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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."

3 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.

    --
    :wq
    1. Re: News for Nerds? by babydog · · Score: 5, Informative

      As the linked-to article indicates, because most districts in VA were Republican, any DMV closings made on the basis of cost and number of customers served had to affect Republicans. For what it's worth, my local non-Republican-serving Arlington DMV office was also closed, and Arlington customers had to go stand in the massive line in Tysons. (I think the story was: immigrants could acquire a VA drivers license without proof of legal residency relatively easily up until a certain point after 9/11. The Tysons office was swamped until that and other things changed.)

  2. Re:In other words ... by SpankiMonki · · Score: 5, Informative

    What I want to know, is why any state's DOT would take orders like that EVEN if they thought it came from the Governor himself. Most rational state governments do not allow the Governor to micro-manage road and lane closures, for non-emergency reasons, and when there is a real emergency need, the DOT is usually well ahead of the elected officials.

    Why does New Jersey allow a governor to make that call?

    NY and NJ DOTs have nothing to do with it. The GWB is run by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey which separate from the state governments. The only reason the NJ governor's office was able to pull this off was because of their appointees & other cronies inside the PANYNJ.