BOSTON (WHDH) – Boston city officials this week announced a new partnership with Google aimed at using AI to tackle traffic congestion on local streets. 

Dubbed Project Green Light, the program puts AI to work to model traffic patterns and recommend traffic signal timing adjustments. 

In a statement Thursday, officials said they started working with Google on Project Green Light in February and have, so far, made changes at four intersections in the Fenway-Kenmore, Mission Hill, and Jamaica Plain areas. 

“We know that even small tweaks can go a long way with traffic,” Mayor Michelle Wu told 7NEWS. 

Traffic analytics firm INRIX in 2023 ranked Boston as the eighth worst city in the world for traffic delays. 

“One of the most frustrating parts of living in a major city is traffic, so Boston is taking every step to combat congestion and get people to where they need to go,” Wu said. 

Google product manager Matheus Vervloet said Project Green Light pairs AI with Google Maps technology to analyze intersections and create recommendations for municipal traffic engineers. 

In Boston, officials said they examined hundreds of intersections and noted a 50% drop in stop-and-go traffic after heeding Project Green Light recommendations at the intersections of Huntington Avenue and Opera Place, and Amory Street and Green Street.

Project Green Light is currently operating in 14 cities across the world. Boston and Seattle were the only US cities invited to join for free.

Moving forward, Boston officials said city engineers are considering implementing additional recommendations from Project Green Light later this year. 

“This is one piece of something that we know could be a bigger part of the solution,” Wu said. 

“We’ve seen great potential to reduce unnecessary stops and reduce emissions and pollution,” Vervloet said.

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NBC Sports Boston once put together an excellent 10-part video series on the best highlights from Hall of Fame Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird that helped carry fans through the slowest part of the pandemic-inflected 2021-22 regular season.

Though that is well behind us, the folks at NBC Sports are at it again. This time, they have put together a series of videos dedicated to highlighting the so-called Hick From French Lick’s best passes and assists of his storied career with Boston. Spanning Bird’s entire career with the Celtics, it is a great way to learn or revisit just how good the Boston icon was at moving the rock.

Scratch that Celtics basketball itch with a watch of the third clip in the series embedded below to help keep you busy until actual Boston basketball returns in the fall with training camp and preseason.

Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi

More!

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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Best of Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird’s passing and assists: Part III

More whales visited Boston Harbor this week, with the breaching animals sometimes even visible from land.

Since a sighting on Monday in Dorchester Bay, another whale was seen between Deer Island and Long Island Bridge Wednesday afternoon. NBC News photographer Mark Garfinkel shared an image of the whale’s dorsal fin among dozens of fishing boats.

Garfinkel wrote that the fishermen were after some striped bass, but most took a break to see the whale peak over the water.

Nicole Ridge, of Nantucket, shared images with Boston.com of a breaching whale she saw in the harbor Thursday morning. She was fishing in Boston Harbor with her father, a charter captain, when she was able to capture the whale leaping out of the water.

“Something we both found remarkable today was the attentiveness of not only the Environmental Police but also the Boston police boat to keep a perimeter around the whales to keep them safe,” Ridge said in a email. “All of the other boats fishing in the area were equally respectful.”

The whale put on the show in front of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, which is set to meet the USS Constitution near Castle Island on Friday. 

Garfinkel captured more images from Deer Island Thursday for the news station, showing the whale with two Massachusetts Environmental Police boats.

Multiple Harbor whale sightings this week

Thursday’s appearances make four sightings just this week, which experts say could be concerning for the whales. Last week, a 2-year-old humpback whale surprised whale watching tours in the harbor. A naturalist with the tours said the whale could have been in distress or just chasing down prey.

Linnea Mayfield, the naturalist manager with Boston Harbor City Cruises, said last week that seeing a whale in the Harbor isn’t rare, but it’s not very common. The humpback then was closer in the Inner Harbor near the Conley Terminal.

“This does occur every few years,” Mayfield said. “We don’t see it quite that far in the harbor often.”

Mayfield warned boaters to give the whale a wide berth, which appeared to be happening in Ridge’s pictures. 

“It does make all of us who work in the whale watching world quite nervous,” Mayfield said last week, “because it does put whales at heightened risk of vessel strike and other threats.”