JEFFREY BROWN:

You know the frustration. You're late for work or to pick up your child. You're driving through city streets, and every block or two, it seems, there's another red light.

It's a problem that plagues commuters across the country. In fact, according to a Texas A&M study, the average commuter in the U.S. spends upwards of 42 hours a year at a complete standstill, stuck in traffic.

Eight years ago, traffic problems in Pittsburgh got the attention of a local philanthropist, who gave seed money to Carnegie Mellon University. The idea? To have its robotics experts use artificial intelligence to create a smarter transportation grid that will eventually remake the commute for drivers, cyclists and bus riders.

Almost half of all Pittsburgh commuters drive alone in their cars, so the first priority was road congestion.

Courtney Ehrlichman helps run the program called Traffic21.

COURTNEY EHRLICHMAN, Deputy Executive Director, Traffic 21: The problem in Pittsburgh is like the problems around the country, is that we have this existing infrastructure that was designed many, many years ago, and you really can't expand it. You really have to optimize the system.

And so we have an opportunity here using these technologies to make our system more efficient and to optimize it, rather than trying to figure out how to build more.