Boston is frequently in the top-20 of polls for positive accomplishments, such as restaurants, medical care, history. But there is one category that we’re ashamed of Boston being listed in, and that’s traffic woes.

I’ve always contended that – in addition to eliminating questionable three- and four-way STOP signs – if the police ticketed cars parked in bus zones as is frequently done in most other cities, commuters’ times would diminish because the buses would not have stopped in the travel lanes, thus impeding vehicular traffic behind them. But here’s a better solution than urging the Police Commissioner to put pressure on his police force to ticket scofflaws parked in bus stops.

This device is already in place for ambulances, fire apparatus, and police cars: drivers of those vehicles can change red lights to green to expedite their arrival times. But there is little, if any, evidence that it is part of traffic light fixtures nowadays in our city to change traffic light colors to reduce traffic at other times. I’m talking about a sensor that reacts to a longer vehicle line waiting for the red light to change – perhaps a line that will have to await two or three signal changes. If it hasn’t been invented yet perhaps contestants on the television show “Shark Tank” can confront Mr. Wonderful and his four colleagues to invest in it.

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Just imagine: a detour has caused a long line at a traffic light with a short green cycle for one street. This device would extend the green bulb to alleviate the back-up. Or a rush-hour: give the green light more time in-bound in the morning and more time out-bound in the late afternoon. Or if there is a fender-bender, modify the time allotment to alleviate any clogging due to a one-lane passage. Or if this is no traffic coming from certain directions, then keep the signal facing that direction red to allow stopped traffic to move on the green. Or if there are no pedestrians nearby, curtail or eliminate any walk-across-the-intersection time.

Now if only we old people would hurry across the crosswalks instead of worrying about falling if we scamper.