Insider Brief
- Ayalon Highways and Quantum Art have partnered to apply quantum computing to optimize citywide traffic management in Israel.
- The collaboration will benchmark quantum-accelerated algorithms against current classical simulation and optimization tools to reduce travel times and improve traffic flow.
- Quantum Art’s trapped-ion architecture will support large-scale coordination across intersections, with future goals including reduced emissions and expanded applications to public transport and logistics.
- Photo by wal_172619 on Pixabay
PRESS RELEASE — Ayalon Highways, Israel’s largest transportation and traffic management organization and the executive arm of the Israeli Ministry of Transportation, is partnering with Quantum Art, a full-stack trapped-ion quantum computing company, on a project that applies quantum computing to citywide traffic optimization.
The collaboration centers on joint development to reduce travel time through smart, near real-time traffic light management. As part of the project, quantum-accelerated algorithms will be benchmarked against the leading classical simulation and optimization tools in use today.
Urban congestion drains time, productivity and air quality. Across the United States, gridlock costs billions of dollars each year. A 2024 report estimated $74 billion in lost time alone. Coordinating hundreds of intersections at once is a hard combinatorial problem. Current tools often manage local optimization, but scaling to a full city network in near real time remains extremely difficult.
“Our job is to keep traffic moving across one of the busiest networks in Israel,” said Tal Elimelech, Director of Experimental Transportation Systems and Innovative Mobility Solutions at Ayalon Highways. “We believe quantum computing can help us manage hundreds of intersections in near real time, to provide benefits to commuters, businesses and the environment. The economic impact of upgrading our capabilities using quantum computing is expected to be huge.”
Quantum Art’s architecture is highly connected, supports multi-qubit gates and uses dynamically reconfigurable multi-core computing, making it well-suited for highly connected network-like optimization problems and complex traffic coordination across an entire metropolitan area.
Initial efforts focus on reducing average travel time, while longer term goals include lowering emissions, shortening pedestrian wait times and reducing stop frequency. Possible expansions could also include heavy truck routing, bus scheduling, parking optimization and shuttle services. In general, scheduling tasks of this kind apply to a wide range of industries beyond transportation.
“Cities struggle every day with gridlock because traffic systems can’t coordinate at scale,” said Dr. Tal David, CEO and co-founder of Quantum Art. “Quantum computing is built for exactly this type of problem. Working with Ayalon Highways lets us demonstrate how our technology can reduce travel times, improve safety, and make daily life easier for millions of people.”
To learn more about Quantum Art’s technology, please visit https://www.quantum-art.tech/
