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UPS Using Software To Eliminate Left Turns
cybermage writes "The NY Times has a story about UPS using software to dramatically reduce the number of left turns their drivers take. With a fleet of vehicles their size, the time and money saved by pre-planning routes that try to eliminate left turns means big savings." Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.
Three rights make a left. Ok, were's my check?
Here in Minneapolis, we have lights on the onramps to the highways to control the flow of people getting on certain roads at certain times.
Aside from my thought of 'this just doesn't work, I have also wondered about how much time and gas is wasted for people to sit and wait for their time for the 'green light'.
One car per green. The wait can be from about 2 seconds between greens and 20 seconds (or more). I have seen cars waiting for several minutes, when the highways are very open. I can't figure it out.
From a time issue along. Left turns usually require red light wait, whereas many right turns just a stop, count 3 and go.
Salesmen.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
You insensitive clod!
Wikileaks, no DNS
NASCAR turned them down on a discount ad deal....
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
If they enter a circle/roundabout do they get stuck in an infinite loop?
And I ask my friend the UPS driver.
He tells me unless the union ratifies it in their contract there is no way this is true or happening.
Why does the union decide on the route?
It's seems like a bit of a strange idea a first, but when you think about it this is a really idea.
Niels
Who's idea was this? Derek Zoolander's?
You have never known nerve-racking until you have tried to merge left, or made a left turn in a USPS mail truck.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
..I bet their tire rotation bill will be an unpleasant surprise.
Left!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Last year, one of my coworkers told me the same story.
He also said he knew a place that was virtually unreachable unless you took a left turn. It was not uncommon to see a UPS truck circle around the place a few times before they arrived.
WWTTD?
Of course, this'll really screw them up when they try to apply it to their deliveries in the UK....
for the GOP debate once again
There's a difference between concept and implementation. Traffic shaping on highway onramps can help reduce congestion on the highways itself. This must be inplemented with some sort of feedback loop between traffic flow on the highway and the number of cars allowed onto it.
If you are waiting a long time when no traffic is on the highway then the implementation is flawed.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
...it seems FedEx has decided to cut costs simply by not delivering packages.
Said FedEx spokesman Dewey Shippit, "We've found that there is a significant savings in randomly tossing packages into a large warehouse and not delivering them. The cost of delivering those packages far exceeds the cost of repeatedly 'issuing a trace' to locate the missing item."
I went to Oregon over the summer and they had the same setup. It was very confusing to me, having never seen a light on an entry ramp. Also, ramps are suppose to allow one to get up to speed and merge more easily, it seems that by brining people to a halt on the ramp, this becomes more difficult.
Left turning cars are a big cause of motorcycle accidents. (It happened to Ben Roethlisberger of the Steelers.) I've read a lot about motorcycle safety and a major point was too look out for cars who are turning left. They never see you and cause some of the worst types of crashes.
FTA:
Wow thats a lot of miles. This is a really good use of software engineering.
I generally plan my routes to avoid left turns. I have since I first learned to drive. However, if I must make a left turn, I find making it at a stop light with a turn lane is much faster, safer and easier than making a left turn without a light on a busy street. Stop lights also save more time and energy than stop signs. Maybe UPS should consider that next.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Try driving in Bangkok!!!! Any given light was at least a 20 minute wait. Sometimes, up to 30 min. Still, I loved the place.
In case people don't know why the parent made that post - you can't make any sort of turn on red in the UK. Red means stop, and stop is what it means. No wiggle room.
I remember driving in San Francisco, my first time driving in the US. I only got caught the once being beeped because I'd just stopped at red and didn't turn right although it was clear, but my other local transgression was a lot worse. We came up to some flashing red lights - I had no idea what they were for. There was one car in front of us before the lights, it stopped for a while and then went. I thought "ah ha - flashing red means stop and go if clear".
It doesn't. It means "tram coming". I found this out at the end of the week we stayed there, suddenly realising I'd spent the entire week running red lights against trams...
Cheers,
Ian
There was a divergence of philosophies. NASCAR (on ovals anyway) is *nothing but* left turns.
"Oh God help us. We're in the hands of engineers."
... or some other delivery company, get them make all left turns, and then they can rotate out their tires to each other.
I can see their program hang when it tries to process a required left-hand turn from one one-way street to another.
Those are being installed all around Atlanta as we speak. I was at a public feedback meeting for adding HOV lanes to I-285 a month or so ago, and happened to find out that, at least in Atlanta, they were planning to control those onramp lights manually, using cameras and human operators. I don't know how many onramps a single operator is supposed to control, but I could easily imagine him not paying sufficient attention and leaving a ramp sitting on red for a few minutes, or going to the bathroom, or any number of other things.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The issue is that in America, we go around our roundabouts counter-clockwise (looking from the top); therefore, to get out of the roundabout we turn right. On the other hand, I suppose in the UK (though I have never been) they go around the roundabouts clockwise; therefore, to get out of the roundabout they turn left. Not sure why you bring up the side of the car the steering wheel is on, as that is irrelevant.
The number of right turns a typical UPS van takes has gone up threefold.
I hope the mapping software is better then online maps that are sometimes missing roads, tell you to get on and off the same highway many times in a roll in the same city.
And what do they when the map tells them to make a trun that can't be made as the road may be set to block that trun and what about roads that are not yet on the map?
The new part of I-355 is missing from all of the online maps.
The article is actually about how UPS is going to lessen global warming or some such silly thing like that. They aren't, the increased distance the route can plot makes you drive as long (it doesn't truly matter if your diesel truck is idling at a light or driving in a circle). It is, however, easier for a driver to make less left turns and probably has some sort of psychological effect on other drivers to not see them in the left lane.
"Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons."
The software is excellent, it makes great routes, can cut down on any number of hassles, but seriously the main point is NOT to eliminate left turns. The software is meant to get more packages out, more quickly, to more people, with less drivers, and more profit.
Silly NY Times writers.
"Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble."
After the .Com bubble burst left the IT market in shambles, us contractors were scrambling for work. One of the odd jobs I wound up with in that time frame was doing exactly what the "Can you hear me now? Good!" guy did. Only I had a car, multiple phones, and a lap top with some really cool software.
I drove virtually every road from NW Chicago, to Door County Wisconsin, over to LaCrosse, and down to Iowa. And it only took a handful of days to start looking for route optimizations. We didn't have software to do it for us, we had state maps, plotter maps, and the laptop maps with GPS. Eliminating Left turns in busy areas, specifically those with out turn signals was always a high priority.
I can imagine the problem would be even more significant for UPS drives because of the number of left turns they will have to make in uncontrolled intersections. Turning left on a 4-lane avenue with no traffic lights into driveways, frontage roads, parking lots, what ever, can be a PITA in a car, let alone a straight-truck. The amount of gas they can save from idling, and gunning it hard to clear traffic probably adds up to a significant amount over the length of the day.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I drove for UPS and will say I hope it works out. Any way to shave precious seconds off a delivery are welcomed.
However, having used the DIAD IV system, I can't see it working out too well. If you're not familiar with it, DIAD is the little brown LCD screen you sign whenyou get a package and has all the stops a driver makes in his day organized in an order that is suppose to be the easiest and quickest. The problem is very rarely is it done right. So you'll be driving on 4th, and the next stop will be on the same end of 3rd. The problem is 3rd is a one way and if you turn on it you'll be hitting oncoming traffic. So you either need to swing around the block (wasteful use of time) or deliver it later via a different route.
Fortunately nobody with half a brain relies on DIAD for their route info. A driver with enough experience will know their route and what stops to make when.
With that being said, it was easily the worst job I ever had. I ran all day and barely ate. In a 2-3 week period I lost 15 pounds.
...when Figgis tells Freddy something along the lines of:
"Red light, don't fight, turn right."
It works in traffic, it works in life. Not all the time, mind you, but a lot more than you'd think.
Somebody needs to use a spell checker. Something is either planned or unplanned. There is no "pre".
6F 9E A9 1E 96 9F 74 27 ED B8 81 6D 0C 4E 1E 78
My other Sig is a 229.
Like keeping lazy-ass drivers from throwing fragile one-of-a-kind packages onto your porch. They totally destroyed a pair of vintage Revox reel-to-reel recorders and totally blew off my claims. FIX THAT YOU BASTARDS!!!
I drive on I-75, 85 and 285 to and from work every day, and I got the impression that those lights are used not for controlling how much traffic can hit the interstates, but because Atlanta drivers don't know the concept of zipper traffic. By the way, those lights already work at the Freedom Parkway entry onto I-85S, and they appear being automated.
It's a plot by Chimpy McBu$hitlerburton to do something sneaky... Lord knows what it is, but it's gotta be...
In the northeastern states, roundabouts are quite common. In fact, in New Hampshire, I know of at least two places where two state routes (these two-lane roads would be considered "major" highways only in N.H.) have roundabouts as the "interchange"
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
nah,
:D
they're just mad because the Fed-Ex car has made the last two chases while DJ barely started 1/2 the races this year (including past champion provisionals). between Gibbs going Toyota & Reutimann taking over the 44 things should be looking up for the UPS car next year.
yes - I a NASCAR watching, database administering, wine collecting, Masters (golf) attending man of eclectic tastes...
go Jimmie!
You'll have more trucks going over the corner of the road, hitting pedestrians on the sidewalk.
(yes, they do that -- I see it often enough!)
I hope this is just an idea for the smaller UPS trucks. A tractor-trailer driver would kill someone who forced him to make a right when he didn't have to. It might save a few insensitive clods in cars who try to scoot through on the right of a truck trying to make his wide right turn. We're even taught to swing right, then left, then right again to try to keep the rear of the trailer far enough right to cut down on that gap while still giving us room to get everything around the corner without curb-hopping while keeping the smaller four-wheelers safely out of that gap. So I've seen a saying somewhere that says "Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." It's just easier that way for semi drivers.
They are going to start configuring UPS vans like NASCAR vehicles, customized to turn in one direction. That way, they not only have to stop less, but they can also take turns at 50 MPH. Time to start buying stock in companies that specialize in left tires.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
we plan our LIVES around not making left turns.
...business to try optimizing turns. Daycare centers prefer to locate on the right side of the street exiting the residential area they primarily serve. That way you get the easy right turn when you're on your way to work and in a hurry, and wait for the left turn on the way home when you can afford the time.
rj
I worked on a private ambulance in and around Boston, and on non-emergency transports (and even some emergencies) left turns could make the difference between which hospital a patient would go to. Left turns can be huge time wasters. Especially in Boston, this seems to me to be a plan that will be very effective.
This is of course assuming that either hospital would be an appropriate choice for the patient, so don't freak out now. There are at least 4 level 1 trauma centers in Boston as I recall, and a total of about 8 ERs just within Boston proper.
Congress was working up a bill that would retrofit all the roads in the
US so we're either straight or turned right. The bill was dropped when
they discovered the principle designer, MC Escher had pased away and nobody
else was capable of drawing them.
Belthize
UPS recently announced the updated name of the project. "The Derek ZooLander Driver Program"
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
My UPS just sits there with a green light on, until the power goes off, then it has a red light and beeps, but still delivers power to the computer.
My Ph.D. was highly related to this problem (it was associated to waste collection routes featuring the same adversion for left turns) and curiously I used a "Travelling Salesman"-like formulation to solve it. Even if the objective is not to minimize distances, the problem itself is a TSP.
PS: Sorry for my bad english (I'm not native speaker nor I live in an english speaking country).
I'm a wierdo, but of course if I wasn't I wouldn't be on slashdot. Nerds aren't exactly "normal" now are we? At any rate, at three bucks per gallon I've been driving in such a manner to minimize my gas useage. It annoys my passengers, while I'm annoyed at the dimwits who race to the next red light, only to be sitting there making me stop at a green light.
I found I wasn't unique, there is actually a name for people like me - "hypermilers". The EPA estimate on my large car (I'm not even a radical hypermiler) is 35 mpg on th ehighway, I can get 36 if I do 50MPH (which REALLY pisses people off, even though I stay in the right lane).
Any way, left turns onto a highway do, indeed, use gas, particularly if there's heavy traffic. But at an intersection, particularly with a left turn arrow, it uses no more gas than a right turn. You have to use as much gas idling to wait for traffic turning right from a side street as you do waiting for traffic turning left on to a side street.
But the seconds of idling don't use much gas at all. What REALLY uses gas is stopping, period. Every time you touch your brake you convert the kinetic energy you spent gas obtaining to heat and throw it away. If you're stopped completely you must overcome inertia, which takes even more energy.
So when I take my foot off the gas when the light ahead turns red, coast to it, and am forced to stop behind your stupid ass at a green light because you zoomed around me racing to the red light, I'm blasting my horn, you rich damned dumbass. Waste your own damned gas but waste mine and I'm pissed.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The US has a very large number of people in it. To get the equivalent number of crazy shooters there, you should sum up every national crazy shooter in Europe.
If you want a non-US 'WTF is wrong' experience for once, try reading this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7092707.stm
It was on Digg more than a year ago. And we all know how prompt Digg is, so this is quite old news.
> If you are waiting a long time when no traffic is on the highway then the implementation is flawed
The flaw is simple: the feedback is not taking into account the number of cars lined up at the light.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
In the USA you are allowed very often to turn right with the red light.
In Europe you'd get a fine for this.
Much more costly than the supposed savings.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I'm sure there's just as much junk going on in the UK, we in the USA just don't give a shit.
Seriously, NYC is far safer than London, especially for non-Black strangers.
Flashing red lights in most of the US means "stop, and go if clear"
"Tram coming" usually involves a solid red light.
I'd have made the same mistake you did (absent other clues which I might have looked for)
At least Derek Zoolander has a fallback career now if he can't model anymore.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
We get them in Arizona - my "master planned" community has a roundabout on the way into the neighborhood, as do a number of nearby neighborhoods.
Of course, they tend to be placed at the intersection of two roads at right angles to each other (traffic "calming" purposes), resulting in people either not knowing what to do (despite the signs that direct which way to go), or ignoring them. They actually cause more accidents than they prevent.
As usual, in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they aren't.
I live in Massachusetts (northeast US) and there's 5 someodd rotaries (what we call 'em) within a stone's throw of my apartment, north of Boston.
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Ok George Carlin...
pre-boarding..what's this? To get on before you get on!?!
pre-recoreded.."this program was pre-recorded" Well of COURSE it's pre-recorded when else are you going to record it? Afterwards?!
pre-heating.. there's only two states an oven can be in, heated or unheated!
That's funny because they actually sponsor a car and advertise during the races a lot.
I want to shoot the messenger!
No rights on red.
Learning to drive elsewhere, I have no idea how many cars I've honked and swore at for waiting at a red light to make a right turn, even at an empty intersection.
My first encounter with that had a lot of honking horns behind me, and my 'navigator' saying "why are they honking at you?"
----------
Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.
To get the equivalent number of crazy shooters there, you should sum up every national crazy shooter in Europe.
You mean if they were allowed to own guns. You've got to be seriously bad ass to kill a lot of people without bullets.
But the issue really is America's media-fed paranoia. Canada has more guns per capita and no where near the homicide rate from guns. Check out 'Bowling for Columbine' for an exploration of the issue.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Is this a new concept? I thought MapQuest had been using the assumption (that left turns take longer than right turns) to compute their routes and approximate their times. Also, I think my inexpensive GPS unit has options such as a slider to tell it how much to bias turns. Why wouldn't UPS use a similar system? I mean, I guess it's interesting that a company is introducing the practice, I'm just not surprised about the impact of left turns on travel time (especially on large vehicles).
300 million people. So a mentally-disturbed kid goes to a mall (Omaha has a mall?) and opens up on the crowd with an old, rusted rifle and kills a few. A better question to pose -- what the fuck is wrong with muslims that they kill 100s a day, every day, all in the name of their god (the teddy bear)? That is seriously fucked up, dude !!
In UPS's underwater branch...
Brain: "Drat, Pinky, the sub club! No matter, we'll just use only right turns."
Am I the only one who was immediately reminded of that?
Sendou Wave Kick!!
Try LIVING with that arrangement. Moving from Texas to Michigan, I was pretty surprised to find the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area didn't seem to have many left turn lights, and in fact had a LOT of "No Left Turn" signs. My first left there, I asked my ex-wife. She simply replied:
"Yeah, you have to take a RIGHT, and then that turnaround a little ways down the road.
-blink-
Those turnarounds work great, if and ONLY if, the traffic oncoming will let you in. Sit in one of turnarounds behind some granny who won't turn without a football field worth of space, or during rush hour when you have to FIGHT for that space.
Frag the no-left policy. It depends too much on the goodwill of other drivers....and there's not much driver goodwill on Michigan highways, it would appear.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
This story is so very years ago.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Oh! Were we talking about traffic?
Funny how that applies to traffic too.
Interesting that the Brits turn to the Left. Hmmm....
----------
Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.
I remember reading the same story in the early 1990s.
So, does turning in the same direction all the time wear out the tires unevenly or mess up the suspension somehow? Are they going to end up with a mess of trucks all sagging on one side?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Would GPS tracking for fleet vehicles work in NYC, or is it inaccurate/imprecise? I know that in some parts of DC, I get no signal or a delayed signal (despite almost no buildings over 160 feet (48 meters) & a generally clear view of the sky).
My Mother-in-Law used to do this all the time before she drove anywhere. Not to save time though just because she did not like to do left turns.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Back in the early 80's, I-25 in Denver would literally come to a crawl and it would be true stop and go traffic. The reason is that at the top of the on-ramps would be stop lights. These would release a batch of cars (2 abreast), who would then FLOOD i-25. At the merge point, the I-25 cars literally had to stop to allow the mass of merging cars in. In 1986, they added those on-ramp lights, and it changed the flow of I-25. Basically, these were timed to the flow of traffic. As I-25 go heavier, then the red light got longer. But now, I-25 flows MUCH faster, fewer accidents, and almost certainly carries a GREAT deal more traffic.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe the drivers can use that time saved to actually do their job and deliver packages. I live in an apartment complex and, for the last 2 years, the UPS drivers do not deliver packages to my door, nor do they leave notice that they're leaving the packages at the leasing office. FedEx, DHL, and others come to the door first and if I'm not home, they leave a note saying it's at the leasing office. The UPS guys simply refuse to. They also have a history of just dropping off the packages at the leasing office and marking that it was signed for by someone who wasn't even there that day.
I've already told my company and several of my clients to not use UPS to send me anything, but sometimes it happens anyway.
End of line..
Be careful using phrases like "travelling salesman" in the context of people actually travelling and interfacing with customers. Managers hear that phrase and don't hear "NP" they hear "Hey, lets make the delivery guys try to sell stuff!"
Who you calling a 'Brit'! Do that again and I will slap you into the middle of next week.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I can see how eliminating left turns can save on time and gas, but how does it reduce the distance traveled? Surely the route found using only right turns is also available when you can use right and left turns.
I heard about this a while ago but in terms of the "green" advantage it gave them. They save a lot of money on gas and reduce their carboon footprint by not idling at red lights waiting to make a left turn.
... UPS dropped all NASCAR sponsorship citing technical difficulties with their in-car GPS systems which caused too many cars to crash into the wall.
I presume that his control would be "X # of cars per minute" not "click to let one car through".
That may be the case in Britain, New Zealand, or Australia. But in these areas, people drive on the left side of a two-way street, and drivers want to eliminate right turns. The U.S. English rule is that -ing doubles the consonant after an accented short vowel. "Travelling" in U.S. English would suggest an accented placement like "truh-VELL-ing".
But I do know of one place with right-side driving and British spelling: anglophone Canada. What province are you from?
While the implementation may well be flawed, it's also possible that the observer's perception of the situation is too limited to adequately judge it. By the nature of the problem, shaping traffic patterns can involve local actions that look non-optimal but have a positive effect on the overall system.
Canada also have much less blacks. Crime statistics in the USA indicate blacks are responsible for over 7 times the rate of crime as whites.
How do you make that out? We get about 100 murders a year in London (Pop approx 10 million), and at least half the victims are people who cheated in drugs deals: Don't expect to sell cleaning powder as cocaine and live.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I recall hearing about this at least two years ago, why is it suddenly /. front page news? There's got to be something else to post.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
I'm from Massachusetts (we don't need no stink'ng turn signals) and thought that having the GPS automatically turn on the turn signals for upcoming turns would be a safety feature or problem. The GPS could be programmed to flip the turn signal on a few seconds or hundreds of feet prior to turning. It would certainly help with the turn signal impaired in Mass. It could also remind drivers of the upcoming navigation (especially if integrated with a display).
On the other hand, it might cause the turn signal response to complete atrophy.
and your parents made a mistake
It's not only Atlanta drivers. It's drivers all over the US who think that they are privileged enough to go before that semi, or that fancy sports car screaming, "I'll show you who's more important!! See... I got in front of you! *slams brakes*"
I truthfully can't wait for a company to get automated driving down to the point where the car itself can be sensible enough to alternate on a merge.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Carlin (or whoever wrote that) evidently doesn't cook much. While many recipes call for the oven to be fully heated before putting the food in -- hence pre-heating -- there are certainly recipes that call for the oven to be at room temperature when the food is put in, and then turned on. So using "pre-" in the former circumstance is perfectly reasonable.
(Of course, to be really geeky, one could point out that all ovens -- even those at room temperature -- are "heated". After all, none of them are at absolute zero
When are they going to come out with software that prevents the UPS monkeys from breaking my stuff in transit. That'd be nice.
"I'm not an ambiturner" - Derek Zoolander.
This must be a woman's idea...my wife hates left turns and would rather make 3 right turns. :)
(I hope the smily makes my statement PC.)
As an Atlanta native who transplanted to Houston, I can tell you that no matter what you think of Atlanta drivers not being able to follow road designs, I can assure you that they are much better drivers than out here in Houston. Now, some may blame the fact that there are just more people in the Houston metro area, but I disagree.
And to make matters worse, Houston actually has frontage roads that are used. Imagine I-285 6-lanes across at the narrowest, all around town (at a further distance from downtown no less) and with an additional 2-3 lanes on each side of the freeway, with on and off ramps everytime there is a underpass. Now imagine that for 75, 85 and 20 as well. All of Houston is laid out like that. Then, as I said imagine 285 further out, that is because there is a second loop just outside of the downtown area, that is 610, which has more construction than any I have seen. Imagine Spaghetti Junction with 365/24/7 construction for three years. That kind of busy, with new construction. Houston has that on 610 in two places.
Now, as far as having a larger population causes more drivers, sure, but that many more dumb-arsen does not follow the laws of averages when increasing a population. It's been a disproportionate increase in my view, or else ATL really does have better drivers overall.
Lastly, I just thought I might add about the HOV's, my favorite annoyance now. In Atlanta, there are HOV lanes on each side, one {north|east}bound and one {south|west}bound. Houston uses that time honored approach (yeah right) of A SINGLE ELEVATED HOV LANE, that changes direction based on the time of day, and THAT IS NOT AVAILABLE ON THE WEEKENDS generally speaking. Gated and seperated and usually elevated. Not like how Atlanta has central lane exits (of course, Houston has those as well, as the HOV is in the middle of the interstate) but the entire thing is segregated. You have to exit the freeway to get on the HOV (except in one small part of town, but it's still gated).
So be happy that Atlanta has some concept of driver congestion and how to relieve it.
Cheers
2^3 * 31 * 647
We hear about UPS doing this.
What you don't realize is they do this year round.
Heck, I try to do it year round.
I drove the same route to work every day for 2 months, making nothing but left turns
just to see what would happen. I found that I lost about 12% of my fuel economy. Thats a big deal when you only get 14mpg.
Yes, I know, flame me for a "Gas guzzler", but I don't burn gas or diesel
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Crime statistics in the USA indicate blacks are responsible for over 7 times the rate of crime as whites.
Gun violence among blacks is only twice that of the average (source).
While blacks make up 1.9% of the Canadian population, they make up nearly 10% of the American population.
Gun violence in the United States almost 3 times that of Canada.
If we were to grant you're premise, wouldn't we have 5 times the gun violence in the US versus Canada?
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
UPS has obviously not heard of the "Michigan Left"... whereas getting ANYWHERE will likely require one-- if not two left turns... basically coordinated U-Turns.
;)
Can I get a "hell yeah" from my Michigan brothers and sisters?
Spuds
Years ago I worked for UPS corporate and I can tell you that this is not news. They were doing this five years ago. It is just a network problem and basically the algorithms on spanning trees you learn about in a compilers course can figure out optimum solutions to this problem. UPS also studies the time it takes for drivers to buckle and unbuckle their seat belts and to pick up and put down packages. When you do over $500M in business a week by moving boxes and flats around, these things tend to be important to you.
Are you telling me that the software utilized by Mapquest, Yahoo, Google, Magellan, Garmin, and Tom Tom hasn't been weighting left turns as taking longer than right turns lo these last 10 years?! Or did it just take UPS 10 years to catch on?
Next Announcement: UPS will include two-way radio communications in all their trucks by 2012.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Murder is not the only crime. Not even the only violent crime.
And there may very well be fewer than 50 stranger-on-stranger murders in NYC this year.
Then again, down the block you have Killadelphia, which is what NYC was during Mayor Sweaty's administration circa 1989-92... "Unmanageable! There's no way you can stop folks from killing each other here! It's the Federal Government's fault!!!"
So I geuss there is more than one tru omni-turner in the world.
So the solution to the traveling salesman problem is a Beowulf Cluster of truck drivers?
UPS driver --> Unionized --> No lunch?? Yeah, right!!
You fucking people would march right down to your union and demand more money. And once you got it, then you would start taking a lunchbreak and say, "Fuck the comp'ny, I needs time ta eat!!". And then when the company starts complaining that you're not getting you're packages delivered, you march right down to the union and say, "Shit, if dey wants me ta give up mah lunchtime to git dis stuff delivered, dey gots ta pay me mo' muny". Ad infinitum.
That isn't racist at all. I thought it was hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing.
What makes driving here much more frustrating than anywhere else in the US as far as I can tell is that Georgia is by far the worst marked state in the US. This goes for any kind of signs: from traffic signs to hiking trail blazes. As a result, many people may be good drivers, but with the signage as it is, they are spending too much time and effort at trying to figure out where to go. It's not surprising then that the most accidents or near accidents occur when people cut across several lanes to get out of or onto an exit lane.
...which are bound to be wearing out on the right side very often...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Satnavs are a boon for low stress driving. Handling the traffic on top of that is just great. If you do a lot of driving I recommend it heartily. It saves masses of time a load of fuel and best of all, zero stress. Doesn't stop left or right turns, but all of a sudden there are very few traffic jams.
http://www.trafficmaster.co.uk/
Deleted
NASCAR got this software years ago. They used it to optimize all their race tracks.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Isn't this kinda old news? I thought UPS announced they were doing this a couple of years ago.
I live in Los Angeles now, after living on the East Coast big cities (NYC, Wash DC, Balt, Philly), and I have to say that SoCal has some of the most passive drivers I've ever seen, and I think it contributes to the traffic problem. If people were a little more agressive - e.g. beep/honk/flash lights at the idiot in the fast lane driving slowly, then traffic might be a bit better. Worst rubber neckers I've encountered too.
No one EVER jumps the lights here to make a left on the green - why because everybody is still making lefts from the previous light traffic cycle.
..........FULL STOP.
I used to live in an apartment complex that was situated directly on one of these Michigan Left roads. This road (M-59 in Macomb Township) has four lanes running in each direction, plus right hand turn lanes. Let me tell you that it would have been a hellish experience had that been a typical intersection with left turn signals and all that. Can you imagine turning left across 4 lanes of busy traffic to get to a business on the other side of the road? These intersections also moved an incredible amount of traffic. I drove on a sequence of two of these roads on my way to work, and due to the fact that lights can be easily timed the traffic is able to continuously flow at decent speeds. Yes, if you are turning "left" onto such a road you will have to stop and wait a few minutes before you can get going, but it is well worth the wait considering the alternative would be to make a much riskier left hand turn in a much more congested intersection. So don't assume most people in Michigan hate these roads, because they make life easier for thousands of people (whether they realize it or not.) Also- the Ann Arbor/Ypsi area barely has any Michigan Left roads. In fact, traffic control seems mostly like an afterthought there.
three rights don't necessarily make a left.
They make either a right or a left depending on how far you're travelling after the last right you made
I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but they also have software that sorts the day's packages into truck routes, organizes them based on an optimal delivery order, and tells the guys loading the truck what order to put the packages in the truck so that the next one to be dropped off is always at the back.
Well, just old technology. I gigged with a client in 2004 and their dispatch software would do this. I would expect that UPS would have even better and more capabilities, from knowing one-way streets to turn-by-turn routing, and left v right turns would be critical.
And drivers with relatively fixed routes would soon become better than the system at optimizing their routes. Save for the priority packages that have to be delivered out of sequence.
Still, this is not really too new, and the newsworthy part to me would be the fuel savings, delivery goals met, and driver turnover avoided.
I, for one would NOT drive for UPS or any other delivery service. Too damned hard. Unless my doctor told me to lose 45 pounds asap. At least I'd get paid for it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Dale Jarret is going to have a problem if he wants to race the truck. After all, all those NASCAR guys can do is turn left.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Since it is nothing but an infinite left turn in the US and anywhere that drives on the opposite side, you have to make a left to get out.
We talked about this over a year ago in one of my GIS classes. Their system was designed using ArcGIS's Network Analyst tool. Optimum routes are created through GIS with left turns having a higher weight.
Except on Thursdays in months that end in "R", in which case flashing green means that your speed has to be a prime number. That is, if you have a license plate ending in an odd number, otherwise you are exempt from this requirement.
In response to your post....
The traffic control lights at the on ramps in the Twin Cities are not programmed to work properly. They are programmed to make driving worse in order to try to convince people to use mass transit. This was proven a few years ago when we the people forced a study to be done and shut the ramp lights off for a month or two. Traffic conditions actually improved after people got used to the changes.
The ramp lights were turned back on and MNDOT claimed to have reprogrammed some ares to fix ramp controls that were causing problems. There is no proof they changed anything and if they did there is no proof that those changes are still in place.
The real cause of traffic problems is governments thinking they can control our behaviors like rats in a maze.
Unexplained rise of right shoulder strain injuries among UPS drivers. Researchers are baffled.
Subject SL610249 is getting unruly, better move the cheese again...
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
You've obviously never driven in Oregon.
I've actually seen a sign to turn right to go to a particular town AFTER the turn.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
It also may have to do with Houston having such a LARGE population of 'undocumented' drivers.
It is really hard to drive down there when you can't read the traffic signs printed in English.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Ah, I see the media scare tactics are working on you too. We have shark scares every year here too, but shark killings are oh so rare.
I'd be more worried about driving in the US if you're concerned about danger. Over 50,000 people are killed in transportation-related accidents in the US every year. That's the equivalent of sixteen 9-11 attacks per annum committed by our mad culture alone. We just don't happen to see headlines screaming "Highway Slaughters Innocent Thousands!" because - well - you gotta keep working and making the cash, y'all, feed the machine. And besides, we're just talking about the cattle here, not financiers and important people. Acceptable losses and all that...
My girlfriend - born in Newcastle and now living in Brighton/Hove - has visited the United States several times and found the experience overwhelmingly positive and rewarding. Something about the openness of the people and all the space - ah, glorious space! So she's selling her flat and moving here next year. I can't guarantee she won't be shot or die in a traffic accident, but then I can't guarantee the same for you either.
We gain in this life by facing down our fears and taking chances. Often we only get the courage retroactively. Of all the chances you could take in life, moving to the US could hardly be called foolish. But not taking the chance because of school shootings or shark attacks... ehhh...?
I'd be more concerned about the plunge in the quality of US institutions and the shortcomings of our adolescent culture... but then I gather those are recurrent world-wide problems.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I wan' go home!
The boring wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulerian_path
The more interesting wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg
No left turns may or may not be the most economical way to traverse a route, but kudos to UPS for efforts towards efficiency. Next, make your trucks run on biodiesel. Oh...wait...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13464113/
The rules for right-of-way at a triangle are obtusely specified in drivers manuals that I've seen.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Has been doing this for years with their WasteRoute GIS system.
Peeking duck must be careful Cheney is in the field hunting. Oh the Wong's need to be careful not the peeking duck
Many years back I worked on a vehicle routing system (we build maps from Navtech data). Underneath, of course, it used Dijkstra's algorithm to find least cost routes between points. The users were given a lot of control over how the cost was calculated. In particular, they could independently assign costs to left and right turns. So if you didn't like left turns you'd just give them a high cost. The route might be a little longer but it would have fewer left turns. Drivers of big rigs (18 wheelers) would put the high costs on the right turns.
Sure! I do it all the time! It's a new-fangled invention called a "left turn signal". Y'see, traffic stops both ways for a short time so I {and those across from me} can turn left.
These intersections also moved an incredible amount of traffic....and I'll betcha that San Antonio, Texas, has a larger population than the AA/Ypsi area...
Yes, if you are turning "left" onto such a road you will have to stop and wait a few minutes before you can get going, but it is well worth the wait considering the alternative would be to make a much riskier left hand turn in a much more congested intersection.Sure, 'cause all that stopped traffic is a hazard... how? Once again, the traffic STOPS for turn signals; if you're turning left at a left-turn signal, the traffic on the road you're turning ON to has been halted. Where's the congestion?
So don't assume most people in Michigan hate these roads, because they make life easier for thousands of people (whether they realize it or not.)...and if you've lived in Michigan all your life, you might not have another example to compare to. I haven't, wouldn't, and know better. If it were such a traffic boon, don't you think it'd be more widely implemented?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
...and your parents obviously spawned a humorless boor. Lighten up, Francis.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I'll grant you about the signage. My word, I had forgotten that little quirk. And to the other ChildPoster on this thread, I've never been to Oregon, so no knowledge.
However, you mention the luxury of Turn Signals. I capitalize them because I'm sure they're trademarked by someone in Atlanta based on the usage in Houston. Houstonians don't only _not use their turn signals_, and _not only will they block you if you use a turn signal_, but they'll actively go to the trouble of using the turn signal on the left to go to the right, and vice versa, and they'll use their turn signals to tell you what they've done.
But to use it to signal a turn, or to identify their intentions? Surely not. In Houston, you see a spot open in traffic, then you had best just muscle in, because otherwise you won't be able to advance. And forget about attempting to merge with any sort of forewarning. Unless you've driven in Houston for at least two years, you'ld do best to just hang out on the right, and get off when you get to your exit. What's that? You need to make a left exit? Best invest in that new UPS software and figure out how to get to your destination by going some other way.
NOTICE: the above post only references the rush hours in Houston, which begin at 05:00, take a siesta at 14:15, then resume at 14:45 until around 21:00. Outside of those times, and presuming the way you're trying to go is not blocked due to road construction, then at that time, and only then, driving in Houston is like driving anywhere else. I think.
It's really been too long. But for fairness sake, I should mention that I am going to Atlanta on the 19th of December, so I can verify then which is truly worse. And I'll be in my car, so I won't have any prejudice as far as which vehicle I'm in.
-------
So, a NJ transplant in ATL? Business or family as a reason for the move? Which industry are you in (presumably Comp related)? I hear NJ is the king of the toll-booth, which I didn't have any experience with till I moved to Houston; here there is the lovely Beltway, which is almost the only way to get around town. How's the tollbooth experience in Atlanta coming along? Last I was there, 400 was toll, but that was it.
Otherwise, how's Atlanta compared to back home? I've always felt that it was a little to home-towny and not enough Metro.
2^3 * 31 * 647
Who has experienced Melbourne's crazy downtown hook turns? As a visitor driving a rental car, it was pretty damn scary. I remember trying to avoid right turns because of it.
So this software enables UPS to pass the Turning Test?
ducks
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
I wonder how it works in NJ, home of the "jug handle"?
I've always preferred the term "vicious circle".
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
When he wound up in Mexico, he said, "I knew I shoulda taken a left toin at Albuquoique!"
Some of the UPS drivers actually go even further - they just do not stop at the STOP signs. Especially efficient and time-saving when it is done next to the elementary school. P.S. I saw it myself at least twice :(
If time equals money, then should a company want to minimize total travel time. If that means turning left to avoid congestion, then that should be optimal.
'Cos you sound like a red, boy.
First you say By the nature of the problem, shaping traffic patterns can involve local actions that look non-optimal but have a positive effect on the overall system., then you'll move onto shaping behaviour patterns and finally shaping thought patterns. And that's commie talk.
Unless you're doing it for an advertising agency, that is.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
... and let me say that this system isn't that great. The software forces drivers to follow a specific "trace" (route) which oftentimes is not the most sensible route possible for a given situation. The software that plans the routes is a super cool idea in theory (like, really cool): every package is scanned when it reaches its delivery center, and a smaller label is applied to it (called a SPA or PAL label -- you'll often see them if you live in a large metropolitan area because smaller locations often don't have it yet). This label looks at the destination address of the package and determines instantaneously exactly where it needs to go: it tells the sorters which belt to put it to, the boxliners which box to put it in, and the loaders which truck to put it in, and what shelf to put it on, in which order. After all this is completed, the program figures out the route it's dispatching a driver on and then the driver downloads it to his DIAD... this is called EDD. EDD essentially is a digital manifest of packages on the truck to be delivered. EDD also creates a delivery order, and expects a driver to follow it.
Sometimes EDD sucks, though. Let's say a business is getting a 1DA package at 10:00am, and the business next door is scheduled to receive a ground package later that day. EDD doesn't necessarily tell the driver that that ground package is there. It would make much more sense to deliver the 1DA box and the ground box to the adjacent businesses, but that would break trace, and the packages in the truck generally aren't ordered that way. This means that the driver might have to come back later in the day to the same spot to deliver the ground package. A lot of drivers will cheat and deliver them at the same time, but it's frowned upon, and generally unknown that you have a ground stop there until the DIAD pops up the next stop and you realize that, "oh, I've already been there."
Yeah, the software can cut down on left turns with its route planning, but an experienced driver who knows his route is oftentimes going to do a much better job of delivering the packages efficiently than even a sophisticated software system like UPS has implemented.
No, actually all those lights have signs next to them saying "one car per green."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This comment won't even be read, but I feel I should say something anyway.
:-)
I completely agree with the original article, in that this is important. In the UK, I frequently try and factor in the number of right-turns (same as US left - cross traffic) I have to make, as it adds significant waiting time to your journey.
Also, if I need to turn right onto a busy road, I try and seek out an intersection with traffic lights, because I know that I'll probably have more luck turning right under control than by giving way.
Although now I live in Leeds none of this matters. It's an every-man-for-himself, fight-your-way-in kinda city. That's why I like driving a diesel with bags of low-rev torque
Manually could also mean the operators manually setting the delay times between greens to adjust to traffic conditions. A single operator could potentially run the whole system and still be able to take coffee breaks with nearly no impact.
I would imagine an automatic system of counting cars would actually require a manual pilot period to be calibrated.
Being in Australia we dont call that 'zipper' traffic, its called 'merging'.
So naturally when trying to figure out what this zipper traffic was, all I could think of was cars cruising red-light districts.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Current R&D efforts are directed at developing software to aid UPS drivers in legal parking.
Have gnu, will travel.
Do they have different rules for different cities? I can certainly see this saving some time in certain big cities, what about small towns, or rural areas?
I used to live in Phoenix when they didn'thave freeways or left arrows at intersections. The old three-rights rule served many well.
Kevin
Irrational Diversions
...and I'll betcha that San Antonio, Texas, has a larger population than the AA/Ypsi area... I'm not talking about the AA/Ypsi area. As I stated in my first post, that area of the state has very few "Michigan Left"-type roads, not to mention that the traffic in the AA/Ypsi area is the lightest of any city I have ever lived in (I currently live in AA actually.) This makes me wonder if maybe we're talking about different topics.
...and if you've lived in Michigan all your life, you might not have another example to compare to. I haven't, wouldn't, and know better. If it were such a traffic boon, don't you think it'd be more widely implemented? Actually I haven't lived here all my life, yet I am a firm believer that "Michigan Left" road setups are much better solutions for 6+ lane roads than left turn lanes and signals. If it were such a traffic boon, don't you think it'd be more widely implemented? Does something need to be widely used for it to be a boon? Would you use that same logic for music, politics, etc?Look: I'm not saying that Michigan Left's are the end-all of traffic engineering, but I am saying that they are very useful when implemented in the correct situations. Suggesting that these roads would be better served by throwing up some left turn signals is ignoring the facts.
I can see how this may save time and gas, but how can it possibly save miles?
The fact that I lived there, or the fact that anyone I asked agreed with very few exceptions?
But enough of our opinions, Spanky... Let the other Slashdotters see how much sense it makes in the link found here.
Comments, anyone?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Duh!!!!
Any kid that's ever had a paper route could have figured that out!!!!!!
Being a delivery driver who averages 90 deliveries over a 6 hour period each day, I can assure you that using GPS would be a huge waste of time. It's all about knowing the best way to go, and knowing as you leave each drop exactly where you'll park for the next one. In the city, you can't just stop anywhere, so you have to know the locations of loading zones etc.
That said, I have to agree with the idea of minimizing left turns (only in Australia it's right turns I minimize), but I don't need software to tell me when it's a good idea or not. There's also lots of other factors to take into account. Some customers need their stuff early (and if they're paying us for sending freight, they get priority), others close for lunch at certain times etc.
I think the biggest hurdle to efficiency in the transport industry is the high turnover of drivers. I've been in my current position for just under 2 years, and I'm now the second-longest employed driver at the depot. (Only 6 drivers at my depot, but the turnover rate is even higher at our larger depots)
I thought about this, and the only one I could think of is the 1/1A/16 rotary just outside Portsmouth. Which ones were you thinking of?
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
No Left Turns? Hmm, so much for "We want to race the truck"...
Seriously... pre-planning? Is that bit of stupidity from the article or just from smitty?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Business - worked at technology commercialization at GA Tech until I found this neat GPS tracking company I signed up with to develop a CRM system for them. Atlanta is actually the first large city I lived in (in NJ I lived in the north-western corner, far from any metro area), and even though you may consider it "home-towny" I find it way too big and busy; enough so to keep my car doors locked when I drive and have Mace in the glove box. The toll is still at 400, but only at a very short section from Lennox to Perimeter; everything else is free. The road north of Perimeter has been widened to make 400 look even more like a parking lot. Meanwhile, the state legislature has been successful at shooting down all proposals for rail transit south and north of the city, and they still can't agree where to build the second airport as more and more people defect to use Chattanooga and Birmingham airports. All those joys of a rapidly growing metro area...
Limited Access Highways: They all run to/from NYC. If you want to go a different direction, you're on a much smaller road. Lots of traffic, but moving fast except during rush hour or accidents.
Smaller Highways: The Jersey barrier -- the Jughandle -- no left turns allowed. Strip malls galore. Stop lights. Totally bogged down with traffic. *Common* to sit through three red light sessions getting through a single light.
Tiny Highways & county roads. Two lanes, no shoulders, curvy, no visibility. Wouldn't be called a highway anywhere else. These are probably from horse and buggy trails -- no planning. Too much traffic for their size. Very possible to take three consecutive rights or lefts on the way somewhere.
<\vent>
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Wonder how this works for this department...
http://www.racing.ups.com/
Those minimum and maximums are set by ENGINEERS. This is slashdot, I'm sure you know what an engineer is.
If that were true you'd have a good point.
Speeds on local roads are often set by municipalities in search of revenue. All of my (2) speeding tickets have been in 40's that dropped to 25 in the middle of nowhere with a cop car behind the bush next to the speed limit sign.
It used to be that the Federal Government set highway speed limits across the country. They still do, on the Interstates - around here I can drive 200 miles on wildly varied road conditions on the Interstate, and the speed limit is 65 the whole way. Some parts should be 80, some 50. And those numbers are only for my car, not a BMW Z3.
Seriously, engineering?
How about transponders every 10th mile with road design info that the car's computer multiplies with its own performance handling characteristics, and gets current weather data from sensors, and calculates a real effective speed limit for *you*?
That would be engineering.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm blasting my horn, you rich damned dumbass. Waste your own damned gas but waste mine and I'm pissed.
;)
Would you hurry up and get off the road so we don't have to widen the highways to accommodate all these slow drivers who are wasting my highway capacity?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
E-mail me some - we are paying $10 per gallon here in the UK (GBP 1.06 per litre)
We've got, IIRC, about $1.50 into taxes on our $3 gallons - so you've got $8.50. How do you people tolerate 700% tax rates? There'd be blood in the streets over here. They took away your guns, didn't they?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And meanwhile, in Europe, people sometimes still wonder how US-ians can consider $3/gallon "expensive" - and that is true in countries with much lower average income.
Imagine your country is as big as all of Europe, you have half the population, and your mass transit sucks. Does that make it easier?
And it's pronounced, "Americans." Look it up.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)