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MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams
Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."
I have a way to help stop traffic jams without fancy algorithms: stop tailgating the person in front of you. That way every time that person slows down slightly you don't have to slam on your brakes, thus requiring people behind you to slam on theirs causing a buildup of cars that aren't going anywhere even if traffic isn't that heavy.
Microsoft's Cleartype technology makes text more blurry. So what can we expect from Microsoft's Clearflow?
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The first thing I thought, and I have thought the idea of analyzing traffic flow on a wide scale could give the individual an edge, as soon as the masses know the way around traffic, the jam will just move. So unless this algorithm can automatically figure out where traffic is stuck, and route the users in many different ways, this will eventually not work. Not to mention that in many cases (ie try entering downtown toronto from etobicoke), there are only so many ways to go. In my example you have some side streets, bloor, eglington, gardiner, lake shore. But they all suck, and if you suggest the small residential roads, you'll probably sit just as long waiting to turn from road to road. I've tried. But if it helps at all its worth it imho, its not my money!
More precisely: Too many cars at a given time.
There are several ways to solve this problem:
1) build more efficient roads, i.e. better traffic control, better lane design, better/fewer intersections, better signs, etc.
2) build more roads, but only up to a point
3) reduce the number of cars on the road at peak times
3a) reduce the number of cars
3b) spread the load out over time
Mass transit and congestion taxes are ways to do 3a. Getting employers and schools to shift work times is a way to do 3b.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
We just need more roads
Or less cars. Use the bus!
Let's add telecommuting in there. There's nothing about the work I do that requires me to be in the office more than one day a week (aside from the mandate from management). I'm sure many people on the road with me are in the same situation.
I've always thought that traffic is basically one massive game of Prisoner's Delimma. Defecting (swerving lanes, cutting people off) can gain you a bit of time relative to traffic, but only at the cost of slowing overall traffic down. The more people do it, the worse the congestion becomes for everyone.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.