While there are a few of commercial apps that can integrate now, The goal is to have every navigation/gps app have the ability to do this. This can also be done by privacy friendly apps.
> Why do these commercial entities get to influence public traffic lights?
The commercial entities don't influence anything, they provide a tool for their users to influence the lights.
> And due to the inherent red-queen arms race
What arms race is inherent here? Traffic isn't (or shouldn't be) a competition but a cooperation.
Your whole comment seems weird because the main point of the article us that most people seem unwilling to change navigation apps to take advantage of this feature so widespread adoption will wait till the apps people are already using (and which already get all that data) support the standard.