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Engineers: Traffic Studies Use Simulation Software, Not Lane Closings

Posted by Soulskill on from the next-you'll-tell-me-we-test-drugs-on-animals-first dept.

Lucas123 writes "The so-called 'traffic study' that closed New Jersey access lanes on the heavily traveled George Washington Bridge last September has left engineers scratching their heads, because in modern America, simulation software is used instead of closing down lanes. One of the best sources for simulation data are video camera systems that use software to count vehicles on roadways. Traffic studies use microscopic traffic simulations to create virtual environments that can model driver behavior to road changes with exacting detail. Instead, the Port Authority, under Gov. Chris Christie, shut down two of the three access lanes for four days last September from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge without warning the public, citing a 'traffic study.' 'I would be pretty confident that if we knew exactly which lanes are closed we could replicate that, and it would show exactly how bad the backups are going to be,' said Lorenzo Rotoli, an engineer and vice president at Fisher Associates, a civil engineering firm in New York that works on roads, bridges and signal systems."

5 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. News for Nerds? by CubicleZombie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Or is this just because Christie is a republican. 2016 is starting early around here.

    The democrat governor of MY state closed the DMVs in all the districts that voted in republican delegates. Didn't make the news at all. And now he's a U.S. Senator.

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    :wq
    1. Re: News for Nerds? by CubicleZombie · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Here's a citation.

      It's a pretty big hassle when you have to drive an hour away and stand in line for four hours to renew your drivers license. Especially when it's just because you had the nerve to vote against the governor's party.

      After that, he turned the Virginia side of the D.C. Beltway into a foreign owned toll road. Then he ran a dirty smear campaign for Senate and won by convincing the general public that his opponent was trying to ban the birth control pill (a lie).

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      :wq
  2. Re:In other words ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I must confess, unless it's just to get page hits, or to demonstrate that nobody could plausibly claim to have really been doing a traffic study ... I find myself asking the same question.

    However, in modern politics, you don't refute the facts, you provide your own 'facts' and talk really loud about something else.

    Maybe this is just a more reasoned attempt to short circuit that.

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    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. Re:In other words ... by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, you're saying that the organizations were illegally dedicated to political purposes, in spite of their application for tax exemption?

    I don't get the logic here... are you trying to say how unfair it was to scrutinize people for a felony so they couldn't commit a felony?

  4. Re:In other words ... by runningduck · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So your grievance is that groups which should not qualify for the tax status if they are political were delayed with their participating in the political debate?

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    -rd