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Traffic Studied Using Computer-Linked Cars
mprindle writes "Yahoo News has an AP article about a system that links individual cars to analyze traffic patterns, which allows the drivers to avoid traffic jams and accidents. This system is part of the 'smart highway' initiatives. The data from the car is sent to a central server and from that data traffic patterns in a 40 mile radius. According to the article this technology is less expensive than using poll mounted antennas or ground sensors."
From FTA: Acura's 2005 RL features a navigation system that provides real-time traffic updates for 20 major cities; information is transmitted to the cars via XM radio satellites. Traffic data is aggregated from local police, transportation departments and other sources. The big question: How much are people willing to spend to avoid sitting in traffic? List figures 10 to 15 percent of drivers in a given area would need to participate to make the system effective. The devices bought separately cost about $1,000.
I find that in the cities where i've lived (San Diego, Atlanta), that even when the highways are gridlocked, there really aren't viable alternatives on surface streets. They're either too far off the route or they're also crowded. So even with a system like this, I don't know that the alternate routes would be that much better a solution, you're still spending close to the same amount of time on the road. It's either gridlocked on the highway or you're gridlocked on the city streets. Maybe better mass transit is the answer.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Per Bak the author of How Nature Works gave a good overview of the theory of , Self Organized Criticality as he developed it using his famous sand pile, and how it applies to gridlock, inter alia.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Click here to read it. Same story.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Really, why, in North America, are we so fixated on the automobile for personal transport?
Because some big corporations (General Motors & some others in the auto industry) decided they'd make more money that way. Here's one blurb that starts discussing it (scroll down a few paragraphs):
One dramatic example is the "Los Angelizing" of the US economy, a huge state-corporate campaign to direct consumer preferences to "suburban sprawl and individualized transport -- as opposed to clustered suburbanization compatible with a mix of rail, bus, and motor car transport," Richard Du Boff observes in his economic history of the United States, a policy that involved "massive destruction of central city capital stock" and "relocating rather than augmenting the supply of housing, commercial structures, and public infrastructure." The role of the federal government was to provide funds for "complete motorization and the crippling of surface mass transit";
Another choice quote:
The private sector operated in parallel: "Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines, a holding company sponsored and funded by GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California, bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities (including New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, and Los Angeles) to be dismantled and replaced with GM buses... In 1949 GM and its partners were convicted in U.S.district court in Chicago of criminal conspiracy in this matter and fined $5,000."
Here's a more detailed history of the controlled demolition of the Bay Area "Key System":
General Motors, and some other companies in the automobile industry, acquired 64% of the stock of the Key System (officially the Railway Equipment and Realty Company) through a "front" company, National City Lines, in 1946. They replaced the board of directors with their own stooges, who then approved a motion to scrap company plans to purchase PCC type streetcars and electric trolleybuses. Today it would be called a "hostile take-over." Orders for more trains were cancelled. Soon they started to decimate the system, first destroying the electric trolleybus line (that, while still under construction, was almost completed) followed by streetcars and electric trains.
It's a small comfort to know that the US government whoring itself to corporate America's interests is not a recent phenomenon.
Arbitrarily? Maybe. Consider though. That 10 extra mph significantly reduces your reaction time. What's more, above 55 mph, the fatality rate for accidents starts increasing exponentially. (As you might expect, from KE = m(v^2) ) Interestingly, if I recall the statistics correctly, there are *fewer* accidents at 65mph than 55mph, but the number of fatalites was 40% more or somesuch.
Right. Go with the herd. It aggrevates the hell out of me when there is a deluge of rain or torrent of white-out-condition snow and the 'herd' (usually composed of overconfident drivers in huge SUVs) continue to rip along at or above the speed limit. That's how massive pile-ups happen. [Been there, avoided that.]
ALL of that aside, it is still 'the other guy' that worries me more.
Gridlock is a very special condition that comes from assholes not obeying the law.
Let me explain. (Long, I apologise)
Say, you are coming up on an intersection in heavy traffic. The street is bumper to bumper traffic. You get to the intersection, but notice that the lane is backed up all the way up to the crosswalk across from you. You decide "Well, it's likely that the traffic will move in a few seconds" and you enter the intersection, stopping behind the car in front of you, but you are still blocking (at least partially) the intersection. Then that green light turns yellow. Then red. You still haven't moved. To make things more realistic, lets say the driver behind you did the same thing.
The intersection is now blocked, but the driver that you have blocked thinks to himself "Oh HELL NO. I'm getting out into the intersection before the light turns yellow, because I KNOW that this idiot in front of me will move in a second" and he pulls up into the intersection.
What you the driver behind you and the driver that is in the intersection facing you don't know is the fact that up ahead there is the same thing happening, becaome some other driver is blocking the intersection as well going the other way.
It dosen't take too many drivers that are assholes to create a situation that impacts hundreds of cars over many city blocks. Bad gridlock spreads as quickly as it takes for cars to line up.
The only way to unravel gridlock is the same method that is used to avoid it. Don't be an asshole and enter an intersection if you cannot clear it immediatly. You are taking the risk of entering a condition that you cannot get out of.
Bad gridlock can only be untangled from the fringes of the locked up area one light at a time working inward.
Computer navigation suggestions cannot help with gridlock, because those that are in the situation are either the idiots that are responsible, or innocent and stuck. What it may help with is allowing you to possibly avoid a current gridlocked area.
Being a labrat for this study I can describe exactly how the program works. Theres three pieces, your pocket pc, your modem, and your gps receiver. To get it to work you must turn on the products in this order, -Turn on GPS -Put Modem in Pocket Pc -Turn on pocket pc -Connect to the network -Start the nav program If you don't do this rain dance in front of your palm pc it will not work. It is very picky about how it wants to work, and is NOT open to interpretation. Furthermore this program is obviously in beta testing there are a lot of issues that occur, such as randomly losing all the data on the flash card that holds the programs for the study, or not being able to connect to the network. Personally one thing I've learned about this program is how unstable Windows CE really is. Now to the day to day operations of the program It has voice directions that tells you where to go to avoid traffic, although since its going though small speakers its not very loud, and if people listen to music the way I do you'll never hear it. Also since its using mapquest type directions sometimes it gives you directions that make no sense, like to get to my house to the highway it gives me a dozen turns, when I know that i can get to the highway in one turn and 10 minutes faster. I have seen it work however, on my way to school it will direct me around the huge wall of traffic that occurs everyday at one stoplight. Overall I'm not a huge fan of any technology that uses gps to know exactly where you are. I'm partaking since it is a fun study and its free. Once the study's over I'll most likely never use it again and put my unit up on ebay. But for people on a long trip or for people who live in an area that has traffic problems (Albany NY DOES NOT have traffic problems despite what the article said) I could see this being useful.