The streets of Vilnius, Lithuania are full of ghost buses that blend right into their surroundings while passing through intersections as if only existing in translucent ethereal form. Matching up to the scenery beyond when glimpsed at just the right moment, the buses are momentarily camouflaged thanks to photorealistic printed imagery mounted to their exteriors for this summer’s Vilnius Street Art Festival (media by Studio Vieta).

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Lithuanian artist Liudas Parulskis collaborated with Studio Vieta to print full-scale scenes from the city onto public trolleybuses, a charmingly retro mode of transportation that has remained popular here despite being replaced by newer transit systems in many modern metropolises. ‘Vanishing Trolleybus’ is a temporary installation encouraging pedestrians to try to catch a glimpse or a photo of the effect in action at just the right ‘vanishing point.’

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One bus appears to be covered in imagery depicting traditional local architecture, while others capture specific street scenes around the city. Parulskis added a wolf running across an intersection to one of the buses, winking at the unofficial mascot of the city.

When visitors approach the intersection in front of Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market in the heart of downtown, the surprise is palpable when they realize that a ‘go’ for pedestrians lets people walk any way they want. Los Angeles recently followed suit, introducing its own omnidirectional ‘scramble intersection’ at a notoriously dangerous crossroads, making it much safer.

At Hollywood and Highland, designers have taken things a step further, adding an X-shaped layer of walking indicators (zebra stripes and white-framed boxes) to make it clear how people are permitted (and encouraged) to cross the streets diagonally through the center.

Popularized in the 1950s by Henry Barnes, the concept is quite simple: when pedestrians get their green light, anyone can cross anywhere during the limited window, then the lanes are given back over to cars and the process repeats. In the months since this latest scrambler was introduced, there has been only a single accident.

Scramble intersections can be found around the world, but are still limited in quantity, focused in areas where the safety gains are greatest. In dense cities like Tokyo, Japan, they can be marvelously busy at times (as shown above). In Seattle, meanwhile, the success of the Pike Street and First Avenue scrambler has led to others being introduced around the city; perhaps LA will continue to follow its lead.

All of our automotive infrastructure is designed around the needs of human drivers, but in a world of driverless cars, a crossroads need not slow anyone down, let alone force someone to stop.

A team of researchers from MIT, Swiss Institute of Technology and the Italian National Research Council developed this Light Traffic concept for maintaining safe distances and speeds, moving vehicles through quickly, efficiently and fairly. Traffic problems are boiled down to a system of sequences, each accommodating different volumes from different directions.

Vehicles approaching the intersection are slotted into a system that slows them down in advance, anticipating the traffic coming from all sides.

By avoiding unnecessary stops, vehicle emissions are reduced, fuel is saved, and annoyance alleviated. Road infrastructure would last longer too, while the lack of lights would reduce costs both upfront and ongoing. In time, such systems could even reduce the need for lanes, giving back space for sidewalks, greenery or other uses.

You might not be too concerned about how many light cycles go by before you actually get to cross the street if you’re too busy playing pong with the person waiting on the other side of the intersection. The ActiWait project aims to brings ‘street pong’ to intersections around the world, with two functioning games already installed in the city of Hildesheim, Germany.

The concept made its debut on the web in 2012, with the original video (below) getting so much attention that the interaction design students from HAWK University who created it decided to make it real. Designers Amelie Künzler, Sandro Angel and Holger Michel collaborated with traffic experts and fabricators to create a device that can be installed on traffic poles.

“Yeah well… the idea was simple but traffic engineering isn’t,” say the designers on their IndieGoGo page, where they’re currently raising funds to bring the ActiWait to more cities. “So we got us some support from companies and professionals in the traffic technology industry. The prototype is 3D printed and fully equipped, the first game is programmed and we’ve already launched our product in October so we can proudly say: the world’s first smart pedestrian light button is finally here!”

The product needs funding to develop hardware and software for the final stage, a new professionaly-produced case, and to pass safety tests. The designers also intend to make it wifi capable for news feeds, navigation, traffic education and other applications in addition to pong – even speed dating. Learn more at IndieGoGo.

The right place, proper timing and a keen eye conspired to help a photographer capture this eerie nighttime phenomena at a crossroads outside of Weimar, Germany.

German photographer Lucas Zimmermann found and shot this intersection at each stage of the its cyclical change, capturing green, yellow and red.

He also went a step beyond the sequential with one particularly impressive shot spanning the entire cycle, creating a rainbow in the mist.

His other work spans from the rural United States to the streets of Beijing, but usually focuses on people over places – this set, however, proved a worthy exception.