Cities are using wireless technology to reduce traffic. Traffic has been the bane of city living for more than 2,000 years. When the streets of ancient Rome grew jammed with carts, vendors and oxen, the caesars banned daytime deliveries altogether-only to have residents complain of being kept awake at night. In the early 1900s, streetcars were buried underground to make way for automobiles and, more recently, cities hinged on road building to speed travel from downtown areas to the suburbs and back.Now road congestion has reached a new crisis point. A 2001 report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva estimated that urban residents in developed countries spend double and triple the amount of time in traffic that theydid 20 years ago. The average annual delay for American drivers climbed from 11 hours in 1982 to 36 hours in 1999, according to the Texas Transportation Institute.
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