It took Noah Forman about 26 minutes to accomplish, but earlier this month, he achieved a personal driving goal: hitting 240 consecutive green lights in Manhattan, which he says is a record.
Forman had previously hit over 100 consecutive green lights in 2014, but, on Tuesday, December 6, very early in the morning, he set out to beat that.
"I wasn't satisfied with that number. These two years have gone by and much has changed: people are driving slower, stopping in random places, crossing four lanes of traffic," Forman, a taxi driver, told Gothamist.
Many stop lights in Manhattan are timed to the expected speed of drivers, which means that if you drive the speed limit up, say, Third Avenue without obstructions, you're likely to catch several green lights in a row. Which appears to be the part of the strategy Forman used, in addition to some luck.
"I was hoping to push my goal up to a large number like 500 green lights," he told Gothamist, "but I'll settle for this: no stopping, smooth, well mostly smooth sailing, for an estimated 240 lights, one yellow, all the rest green."