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Boston Using IBM Engineers To Solve Traffic Problems
vu1986 writes "Boston won the opportunity to pick the brains of six IBM engineers — including one from Tokyo — who flew in to check out its traffic situation and figure out a way to consolidate, analyze and use existing traffic data feeds as well as new data sources including (of course) Twitter feeds, to ease the city's notorious traffic jams."
Are they road planners?
What is their engineering expertise?
Because they've solved all their traffic problems I suppose.
Don't forget nuclear explosives.
So, what solution did they propose?
I don't care from where they fly in their consultants, unless if they came from Titan or Kepler-22b.
as opposed to fining people for driving there
Easy peasy. Give me a billion dollars or so... let me build a really, really big tunnel... that'll solve all the problems... I'll call it the "Big Dig" so everyone can have really folksy stories about it. Problem solved!
Oh, wait...
Over the past several years, many IT and biotech startups as well as mature companies have moved to the rapidly developing South Boston waterfront, which is accessible via subway but not too friendly for people driving cars who have to contend with lots of traffic and parking hassles.
I take it that one of the unspoken advantages from the POV of hiring managers, is that it will attract recent college grads still living in Boston and Cambridge (particularly from MIT), while being less attractive to middle aged engineers and managers commuting from the suburbs. Thus there is a built-in age bias that is pretty much immune to lawsuits.
All the IBM engineers will do is decrease the issue of traffic by a couple of percent, maybe raise efficiency by 10-20% here and there, but the real issue is cultural. Cars suck for a dense urban environment, you need people on bikes, carpooling and the most important thing: good public transportation.
Good public transportation means though forcing cars out from city centers by creating bus lanes, creating tram lines on previously car-only roads, building enough parking space at the edge of the city where people could switch over to public transport, etc.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Then we can ask the MBTA to shoudler the billion dollar debt for ourselves since the rest of the state doesn/t want to pay for bostons tunnel. Then the MBTA can have an increasingly large debt until they have to cut programs and make price hikes.
Turned on some music to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar song
I closed my eyes and I slipped away
Closing the I-93 tunnel northbound this morning didn't help.
Have you ever been to Berlin? I was there several years ago and watched the traffic from the old East German TV tower that was nothing to do with spying at all, not even a little bit. It was amazing how smoothly the traffic ran. It was like clockwork.
According to a local colleague a) they adjust the lights to favor traffic moving away from busy areas and restrict it entering the jams and b) anyone blocking an intersection is taken out und geschossen.
Contrast that with Brussels or Paris where you can sit through three green lights because some imbecile on the cross street is stopped in the middle of the intersection.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
right under the city? it would probably solve those traffic problems for good! also, it wouldn't cost that much, and it wouldn't take that long.
I can tell you that traffic jams are stochastic and can spontaneously happen. It is still a big problem in queuing theory to model these kinds of things in order to minimize the amount of traffic, but even so large jams can still happen due to the chaotic nature of the problem.
Given that traffic congestion is a shortage of available road space for the number of motorists who want to use it at a particular time, the solution is obvious to anyone with an ounce of economic sense: stop setting the price below the going rate determined by supply and demand. Get rid of the government-imposed price ceilings on freeway travel, and suddenly the traffic jams will start to clear up.
Ideally, the price should rise and fall throughout the day to keep demand constant and prevent overcharging anyone.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Earlier on Slashdot: Cringely Predicts IBM Will Shed 78% of US Employees By 2015
My lab of engineers have came up with this. Take away the 1% of drivers who have no business driving and hold up hundreds of people behind them and get in multiple accidents that cause a 10 mile backup and traffic will move a hell of a lot better than 1% better. There have been numerous studies saying 1 person can affect hundreds of people in any traffic system. So get grandma, the 20 year old semis, and borderline psychological problems people off the road and that'll do better than any AI routing.
Everyone goes. When a collision is detected, everyone backs up and tries again.
Have gnu, will travel.
They will implement NetCool....thats IBM SOP
Using more than one source for your information will get you a letter from Apple's lawyers.
Get rid of the damn traffic lights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS_wjo378h4
The only problem is they can't put red light cameras for free money, oh no.
TRAFFIC "EXPERIMENTS" AND A CURE FOR WAVES & JAMS
1998 William Beaty Electrical Engineer
My first 'experiment': accidentally erasing waves!
Once upon a time, years ago, I was driving through a number of stop/go traffic waves on I-520 at rush hour in Seattle. I decided to try something. On a day when I immediately started hitting the usual "waves" of stopped cars, I decided to drive smoothly. Rather than repeatedly rushing ahead with everyone else, only to come to a halt, I decided to try to move at the average speed of the traffic. I let a huge gap open up ahead of me, and timed things so I was arriving at the next "stop-wave" just as the last red brakelights were turning off ahead of me. It certainly felt weird to have that huge empty space ahead of me, but I knew I was driving no slower than anyone else. Sometimes I hit it just right and never had to touch the brakes at all. Other times I was too fast or slow. There were many "waves" that evening, and this gave me many opportunities to improve my skill as I drove along.
I kept this up for maybe half an hour while approaching the city. Finally I happened to glance at my rearview mirror. There was an interesting sight.
It was dusk, the headlights were on, and I was going down a long hill to the bridges. I had a view of miles of highway behind me. In the neighboring lane I could see maybe five of the traffic stop-waves. But in the lane behind me, for miles, TOTALLY UNIFORM DISTRIBUTION. I hadn't realized it, but by driving at the average speed of the traffic around me, my car had been "eating" the traffic waves. Everyone ahead of me was caught in the stop/go cycle, while everyone behind me was forced to go at a nice smooth 35MPH or so. My single tiny car had erased miles and miles of stop-and-go traffic. Just one single "lubricant atom" had a profound effect on the turbulent particle flow within the entire miles of "tube."
http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=traffic+site:amasci.com
I thought the article was going to say that Boston throws IBM engineers in front of traffic to 'solve' its problems.
I guess IBM has not achieved the status of Sirius Cybernatics Corporation, yet.
Just allow lane splitting (don't know why the USA hate the idea so much) and create motorcycles only lanes and parking. It is still as fast as a car and use a fraction of the space.
The IBM guys are going to insist that every car's firmware gets a license for Lotus Notes.
1) Throw in a number of round-a-bouts where stop signs are (round-a-bouts are much better than stop signs for handling traffic flow). 2) re-time a number of stop-lights. 3) a new layer of traffic: Basically add in rail underground, or better yet, and much cheaper, put elevated monorail around the area.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
this is the USA. roundabouts don't work good (well): http://www.wral.com/traffic/story/11173856/ Raleigh NC has given up. tried it. fail.
#@$ Tweeter feeds? How about they get into a goddam car and try to drive through this city. Not only the layout is asinine, every year they've been adding a ton of lights without giving any thought to synchronization. Sensors are present at best on half of them. The timings on many of the lights are a complete opposite of what they should be. It's like they're screwing with you on purpose. You don't need to hire IBM geniuses - just start giving a damn.
could probably give them a few ideas regarding moving people around in a congested area.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
See above next post will be about millions spent and a derailed train
This isn't about solving a traffic problem. It's about solving an information distribution problem. IBM will not be working on traffic at all, but will be working with traffic systems to report on them, in real time, to the population.
I've always had the idea that every car should have 3GPS in it (3G data GPS) that reports start and destination to a central server, and the central server reports back a preferred route based on real-time traffic and road conditions (including expected road conditions based on other's trips). This would lead to prevention of traffic jams by routing traffic around bottlenecks before critical mass.
Yes, I realize that the libertarian-leaning Slashdot would hate this idea, and I'm aware of the privacy and security issues. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't massively improve traffic flow at a relatively low cost.
But IBM isn't working on anything like that. They are just tweeting jams. Why is it that every $1,000,000,000 government idea sounds like what a guy in his garage could accomplish in a weekend if they had access to the systems?
Learn to love Alaska
BUT is is pretty expensive and you will have to step on LOTS of toes do it.
So consider the following. The city of Melbourne has 75km of freeway that leads into and out of the city core. The rebuilt the road and did the following:>/p>
Now the central traffic authority controls all the roads, highways, arterials, everything. In the state of California CalTrans has to deal with every municipality and get them to agree to ramp metering AND they have to get them to coordinate all the signals on the arterial feed roads.
So as you can see it is more then just money it is politics. There really is a simple solution and that is you push the congestion back onto city streets for entrances onto and off of the main lines.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Boston has a ridiculous street layout, probably a side effect of growing organically hundreds of years before cars.
I wonder why cities with a good subway system have car traffic issues. (subway doesn't have the practical traffic issues or mental 'poor people only' issues that buses have)
DC has planned grid streets and some of the same problems.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
This isn't the USA. This is Massachusetts. We have lots of traffic circles up here and generally know how to use them.
After all, putting another car on the road at peak times holds up others. So just force the decision to account for the externality based on some slightly conservative back of the envelope estimate of the average value of a commuter's time.
This would encourage use of any and every escape mechanism conceivable. Biking, public transit, carpooling, timeshifting, tellecommuting all would rise, rising most in the most congested corridors that need relief the most.
Of course, this would extract a lot of revenue from those who don't switch and at first there would be a ton of resistance to doing that and hence a lot of anger even though it's immediately an economic win and the tax revenues are gravy. Probably a lot more palatable if there's tax credit or the like that this funds... or you know, you could always try to improve the underlying transportation infrastructure.
Most people in LA can not even figure out a four way stop let alone a roundabout
bwahahahahhahaha!!!!!! you've obviously never lived anywhere that people DO know how to use them. I live in Camberville now, and coming from MANY places that do know how to use them, they're a cluster fuck in MA.
There is no I-520 in Seattle. Wiki shows an I-520 in Georgia. There's a Washington state route 520. And slowing up to 35 on that route rated for 55 will make your commute easier, not so much for the people behind you. (The big slowdown has been the floating bridge, which is being replaced, and is now tolled).
I live near a couple of rotaries. (Which is what we call them.) I keep seeing people do insane shit in them, like stopping while they're in the rotary because they can't get off where they want.(Just go around, keep fucking moving.) Then again this is massachusetts where people will be in the right most lane of a 3 lane road and take a left. (Yes, really.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I've done this on occasion and it seems to work quite nicely as I find I'm rarely braking. The cars behind me enjoy a nice smooth flow and since there is usually a space in front of me others can easily merge.
Don't confuse this with driving slow. One average I'm going approximately the same speed as the stop-and-go cars in front. If I see congestion up ahead I take my foot off the accelerator and try to time it so that the car in front is just starting to get going again just as I arrive.
They gave that a try in a few places - it didn't really work out as you can see in this google maps shot: https://maps.google.com/?ll=42.334109,-71.104866&spn=0.001036,0.001206&z=20
I had to drive into Boston for a few days last week. 1:45 minutes to get into the city the two days I drove myself. Over two hours when I took the train, because first I had to get to the subway. Then I had to wait for the first train, which kept stopping, so it was a long and delayed ride. Then I got to the the Green line and had to wait for another train. Eventually I got where I was going. When sitting in my car is more comfortable and faster, there is little incentive to take the train. Make public transportation faster and more reliable and maybe I'll be more inclined to take...
Furthermore, on both days that I drove 15 minutes of my ride was getting through a short section of MA Ave, where the lights were perhaps 10's of yards apart. First light turns green. But the light ahead is red, so no one moves. Green light turns red, red light turns green. Next time the light turns green I'm able to move up just enough to get through the intersection and wait at the next red light... I don't know, maybe like get the lights back in sync now and again so traffic can actually flow smoothly?
They can show all the employers not physically involved in local services to Bostonians how to outsource their jobs overseas (or maybe just to cheaper cost-of-living states?). Then there should not be nearly so many commuters clogging the roads.
FTFY
Essentially there are only 2 ways to ease traffic jams
1. Widen existing roadways and build more new thoroughfares to accommodate the vehicles
or
2. Cut down on the number of vehicles that travel on the road
Don't need IBM engineers to figure that out
Yes, but IBM engineers can make driving so user unfriendly and convoluted that fewer people will want to drive, thus achieving solution number 2.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Boston traffic jams are caused by too many people using too few routes to get into the city and out of the city. Boston loses 180 degrees of access, in comparison to inland cities, due to being right on the coast. This further limits traffic flow. In addition, Boston and the surrounding area is so built up that the only option to expansion is either underground or by eminent domain, both of which would be politically impossible. Additional public transportation would help, but it would have to have an expanded schedule and increased number of trains. Even so, it would just shorten the length of traffic jams, which was the result of the Big Dig, not get rid of them entirely.
My thought is that the biggest problem with Boston is the lack of density. New York is a very dense city with a high capacity high-rise business and housing infrastructure. Boston is a low density city, by comparison, with a huge majority of the population living in the suburbs instead of in the city itself. In addition, state and local community policies actively discourage the construction of large buildings though zoning rules (NIMBY) and low-income housing requirements. While I am all for low-income housing, the balance is tilted in the wrong direction to encourage construction.
If I'm in the right mood I've done this, and semi truck drivers seem to routinely drive like this, probably more out of self interest than altruistic intent. Avoid shifting, avoid brake wear, probably minimizes fuel usage too.
It seems to have a positive impact on traffic flow. Plus there's always some asshole behind you who's just furious at you driving "slow". Pissing off that guy can be fun.
In fact you're staying next to the same set of about 10 cars in the other lanes the whole time, so there's no negative impact to his commute time. But he can't race up to 50 then stop, then to 50 mph, then stop when he's riding your ass doing 30 the whole time.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
The IBM engineers will be a sort of "Traffic Ring" in which the major roads are used IN TURN, so that all of the lanes go the same direction. Each building will await it's turn, then all the traffic from that building will go out at once for a specific period of time. During that period of time, traffic from that building will have complete use of the roads until the turn passes and it becomes the next building's turn.
To enable this, there will be a Token passed from building to building. Whichever building has the token will control all traffic on the ring. :-)
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
A modern roundabout has spiralling lanes, that guide you to the correct exit. Remembering the UK drives on the left, follow a car through a right turn -- the innermost lane when entering the roundabout becomes the outermost lane when the car reaches the correct exit (or next-but-outermost, sometimes, if the outgoing exit has two lanes).
Roundabout aficionados may wish to follow the main road (above) east a little, to see this. I can see eight.
Someone must have designed Kenmore Square specifically create traffic jams.
Perhaps they can ask the Linux kernel developers to solve unemployment by coming up with novel resource scheduling algorithms, and ask the engineers at Google help solve the problem of populistic voting by introducing their page rank system into the elections.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
In MA, we build roundabouts and then put stop signs on them because people are too stupid and self-centered to figure out how to use them. We dug a big tunnel, too, and my grandchildren will likely still be paying for it after the whole thing is under water.
When I find myself in stop-and-go traffic, I find a semi and get behind it and enjoy the smooth drive.
In some places those are the only two ways to ELIMINATE traffic jams. You can ease them considerably, and possibly eliminate them in some situations, by making some fairly small changes to the way traffic flows. Timing lights, replacing lights with overpasses (or just blocking access from some streets), reversing lanes at certain times of the day, etc.
There's one place on the freeway near me that is almost always bumper to bumper. The road before and after this spot is usually fine. What's the problem? Some idiot highway planner designed an on ramp that comes up to the (elevated) highway level blind, then the merge lane is nonexistent. So anybody coming up that on ramp finds themselves suddenly in a highway lane, and anyone in that highway lane instantly tries to move over to the left, etc. The problem could be solved by either making a reasonable acceleration lane at highway level, getting the on ramp to highway level faster, or even blocking off the rightmost lane of the highway (generally the highway isn't at capacity anyway).
Considering how sucky IBM software is, this will probably just make things worse. And traffic engineers from the worst traffic city in the world? Get a CLUE!!!!
Boston has already done a good enough job of that on its own. I've driven there twice and have no desire to repeat the experience.
www.wavefront-av.com
That's great, but it only works with a competent, conscientous driver, and most people aren't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
California is just FULL of shit like that. What's pathetic is that it really appears to be deliberate because even when there's lots of space for another lane to control merging it is rarely there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, they don't!! An extreme example is the Drumhill rotary near Lowell. I used to drive through there every day to work and every day there was at least one accident. Granted, it was the most poorly designed rotary possible with bad sight lines, but people had no idea what to do when trying to navigate it. It was changed to a 4 way stop during the Route 3 expansion.
Massachusetts has got to have the worst road designers EVER. Off and On ramps that are way too short, poorly built rotaries, lack of feeder roads, merge lanes with multiple lanes instead of filtering down to one, etc.
Plus there's always some asshole behind you who's just furious at you driving "slow". Pissing off that guy can be fun.
There's also an asshole in front of the asshole behind you, if that's your attitude.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
you could build a bridge out of them
Boston should have gone to a grid system, like Manhattan has, long ago.
I live in Boston, just moved here about a year ago and have lived in a couple other highly automotive metro areas (including LA). There's nothing wrong with the traffic system in Boston, it's the people. To a Bostonian "The Right of Way" is simply translated to "My Way". Pedestrians jut out into intersections, driving lanes are merely suggestions and many cyclist don't even bother going down the right side of the street. Boston doesn't need IBM, it needs group counseling.
But that's OK, 'cause he's our kind of asshole....
Essentially there are only 2 ways to ease traffic jams
1. Widen existing roadways and build more new thoroughfares to accommodate the vehicles
2. Cut down on the number of vehicles that travel on the road
3. Fix traffic light timing
4. Identify and fix critical bottlenecks
5. Convert more lanes to HOV to encourage car-pooling
6. Eliminate underused HOV lanes, so everyone can drive in them
7. Convert traffic circles to traffic lights or stop signs
8. Convert traffic lights to traffic circles
9. Build more off street parking, so people pulling in and out of on-street parking don't block traffic
10. Handout hefty fines to people that stop in intersections, causing gridlock
11. Encourage the purchase of automated cruise control systems (these reduce the accordion effect in traffic jams)
12. Ticket slow drivers in the fast lane
13. etc, etc, etc
Poor red-light timings can contribute significantly as well.
by loom_weaver
I've done this on occasion and it seems to work quite nicely as I find I'm rarely braking. The cars behind me enjoy a nice smooth flow and since there is usually a space in front of me others can easily merge.
The only problem with this method is that it just doesn't work on multi-lane roads. There are always asshats that jump into the gap and braking...
m
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
THIS TRAFFIC LIGHT INTENTIONALLY LEFT RED
(please ignore this obligatory lower case sentence to avoid the filter error)
I speak England very best
I would say that it is broken. Everybody is going to the left, rather than the right. :)
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.