By Fred Palm, contributing editor  | The S.C. Department of Transportation (SCDOT) wants to widen Interstate 526 to six lanes in Charleston and Berkeley counties recognizing that congestion is regional and the correct response is more highway. 

Maybe.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way into the commercial, medical and educational spheres. Traffic management involves dynamic conditions involving both complex and repetitive decisions to control traffic signals to get us through an intersection.

Congestion detection and prediction is a math problem that we can do — and so can trained machines. In fact, the Federal Highway Administration advocates more use of these “Adaptive Traffic Management Systems.”