001h036/ - this is called "the Lebedev pose"), and that the flat roofs are inappropriate to the climate and now look like this: http://denis-galitsky.livejournal.com/33098.html .

It doesn't help that Artemy Lebedev is a giant, giant douche nozzle - if you read Russian, you can convince yourself of this by browsing his blog.

Not particularly motivated to support Lebedev, but my understanding regarding the bus stop benches is that they are uncomfortable on purpose, so people won't sleep on them. London's bus stops have these seats as well.

I remember reading somewhere in the discussions which I linked to that the bench ended up being at that height simply because the nearest structural pipe (to which it is welded) is there, and all models of the bus stop have benches at different heights because of where the skeleton happens to be (and most are much too high). I don't know if that was part of Lebedev's brief.

Anyway, Lebedev apparently didn't give much thought to how these stops would actually be built (or used, for that matter), leading someone to say that the sketch was by Studio Art. Lebedev, but the actual industrial design was by Vasya the welder - who had no choice but to pick up the burden where the Studio dropped it.

  It doesn't help that Artemy Lebedev is a giant, giant
  douche nozzle - if you read Russian, you can convince
  yourself of this by browsing his blog.

Yep. The things they do are not that great to allow for his tone. "Kovodstvo" was a good read for me when I was starting my proffesional career as webdev (around 1999), but I left it for the higher quality in English (and because Lebedev's studio still cannot code HTML).

"[...] if you read Russian, you can convince yourself of this by browsing his blog."

there is an English version of it here: http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/

which is a translation of http://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo/sections/

(I don't know if this is the blog you were referring to)

No, that's not it at all - I am referring to his main blog at tema.livejournal.com. It's a profanity-laced display that really needs to be appreciated in the original to be believed. E.g. his response to the bus stop fiasco was along the lines of - I am translating liberally here, and you may want to cover the eyes of any small children reading along with you - that as a designer, his ass doesn't get fucked with this, and it's the builder who takes it up the ass for anything not built to his sketches.

That's a pretty original concept of industrial design - all product designers I know follow the product from sketch to engineering drawings to casting molds to the prototype to the production line, to make sure every little squiggle is just right. Now, if he wants to be a sketch artist, as opposed to a product designer, that's fine too, but that's not what he gets hired to do.

You may remember the disaster of the "Optimus Maximus" keyboard - this is the $1500 keyboard with LCD displays on all the keys. It ended up being years late and looked nothing like what was promised - he couldn't handle the engineering of placing the LCDs on the keys, so the keys became transparent with the LCDs under them. Now, that was a privately-developed product, but he's done this to paying customers any number of times as well, leaving them with a misdesigned product and late to the market. He then explains in his charming manner (see above) that this is all their fault.

He is a fantastic walking self-promotion machine, which is why the studio seems unsinkable despite being kind of lousy in terms of actual product design firepower.

Probably this: http://tema.livejournal.com/ Com/mandership is much less douchy.

Wow, as an Istanbul native, I'm surprised that the city govt is doing it right by handing design to a design shop. I like how it looks, it's odd and quirky, but I think it somehow fits with the city. For the record, Isik + lar means "lights" (the suffix is a pluralizer), and I'm guessing the "us" is the generic latin name suffix?!

Yes, Artlebedev studio ends most of its products with generic latin name sufix.

It's too bad that traffic signals don't make their state available via some sort of radio link. Then we could have cars that provide the driver with an optimal target speed to get through a series of intersections without stopping.

Ingolstadt (city of Audi HQ) had (still has?) this experiment.

Cars were getting signal from traffic ligjts and you as a driver got a warning sign like: "drive 30 km/h" to hit green light without stopping.

Some cities in America have traffic-synchronized streets where a driver going a certain (indicated all along the street) speed should hit the greens every time. The problem one one street I've seen it used for is, the sign is very vague about when this system is active "during peak traffic hours" so I do not know when to go the suggested speed or not.

Pretty common elsewhere in the world too. In the Netherlands they call it the "Green Wave", and marketed as such. I suspect b/c speeding in those area's really doesn't buy you anything. So when traffic is light, they double as a "speed bump" :-)

Common in Germany as well.

That wouldn't fly with the many cities that depend on traffic tickets for revenue.

Are there many cities that don't depend on this non-voter approved tax?

As a passenger of a Dolmus(Turkish taxi bus), scared by their driving style, I heard a joke a while ago: "In France, traffic lights are mandatory. In Italy they are optional. In Turkey they are decorative". It looks they took it seriously.

I always got a kick out of these buses. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmu%C5%9F

  These share taxis depart from the terminal only when a sufficient amount of passengers have
  boarded, and the name is derived from Turkish for "apparently stuffed" for this reason.

I was in Istanbul a few months ago and the traffic was the craziest I've ever seen. It didn't really seem like anyone paid attention to the traffic signals anyway. I don't see how a new design would help fix that.

I just wanted to post exactly the same. I haven't yet seen any other city with a traffic as bad as in Istanbul: Drivers typically don't care about traffic lights and drive without braking and just honking over pedestrian crossings, even though they have a red light and there are pedestrians on the street. In case of traffic jams drivers just continue driving on the sidewalk. I saw deadlock situations on crossings multiple times a day, because drivers just continued to drive into crossings, even though they had a red light and/or the crossing was blocked. Police does not seem to care at all.

I don't see how new traffic lights would change this.

I think you are talking about somewhere in India or Thailand or something, I drive in Istanbul for the last umm, 12 years and never missed a red light intentionally and saw maybe ten or fifteen idiots that does not care about the red light.

Btw did you visit Istanbul in the end of 80's I believe it was the only time The city was packed enough and that situation maybe seen because I can remember those times, now its different though many of the traffic lights have cameras that trigger with a red light pass, even there were accidents the first few months cameras were installed people were braking harder than usual to make sure they stop :)

As for deadlocks, Istanbul transport authority changed thousands of streets to one way or changed the rules of many areas to stop that in the last 5 years, when were you last in Istanbul seriously :) ?

And police does care, if you are involved in a red light violation and police is around you are not screwed but definitely get a ticket.

I've lived in Istanbul for 11 years and you must have had your eyes shut mate. 3 lanes of traffic becomes 5; it's all about nosing in and cutting up; red lights are often rushed through for a few seconds after they change (if not more), pedestrian crossings are of no use whatsoever.

As for traffic violations and police stops, don't make me laugh. Driving in Istanbul is carefree - do whatever you want whenever you want (which is why there are so many road deaths... I don't think I know a single Turk who doesn't know of someone relatively close who has been lost in a traffic accident). You'll rarely if ever be stopped by the police. The only time I've been stopped or seen people stopped is by late night alcohol checks or trafik polis running spot checks - both of which you can always pay your way out of (and I have).

I know Turks are generally nationalistic and proud, but please learn to have some introspection, look inwardly, critcise and laugh. Too many subjects on the internet concerning Turkey or Turks get mobbed and trolled by Turks trying to put a positive spin, just because they don't want to see their country portrayed in any bad light internationally.

I was there in 2008 when I attended a conference near Taksim square. However, this was during Ramazan - so maybe traffic during Ramazan is worse then during the remainder of the year.

When I was there most crossings looked somewhat like this (warning: terrible video quality): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYdHUmG100 (I had a green light when I passed this crossing as a pedestrian).

I lived in Istanbul for long time. I agree that traffic and some drivers are terrible, It is correct that they don't care about zebra crossings, but drivers obeys traffic lights in general. The main issue is density, too much vehicles, too little roads and everybody is in a hurry.

Also Cairo is definitely worse than Istanbul.

Istanbul is about 3000 years old and built on 7 (some very steep, think San Fransisco steep) hills. It was never designed (if designed is a word you can use at all here) for either tall buildings or vehicles.

Over the past 10 years something weird happened, people started buying cars, and some people would buy more than one but as most people live in apartments in Istanbul it appears as though there are more cars on the road than there are parking spaces in some areas (I know this is the case where my in-laws live near Nisantasi).

In my experience Istanbul drivers will mostly adhere to traffic lights, but not necessarily to things like zebra crossings and road markings. The worst drivers tend to come from the countryside as they don't necessarily know the road layout and drive as though they're in a village or open countryside.

I've been told quite a few times that the only reason the fatality rate from car crashes is not as high as it should be is because for most of Istanbul it's hard to drive faster than 50kmh for any period of time.

Of course, if you really want to see what 'driving by inshallah' is like, then you need to go to Saudi Arabia. When god determines whether or not you live or die, there's no point in driving properly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_claimed_to_be_bu...

And only the old Istanbul (historic peninsula) is claimed to be built on seven hills.

Is it necessary to mention Saudi Arabia here? Atheists dont drive better in Istanbul. Istanbul is an old, huge and unorginized jungle. Most of the bridges and connections are not designed to handle today's traffic volume. I remember spending 3hrs just to arrive work and get back at home (And there are only 10km btw the two -- avg I spend at least 2 hrs). There is not a proper railway or metro system. Even though sea transportation is fair enough, most people drive and they drive alone. Population is estimated to be 20M with tourists. There are tens of thousands cars crossing the bridges that are making the Europe-Asia connection with only 7 lines in total.

Given these circumstances, just imagine the stress on the drivers.

But the best part: I live in Asia and work in Europe. My 2hrs is an intercontinental journey.

I think it is necessary to mention Saudia Arabia because it's much worse in Saudi Arabia. I'm sorry if there was a misconception that I was implying that all Turks drive 'by inshallah', which of course isn't true, they just tend to drive badly - those in Istanbul drive aggressively (or insanely, by the standards of some other places) out of necessity. Those out in dogu anadolu drive as though they're still out in the villages.

As an aside - I don't know anyone who cycles in Istanbul. Is there a cycling commuter community there?

Interestingly Istanbul-drivers are not liked at all in other parts of Turkey as well. When asked they say they have to otherwise they will not make it.

Once a book on chaos theory started the topic by describing the traffic in Istanbul.

If you are able to drive in Istanbul, you can drive in everywhere.

I spent a week there, and truthfully it didn't seem any worse than Houston or New York. Not really all that much traffic, and what seem like drivers who are used to the locale. Down near the harbor, I never saw a car run a light in all the times I walked from there back up to my hotel in the old town.

Honestly, it's not that bad. It takes you a while to get used to it but if you look around, everyone is paying a lot of attention and it isn't actually dangerous at all - hectic, but not dangerous.

Check out the process page http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/isiklarius/process/ I really like the ones by Ji-youn with a triangle for stop, circle for orange and rectangle for green. You can see some serious effort went into this

Since each color is an LED display and can display shapes it'd be cool to use the traffic lights to direct people to detours when a road is closed or over capacity.

More likely the STOP will be used to display advertising while people wait. 8-) "McDonalds in 200m"

It would be reasonable, no one seems to care about traffic lights in Istanbul.

"Isiklarius is equipped with a system developed in our studio that detects visually impaired and handicapped pedestrians."

How does that work??

It doesn't. This is imagination, not an actual product.

I think in short time this light colors would go black with exhaust smoke. And as someone who drives in Istanbul some time to time, I think what Istanbul needs is strict control and huge fines. Traffic is full of aggressive *astarts who does not respect any pedestrian or other drivers.

Quite a beautiful design but I would question the durability of the wood-veneer model. That finish is generally more suited to interior use and would start to look pretty tatty in a couple of years I expect.

That said, I want them for my city immediately.

Also, from a design standpoint, the idea of using LEDs is being challenged - while the designer mentions a lack of snow build-up, the traditional lights do a good job of emitting enough heat to melt snow drift:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34436730/ns/us_news-life/t/energ...

It's not an entirely obvious problem, but one that is being dealt with often in colder climates. Unintended consequences of design.

Stockholm has had LED traffic lights for over 20 years and no problem with snow buildup whatsoever. We get a wee bit more snow than Istanbul...

Actually, Istanbul can get a fair amount of snow precipitation during short periods of time, which is the main concern for obscuring traffic lights.

Well, last year not an inch of snow dropped in city. That short periods of snow times had long passed since the population of the city doubled in last 20 years.

True, but previously it has snowed quite heavily when I've been there in the winter, and the effect it has on traffic is quite big, mainly due to the steep hills and people not using decent chains on their tyres.

In Soviet^w Russia in recent years nearly all the traffic lights were replaced by LED ones. And they perform really well, and there is no such problem like snow obscuring them.

In most of them bottom wall is absent or tilted in such direction that snow or dust does not build-up there.

There must be cheaper ways to get rid of snow than incandescent lightbulbs.

This doesn't seem immediately obvious to me. Care to explain? Incandescent lightbulbs are a time-proven technology with economies of scale behind them. They generate heat and light, which is what's required here. Seems ideal for the application.

Really? Even assuming that we absolutely need to heat up the lights to solve this problem, we only need to do it when there is enough snow on the light to be a problem, which means at most only during snowfall, realistically much less frequently than that. Even in New England during winter, you've gotta be talking under 10% of the time that this has to happen.

You seriously can't come up with a better way to solve this problem than replacing a very efficient, very robust light source with a very inefficient, very delicate one, secure in the knowledge that as it runs all year round, some tiny fraction of the huge amount of waste heat it generates will go towards melting snow?

Although I'll note in your defense that "incandescent lightbulbs" are more accurately described as "heat lamps", and one potential solution might well involve a specialized heat lamp which only activates when the light itself is obstructed.

Don't forget you need some kind of snow sensor - or at least a temperature sensor.

Or some kind of centralized switch.

Totally doable of course, but it does make them more complicated, more expensive and less reliable.

You would need to calculate the tradeofs. It's not automatic either way.

A traffic light is already half of a snow sensor by virtue of being a light. If it's covered with snow, the snow will reflect light back. Add a few photoresistors and you're in business. It'd be the cheapest part of the whole project.

You can use a regular resistive heating coil. You can design a heating coil that will never burn out. LEDs themselves can last over 10 years. Thus the combination of led plus heating coil will last you more than ten years. Incadescents on the other hand burn out all the time especially when they need to be turned on and off very often, as in traffic lights. For an American city the upkeep of traffic lights is more expensive than the hardware. Also traffic lights that burn out will cause dangerous co fictions and may cause accidents.

How do cars defrost the rear windshield? Embedded heating elements in the glass. That's pretty proven, and easy to manufacture. The exact same thing could be used here.

That works for frost, but I still need to clear the windshield after it snows. I dunno how hot those defrosters will go if you really crank 'em, though...

Apropos of nothing, but this just made me look up "defroster" on Wikipedia... "For primary defogging, heat is generally provided by the vehicle's engine coolant via the heater core; fresh air is blown through the heater core and then ducted to and distributed over the interior surface of the windshield by a blower. This air is in many cases first dehumidified by passing it through the vehicle's operating air conditioning evaporator." Wikipedia makes everything so cool.

You could duct building hvac systems at street level and use waste heat / energy that way.

Utah has that problem with its LED stoplights. The DoT said, "Tough. Treat it like you would a power outage".

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705366962/Blowing-wet-sno...

Those lights look like they have been specifically designed for catching snow. Move the glass in front of the lights to the end of the tubes, problem solved.

This is a really good point. To be fair though, Istanbul gets heavy snow maybe a week or two every year. I do agree with the grandparent on the wood veneer though. I guess they tried to make it look more ancient for the old city area.

Reading this got me thinking about the sound signal schemes that traffic stop devices - sometimes the lights, sometimes the push button boxes - emit to aid those with visual impairment.

The Swedish system is a mechanical ticker placed inside the push button box, like a very loud clock that ticks slowly at one tick about every other second during red/yellow, and then picks up pace to about 7-8 ticks per second during green, cleverly aimed towards the listeners' intuition, telling them to "slow down" and "hurry across". I remember how this even served a good purpose and reminder for me as a kid, when I was too young, too impatient and too reckless to pay attention to the streeth lights - but the loud and clear sound signal and its intuitive meaning never escaped my attention.

What's used where you live?

My university (Purdue, USA) has an audio countdown with a seconds tick.

You can also hear those ticks in parts of Germany.

never liked anything from that studio. but then, i don't like Dyson too...

but this proves my point about art lebedev. they got an assignment to redo traffic lights, and just made then square. ...oh, and use the newest led tech buzzword! don't forget the latest led tech buzzword.

If you read their earlier post on it, the squareness is far from a quirk and actually a very well thought out design decision. Obviously design is a matter of taste, but like them or no, their method is a lot more than just being quirky or using buzzwords.

I'm not disliking based on aesthetics.

but because 100% of traffic lights were i live are square. nothing new.

also, besides being square, they have sensors in the asphalt that detects cars (and bikes in bike lanes) toadjust for optimum wait time.

Where do you live? They're all round here (and often barely visible, judging by the number of times I've almost been on the receiving end of a bumper...)

wow some Turkish stuff on HN. nice to see.

More Russian than Turkish though. art.lebedev studio is russian.

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