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Algorithm Challenge: Burning Man Vehicle Exodus
As part of my advance preparation for going to Burning Man in 2013, I read on the official site that the car lines to get out of Burning Man often take five hours to get through. Scroll a bit further down and you can find, asked and answered, the question that I thought of after reading about the five-hour waits, and it's worth quoting the whole thing:
Q. You should set up a system where people can register for a departure time and give them an "express" lane (or some version of a priority/regulated system). Those who miss their window or don't register would have to wait longer.
A. This suggestion has made its way to us every year for many, many years now. And on the surface it looks very attractive. But, as is usually the case, the devil is in the details. Here are the primary reasons we have not implemented a reservation-based Exodus system:
- Such a system takes a lot of people power (e.g., people to verify departure times, people to direct traffic, people to enforce the system) and a lot of resources (e.g. a registration system, building secure lanes for 5 miles of Gate Road that would prevent people from jumping into the wrong section)...more than we currently have.
- Verifying registration would require slowing traffic before Gate Road, which will in turn slow down the rate at which people can get onto Gate Road. Without a significant redesign, traffic inside BRC could become gridlocked.
- One thing we have learned about Burning Man is people rarely stick to their intended timeline. Camp clean up took longer than planned, you stayed up really late the night before, it took a while to track down your passengers, you couldn't find your car keys, you just had to visit the ashes of the Man one more time, or myriad other possibilities that are so very common to the Burning Man experience. To get 50,000 people to stick to a specific window of time may very well be the most difficult part of this idea to solve.
- Another thing our Gate experience tells us is that verifying Exodus registrations and enforcing 'rules' will not be a cut-and-dried process. We will no doubt hear many stories (traffic to get from my camp at 2:00 was worse than I thought, but I really did leave in time! My camp-mate burned my registration slip in an offering to the Man but this really is my time window! I have a flight that leaves in a few hours, please I need to get out faster!). Each vehicle that pleads their case in turn holds up traffic for everyone else, and this ultimately will cause significant inefficiencies in the system.
- Remember how we said this type of system would require a lot more people power? Despite our calls for help from the community, we continue to struggle to find enough people to manage the bare basics of Exodus (e.g. highway flaggers). We understand that most people are tired by the end of the event, and many need to get home. However, in order for us to continue to evolve the Exodus process, we need YOUR help. We need volunteers to help run all parts of this process. Everything that happens in BRC is created entirely by its citizens, including Exodus.
Some of the above issues could be overcome, but taken all together a system like this in an environment like Burning Man would be complex and expensive to implement and considerably more difficult to run efficiently.
Bennett again. So I thought about this some more and wondered about a different idea: My question: Why not have a priority exodus line set aside for vehicles who leave during a designated time slot, based on the last digit of their license plate? So for example halfway through Burning Man, a random number or letter would be selected by the organizers — say, "T." During daylight hours on the last day, a priority exit lane is set up where from 6:00-6:30 AM, only vehicles with license plates ending in "T" can exit. Then from 6:30-7:00 AM, only vehicles with license plates ending in "U" can exit. And so on, until you've cycled through all the letters and numbers. (The initial letter in the cycle — in this case, T — would have to be selected after the event starts, to prevent people from gaming the system in advance, by bringing in vehicles with plates deliberately chosen to get an early exit time.) And then you have a second, longer line for everybody else who doesn't want to leave in their designated time slot.
This has a number of desirable features:
-
It avoids most of the problems described in the FAQ — you don't have to "create" a registration system, or stop cars in order to verify their registered departure time. All you need are observers for the priority exit lane watching to see that the cars in that lane have the correct last digit of their license plate. (Since all exiting cars are passing through the same bottleneck, you only really need one or two observing at a time to glance at license plates.) And if an observer spots a cheater, they don't have to throw their body in front of the vehicle, just radio ahead to tell someone further down the road that there's an unauthorized car in the priority exit line.
-
It's difficult to cheat. You could try to hack the system by bringing multiple sets of license plates to Burning Man and then, after the departure times have been announced, putting the earliest-departure license plate on your car. However, apart from the fact that this is illegal (which never stopped certain recreational activities at Burning Man, after all), there would be diminishing returns from loading up on too many extra license plates. If you want a guaranteed exit in the first 9 hours, then out of 36 sequential time slots, you'd only need 4 different license plates to guarantee an exit in one of the first 9 slots. But if you wanted a guaranteed exit in the first 3 hours, then you would need 12 different license plates, and so on.
-
Most importantly, and this is the whole point, would reduce the amount of time waiting in the exit line, for drivers that opted to use this system. Under the existing system, with a single queue that anyone can enter at any time, the queue grows to a length at which the inconvenience of the long wait is just barely outweighed by the desirability of getting out (an equilibrium which apparently sometimes causes the lines to grow to up to five hours). By dividing the population into segments by last digit of license number, those drivers are only queueing up with 1/36th of the rest of the population, and so can expect a faster exit time.
In the theory of queueing, if a population is sufficiently large, then when users are queueing for a desirable resource, the queue will grow until the cost of waiting in the queue is just barely outweighed by the benefits of the resource at the end of it. (Steven Landsburg explains in the opening chapter of The Armchair Economist that if a sufficiently large town opens a free aquarium, the line to get in will grow to the point where the inconvenience of the line exactly cancels out the benefits of the visit, so the benefit to the citizens' lives will be exactly zero.) Interestingly, this means that for the Burning Man exit queue, if you simply divide the queueing population in half — say, by allowing cars with even license plates to exit in the morning, and cars with odd license plates to exit in the afternoon — then you won't accomplish anything, because each half-size population will probably still be large enough that the queue grows to the point where the convenience of getting out just barely outweighs the inconvenience of waiting in line. It's not merely that dividing the population in half wouldn't accomplish as much as dividing it into 1/36th slices; it's that dividing the population in half would accomplish nothing at all. To make the queue shorter, you have to divide the population into sufficiently small slices that there is no longer a large enough population in each slice, to make the queue swell to the point of convenience-cancelling equilibrium. The simplest way I can think of to do that would be to split up the car population into 1/36th by last license plate digit.
It's important to note this does not actually increase the rate at which drivers can exit from Burning Man, which is actually a limit set by the Bureau of Land Management at 1,000 cars per hour. No algorithm can get around that limit. The algorithm only aims to reduce the amount of time that cars spend waiting in line to get out (in the hot sun, some with broken air conditioners). If you want to use the prioritized queue but you know that your time slot won't come around until 2 PM, you can spend the time until then exploring what's left of Burning Man, learning and making new friends, instead of getting in line at 10 AM just to get out by 2.
In any case, this isn't my problem, since I took the Burner Express bus in and out of Burning Man and would plan on doing it again. But while I was preparing last year, I went ahead and posted the question to ePlaya, the Burning Man message boards ("playa" being another word for dry lake and the nickname for the physical location of Burning Man). Some of the respondents were convinced that "Bennett Haselton" was an elaborate troll (you guys would get along), although I mostly got people saying, "The organizers have had years of experience doing this, why not wait and see it in person before trying to 'solve' it." Well, I was kind of asking for it, admitting that I had never been to Burning Man before, posting in a forum frequented by grizzled veterans, claiming that from my ivory tower on high, I had divined a solution to a problem that others had been working on for decades. (Of course, none of these are valid reasons why the idea is wrong.)
But anyway, I took the advice in the replies: as I was riding out of Burning Man in the Burner Express bus, I glanced out the window as we passed a mile of non-moving cars waiting to get out. I still don't know what I was supposed to see that would illustrate why the license plate prioritization system would a bad idea. What do you think? Or do you have a different idea?
Then again, maybe it doesn't matter how objectively "good" an idea is, if change is just plain hard. In another thread that I started after Burning Man was over, I said that the porta-potties seemed to work fine but that the dispensers next to the porta-potties, mounted on wooden stakes stuck into the ground, were almost always empty. They could easily attach more dispensers to the posts, or set up more posts (as long as the maintenance company kept replenishing the dispensers with the same frequency), at a cost that would be almost nothing relative to the cost of maintaining the porta-potties in the first place. Even that suggestion was met with fair bit of snark, although eventually someone gave me the email address where I could send feedback like that to the Burning Man organizers. So I sent the hand sanitizer suggestion to the feedback address, but don't hold your breath (except in the porta-potties).
because of people their egotism when under the influence of drugs
burning man? really? if you are beyond your early 20s and haven't realized how dumb burning man is....
Seriously this is the best you guys could come up with?
Isn't it in a flat desert? couldn't everyone leave by driving in an expanding circle and then at some radius turn toward the nearest road?
How about instead we just pave the playa and then create 65,000 lanes all the way to San Francisco!
TDLR: "I think I have the answer, why doesn't anyone listen to me?"
Cleaning up Burning man is as easy as
Nuke it from orbit.
[]
Can we get a fucking explanation for why Bennett Haselton gets to post his half-baked ideas on Slashdot instead of having links to his blog like everyone else?
In particular, I want to know whether he has paid for the privilege. If so, his posts are essentially paid advertisements and you ought to disclose that fact. And if not, perhaps you could replace him with someone smarter and more interesting, like Bruce Schneier.
The problem is not getting off the playa, it's the 70 miles of single lane road that gets backed up (and often closed due to accidents). The lines to get out are there to feed a manageable amount of traffic onto the 447 highway.
The fundamental problem seems to be the bottleneck of cars getting onto the highway. By creating a priority lane you'll be reducing the number of cars/minute that are able to leave via the regular lane. Additionally there will likely be some switching inefficiencies introduced with the new lane merge.
So some cars will get out faster, other cars will get out slower (as the non-priority cars wait for the priority cars to pass them and leave), I think we'll see average car wait time increase here. The extra labour used to manage entrance to the express lane could probably be better spent on highway flagging or looking to optimize the highway merge for more vehicles/minute.
paul reinheimer
The first point of the quoted FAQ still applies, as do pretty well most of the others.
And why the fuck do we care about micro-optimising the Burning Man departure queue? If the Burning Man forums don't care (and I take it that those forums are where all the affected people hangout), why should /. suddenly decide that its an intellectual problem worth solving? It just smacks of Karma Whoring and being butt-hurt from being rejected by the Burning Man forums.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
...this makes no sense. I'm glad I've never bothered with it. I mean, the fact that it takes so long to get something as simple as leaving dealt with kind of proves that this event lacks:
- communal effort
- civic responsibility
- participation
- immediacy
You know, all that crap the wikipedia page lists. Perhaps you should just ask Disney World, they manage to move over 30,000 cars every busy day and it sure as hell doesn't take them 5 hours. Oh wait, that's the opposite of what Burning Man is all about. :-P
they are pretty much all drug using hipster assholes nobody in the world would miss them if you just burn them all.
also would fit perfectly with the name ..
The license plate thing probably would reduce the wait. The wait could be more organically reduced by holding some event or two shortly after the time people are currently leaving, so that some people stick around a bit longer.
I don't know exactly what would be appropriate at what time, but let's say the traffic jam is really bad from 9AM-10AM. Schedule to announce the winner of the biggest bud contest at 10:00, and give away a ______ at 10:30. People staying for those two things would level out the traffic outflow.
Another issue is what happens when people cheat. Pretty much the only punishment the blockers can do is to physically prevent anyone at all from using the fast exit lane.
My best suggestion to deal with this issue is simple - money. That is, tell people that they can in fact either use the proper license plate timed exist OR buy their way into the express lane via an excessive charge. Call it $500.
Just a few people buying this would put some money into the system, letting them pay people to act as flaggers, spotters and stoppers. You could also offer cheaters a way to continue on their way - just pay the $500 fee.
There is of course a single major problem with my addendum to your idea: The philosophical bent of Burning Man is probably against this monetary solution.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
License Plates work well enough, IFF they are on the front of a car.
But I recently moved from a state where front & rear plates were required (WA) to a state where people only have rear plates (KS).
If a car comes up the express lane towards an observer/monitor, the observer won't know the car is in the wrong lane until the car is already past them, and driving away.
Enforcement just went to hell.
(nevermind that at B.M., many plates are totally obscured with dust).
I don't see how you could enforce the priority lane. Suppose someone stubburn pulls into the lane without the proper plate. What do you do? Push their car into a ditch? You either have big argument while one of you lanes is closed, use violence, or have it work on a honor system and hope the cheaters don't cause a pile up.
I just order a limo 6 months in advance.
The idea is interesting, but car + long line => selfish jerk behavior, always. So you mention radioing ahead to tell someone that an unauthorized car is in the express line. Then what? How do you force that car out of the line? It still seems like you're expecting people to follow the rules and, when they don't, say "gosh darnit, you're right. I was cheating" and then calmly get out of line. People who are hot, tired, dirty, and irritated are not going to be reasonable.
Speaking as someone who's gone for a few years, and now volunteer at the event, I can give you the perfect answer.
Join the Exodus team, help run the traffic outflow, and you'll get a better reception than some random dude on a web forum. We are a do-ocracy - do shit, and you'll eventually be in charge of it if you can handle it and not get burned out.
And also, fuck ePlaya - that place is full of trolls and assholes and burnier-than-thou cranks.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
My algorithms:
Lave early before the rush.
Hang out until everyone else leaves - like I do on airplanes.
Nothing fancy. Sometimes not being as smart pays off.
...this makes no sense. I'm glad I've never bothered with it.
Ah... /.er admitting knowing nothing about something and then having judgemental opinion anyway. Christ this site is frustrating sometimes.
This image has never been more appropriate
http://1-media-cdn.foolz.us/ff...
Ok, so you want something better than "we don't care" for a response. Your plan has a serious flaw: Not all license plates follow your pattern. In Oregon in particular the format is letter letter letter space number number number.
Also, leaving is a social experience. If you haven't learned to appreciate waiting in line by the end.. well.. you haven't really been there. Part of it is surviving, and surviving the line at the end is just the last step.
I'm still looking for you guys to give me an answer on how much I have to pay to get front page placement like Bennett?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
burning man is big business now with tickets costing as much as coachella, fuck the capitalist blood suckers and fuck burning man.
Not being American I have no idea how your license plates work but it seems to me the idea mentioned in the article is dependant on there being an equal amount of cars in each group. What happens if there are 10 times as many people with cars whose plate ends with a 'T' than those that end with a 'U'
If it's too difficult, I can't understand it !
The Burning Man organization just doesn't want to solve certain problems with the event. Entry and exodus are big ones.
Entry has even more obvious solutions to the problems. But they are absolutely uninterested in solving it because it would involve making changes, and the entry procedure is "traditional'. Also, speeding things up would involve taking away certain peoples' ego trips; like the pointless and milquetoast "searching" of incoming vehicles that's not really a search and never uncovers contraband, but lets the "searcher" assert his au-thor-a-TAH over the "searched". Seriously... a friend of mine once entered with a crate full of illegal, and against BM rules, fireworks sitting openly in his van in full view of the people "searching" it, and they just waved him through! They could also cut out the, once again, "traditional" routine of making everyone get out of their cars AGAIN to ring the bell, get hugged by a hippie, and make the first-timers roll around in the dirt. But those people, too, have made their niche for themselves in the BMorg, and damned if they'll give it up, and to hell with the attendees who've just spent 14 hours stuck in their cars and would just like to get to camp and take a break.
I've never really payed attention and gotten all riled up at exodus; mainly because I've at atypical hours the years I went and didn't get stuck in major hold-ups. But I expect that there are similar improvements that could be made.
Hell, all they'd have to do is send the managers of entry and exodus down to Anaheim for a weekend and tell them to watch how Disneyland gets a Burning-Man-sized crowd in and out EVERY DAY, with hardly ever a delay, then bring back the knowledge and re-implement it. But there's no interest across the organization in fixing the problem.
Imagine all the people...
You can't limit the exit queue by having to check for anything, even a plate's last character.
The only realistic way to do this is to have the "algorithm" parallelized and distributed among all the participants.
Instead of enforcing some kind of single point of exodus regulation, you have each individual vehicle calculate the best time for leaving.
It works like this: you watch the line. If its too long (for you) then don't get in line.
With cooperation and with the diversity of people, you could in theory then allow for some people who need to get out quickly, with the cooperation of the people who don't need to get out quickly who will cooperatively not get in line and do something else for a while.
This is probably what's already happening.
You could possibly create a mobile app that allows people to voluntarily enter the time they wish to leave, at which point the app would estimate based on past exodus statistics how long it will take to exit at that time. The wait time would change as more people entered their desired exit time. You could then change your exit time if the wait time becomes too long for you. This might create a better equilibrium than just "eyeballing the line" at the time of exodus.
Thus, its completely voluntary, and would make no negative difference to anybody not using the app (and might make things better, if anything). There's no checking cars at exodus time.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
If you go to burning man, you're a tool and deserve to wait in line. :-p
What stops me from just jumping in my car and leaving through the express lane in the first spot, regardless of what my license plate is? Is some stoner volunteer going to appeal to my humanity as he eats my dust?
Oh no! It's Bennett!
The post says the total number of exits is fixed. You're just shuffling the order of the queue. A limited benefit, if any benefit at all - the people in the general queue will wait even longer, with more breakdowns and medical emergencies as a result.
And the post itself mentions the solution: Make off-site parking more viable so more people get in and out on buses. That would benefit everybody, rather than pitching one subgroup against another.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Wasn't there a bus from a company called something like green tortise tours that was taking people to and from Burning Man for many years?
I know it's the land that invented the drive-thru but surely you can apply a bit of alternative thinking and leave that SUV at home to get to an alternative festival. Even cutting the number of vehicles by a quarter would make a difference.
Camp out one more night, leave the next afternoon and avoid the mass stampede.
Is the last digit of the license plate evenly distributed? This idea assumes that 1/36th of the cars would have each digit.
Hey guys, I know the quickest way back to the default world. Follow me!
My
Your system is unenforceable. Or at least about as enforceable as the "10 items or less" lane at the checkout. Or rather, it is enforceable if you want to hire a bunch of jack-booted thugs with arrest authority to keep everyone in line, but that sounds like something outside of the spirit of Burning Man.
Proverbs 21:19
Your Disney point is spot on. I attended a talk by thier head of parking a couple of years ago and he indicated that Disney is legally allowed to "only" park 3,600 cars per hour on the property but when things get busy they can park over 5,000 cars per hour. That is amazing. More than a car per second with usually no wait at all. That is impressive! Not only that but the cast members that work in parking are always extremely helpful, polite and happy.
So, let me get this straight: you want to use a similar algorithm to the ones that are corrupting the world's economies and financial institutions by enabling ultra-fast options trading... and apply them to a sea of drunk and/or high individuals attempting to escape the scorching desert in their vehicles? What could possibly go wrong...?
Or if you go, take a tent, plan to stay awhile by bringing enough water/food etc. Just leave when the line dies down or leave before it's over and the line gets long.
This is what the NASCAR folks do... How hard is this if a bunch of Rednecks can figure it out.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Ah... /.er with an account showing he can't read a title. Christ I love posting A/C. When I make a mistake, it's not forever.
That being said, it's not a mistake to call the event out for what it is.
I think I have a better idea, since the problem is to wait in the queue for hours:
- Just one lane, with a known 1000 vehicles/hour limit.
- Have 3 or 4 "small" buffer parks (500 vehicles each) to wait with better conditions than in the main waiting line.
- Note: each vehicle in a proxy encampment has left its own main camp, so everything is packed, done, the driver has the key, etc.
- Every 30 mn, give the go for the next batch, so they start queueing, if someone stays the park (lost key or driver somewhere else), he will be soon surrounded by the new vehicle pool and will have to wait for the next round.
This way we have :
- one short main waiting line on exit
- 3 or 4 small dedicated parks next to main exit (worth 2 hours of line feed), people ready, waiting in better conditions than in lane. They know precisely when they will be going in the main line.
- the main camp, people getting ready, waiting for a proxy park to be freed.
If some people are willing to queue for more than the total pool time, let them fill a new proxy park and wait there.
For people who are packing light ("what fits on your backpack, no more"), increase the use of buses and provide (more?) safe/monitored parking in a "nearby" town at a reasonable price. Better yet, increase any fees paid by attendees to subsidize the cost, so those who do not use the in-city parking pay for part of the cost so as to encourage more use.
I don't know if this 2-lane highway has "full-service" shoulders on it, but if it does, get a permit from the state to allow these buses and other very-high-occupancy vehicles to use the shoulders, the same way that some roads in hurricane-areas have "full service shoulders" that are open during a hurricane evacuation.
Heck, for that matter, if the 2-lane road "could" be safely re-striped as a 3-lane road, pay to have it re-striped with the middle lane going inbound at the start and outbound at the end. Yes, that's a lot of money so barring a big donation it may not be feasible, but it's worth at least looking into.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
1. People frequently travel in groups. If your camp of 4 cars wants to travel together and leaves at the same time, who's plate do you go off of?
2. If you're in the 5am block and the rest of your camp is in the 4pm block, how are you going to break camp?
3. How are you going to enforce this? Needs people to do so.
4. What do you do with people who don't want to participate in the license plate lottery? Again, requires more people and a place to put them.
5. Still will have the problem of people who think they're special with exceptions as to why they need out now, why they missed their window, or why they should be allowed in a different time slot. This takes people and slows things down.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Heh when my mom goes to church she just waits, sitting down, for THREE MINUTES (OH GOD!) until everyone rushes out the door.
Isn't the whole event in the SUN to begin with??!?
I realize the point is traffic flow, but whether you're waiting in line, or waiting to leave your spot, you're still in the friggin' sun!
Beware of the Leopard.
This is stupid.
I love me some burning man, but this post is dumb.. Get a blog....and good luck getting anyone to give a crap about your exodus plans.
If most people in the community stopped giving a crap about these traffic problem solving theories long ago (they did) ..what makes you think slashdot will give a crap?
I'd like to see burning man more often discussed outside of the community, especially here on slashdot..... but not for this....... perhaps for the awesome engineering challenges that are involved in some of the very high tech art installations? how about posts about keeping the internet and power grid working in the middle of a dry lake bed miles from anywhere? .... no, we get shit about traffic that even the people in the community stopped caring about
way to go OP!!!
signed: long time burner, long time slashdot user.
busses are far more efficient means of transporting people into and out of anywhere. they have a lower carbon footprint than hordes of cars as well. Carpooling to a lesser extent also helps. Not holding your asinine art-pop circle jerk in the middle of nowhere is also a spectacular start to a better commute.
but whatever you do, stop trying to arithmatically justify your american fetish with driving everywhere. Cars do not scale.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This idea is basically a super-simple hashing algorithm, which are commonly used to turn big hard problems into smaller easier ones.
I see no arguments against this guy's ideas, just ad-hominem attacks and people being insulted that someone try and come up with new solutions to old problems. Don't be that guy. If it won't work, explain why.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
So they announce to the attendees that all plates ending in "T" will leave first. Just hope that, if your plate ends in "T" (or something close in sequence), you'd better guard that plate with your life.
OR, this would be a better idea. Go to one of those shops that sells old license plates for cheap. Buy one of each number and letter (or buy most; you'll probably get lucky) and just stash them in a box in your car. Easy.
When people arrive, they are randomly given a color ticket with a time stamp.
Red = 4pm
Green = 11am
Blue = 1pm
Purple = 6pm
etc.
These get to go through preferential lines in their respective hour. People get what they get. But here's the thing, if I got a 4pm Red but I'm leaving in the morning. I'll try to find someone to swap with, and if I want to stay later, I'll see if I can swap my blue for your purple.
Registration is WAYYYYYYY too long. Handing a simple pass makes it extremely easy. You allow the desired time to be sorted out via the festival's barter system.
Well, darn I want to use my 1pm blue exit, but the guy gave me a 6 pack of craft beer and his 6pm Purple. I figured, I could linger for a few more hours while drinking the sixpack.
"Hell, all they'd have to do is send the managers of entry and exodus down to Anaheim for a weekend and tell them to watch how Disneyland gets a Burning-Man-sized crowd in and out EVERY DAY, with hardly ever a delay, then bring back the knowledge and re-implement it"
You say this like it is impressive. The majority of the BM crowd does indeed leave in a single day, from Burning Man, so the population leaving isn't all that different. Disneyland is built in the middle of an urban area, surrounded by multilane freeways. If BM occurred in a similar area, then it wouldn't have any exodus problems either. We don't need Disney's "ideas" to improve Exodus; we need their freeway connectivity. Guess what? We're not getting it. (If a new Disneyland were built on the site of BM, it would have the same 1000 vehicles per hour egress limit placed on it by the government, and it would be similarly unable to get X number of people out in a day without a line--because that 1000 vehicle per hour exit limit is not arbitrary, but based on the carrying capacity of a 2 lane highway where 99.9% of the traffic goes 1 direction. The other direction is 60 miles of dirt road advised for 4wd vehicles only, at the end of which you're more in the middle of nowhere than when you started).
http://www.southparkstudios.co...
10:50.
1) Clueless submitter: Hey I have a solution!
2) Burning Man: All the reasons why it is, in fact, not a solution.
3) Clueless submitter: Re-sends idea from (1) with more lipstick
4) Slashdot scrum ensues.
5) Profit? (Who, exactly?)
What's even worse is the Slashdot commenters who thought there still wasn't quite enough lipstick on (3) and added their own to it.
--- Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. ---
You know, like the "why your anti-spam idea won't work" form. Needs stuff like:
( ) Your idea will only reduce traffic capacity
( ) License plate numbers don't work that way
( ) License plate numbers are not random, only which vehicle they are on is random
( ) Requires everyone to keep track of a small slip of paper over the period of a few days in a campsite
( ) Fails to account for people being delayed moving between their campsite and the exit
( ) Requires more people directing traffic than are inside the vehicles being directed
( ) Any satellite with sufficient resolution is not geostationary and unlikely to be over the playa at the right moment
( ) The NSA really doesn't care about Burning Man, really
etc.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Wouldn't a simpler answer be to display an estimated departure line wait time on an electronic board similar to the highway signs that list "Time to Exit XYZ" based on congestion? Doesn't even have to be all that accurate, a simple SWAG estimate is all that would be needed.
How about: Have you considered not going to Burning Man in your own vehicle? Having been born and lived in the U.S. my entire life I certainly understand the automobile culture, but for cryin' out loud, people, can't some of you carpool to this thing? Or get together and rent a truck or a bus or something?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
A simpler solution:
1. Use a single lane, no additional man power or lane markers required.
2. Divide the hour into 10, 6 minute increments.
3. Reading your plate left to right, find the first digit, that is the hourly slot that you can depart in, in any hour on departure day where rate limiting is in effect.
4. No # on your license plate, you're in the 1st slot of each hour.
5. If you arrive one slot before your slot and the line is not busy, you get to go then.
Simple.
Done.
Because nothing says "Burning Man" like stringent adherence to an authoritarian algorithm.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The 'holding some event after the time poeple are leaving so some people stick around longer' is sort of what happened - in the early days everyone used to leave on sunday (the man was tourched on saturday night) then the group who build a structure called the temple each year started burning that on sunday night, so for a couple of years departure was spread across sunday and monday as half the attendees continued to leave on sunday and the other half stuck around to watch the temple burn then left late sunday night or on monday. But the temple burn is now so popular most of the attendees stay for it, and everyone is trying to get out somewhere between sunday night and monday. Maybe we need some niche events for monday which would only appeal to 1/3-1/2 of attendees :)
Bennett again.
Funny, that's what I was thinking. With appropriate trailing punctuation.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I have to think that anyone wanting to leave quickly has a helicopter fly in a driver and fly out with them.
So the mined already have an express out, good enough for me.
Otherwise you came to enjoy the desert and a lot of people, so Exodus just sounds like more of what you came for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So I've heard. The BM guidebook/FAQ says dont count on it. It is in the middle of a desert after all.
Thousands of people burning fuel driving to get there just to watch a shit load of dead trees burn down and then burn tons of fuel driving out. Are you afraid they will turn an area of land where most living things cannot survive into something more habitable? How worse can a desert get? Seriously. The conservation of a desert is extremely low maintenance.
There is barely (if any) paved shoulder on any stretch of the road and it's definitely not wide enough to be re-striped.
One big problem with this approach is that ending characters on license plates will not be uniformly distributed. In California, for example, all non-vanity plates end in a number. In Nevada for the longest time they strictly ended with a letter. Now you have to consider that wherever Burning Man is held, the local license plate templates are going to dominate and your queues are going to clump accordingly.
I think before you can have credibility in submitting such an algorithm to them you really need to be on the ground directing traffic at the event. Then maybe you'll be able to see a solution they haven't thought of yet.
I was out of there in 2 hours. I spent the time going around, meeting new people, and exchanging gifts. It was a great experience. Got to hang out with some impossibly hot and awesome people.
I know some people that took 6 hours to get out. I also know people who didn't even wait in a line. It's all about planning ahead and timing.
However, the whole point of the experience is to slow down, enjoy people and yourself, and interact. Going in, you know there's going to be a delay in going out. Why not make the best of it?
The best method would be to establish the gate at the exit point, and to have a radio checkpoint further up the road. Do not allow vehicles out until the way is clear enough to meet additional cars' speed-to-AC ratio. If you can't establish at least an aggregate 20 mph (just pulling the figure out of thick smelly air), no additional cars are allowed to exit, excepting buses and emergency vehicles. The backlog of people wanting to enter their cars would be able to view the progress of cars at the exit and then make an informed decision. As long as there's free water and something interesting to watch, I'm certain folks won't be too bent outta shape.
That said, plenty of people carpool..I for example went in an old airport shuttle bus with 16 other people towing a trailer. This is actually very common. The thing is that building a city in the middle of a desert requires people to bring a lot of stuff, so vehicle capacity is limited. Think about how many people you can fit in a sedan..when you factor in, tents, water for a week in the desert (15gallons/person, bulky), clothes, food, etc..really, it's hard to fit more than 3 people, and even that can be a squeeze.
Disclaimer: I have been to Burning Man six times.
I wonder if thats addressed in TFA?
In any case, this isn't my problem, since I took the Burner Express bus in and out of Burning Man and would plan on doing it again.
Yep, it is.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
not. even. once. i call "cuban slashdot"
No, Vern. They just let him in.
A five hour wait to exit is not the problem. The problem is a five hour traffic scrum, with cars inching forward and jockeying for position all the time. The "solution" is to bring the scrum to a control point that oscillates between open and closed with a large period, so that traffic comes to a complete stop and people can relax for while, shut off engines, take a pee break, switch cars with a friend, and so forth. Then open the control point, everyone gets back in the cars and the scrum resumes. Since the exit is 1000 cars per hour, it's sufficient to have an oscillating control point that can pass 2000 cars per hour with a 50% duty cycle - or 4000 cars per hour with a 25% duty cycle.
I've not been to BM, but I ski, and this is what naturally happens on Highway 80 when there's heavy snow and multiple spin-outs.
The searchers are not looking for contraband; they're looking for stowaways. They don't care about your drugs or fireworks.
Exodus takes forever because Highway 447 has limited capacity. The BMOrg can't just dump unlimited traffic on the road; they have to meter people out so the highway keeps flowing. Short of expanding the highway, there's not much they can do to speed things up.
...is that the main barrier to efficient algorithms for exiting Burning Man would boil down to "Rules are a drag, man."
-Styopa
But I was in line for the express lane at 6:30, I swear!
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Congratulations, you've reimplemented airline boarding procedures.
1: People will exit anyway, regardless of whether or not their letter has been called.
2: People exiting early or getting ready to exit will prevent people who are supposed to exit from exiting in time. This results in people from A still trying to exit while people from B are exiting, and this cascades all the way through.
At this time we'd like to offer boarding to our First Class and Business Class travelers, our Convoluted Rewards Program Platinum, Gold, and Silver members, as well as any elderly travelers, travelers needing assistance, those traveling with small children, and travelers serving in the military.
Half of the travelers stand up and congeal into an undulating blob at the doors. Over the course of 15 minutes, the blob reduces in size by 50%.
At this time we'll be boarding boarding group A.
The rest of the travelers stand up and join the blob, regardless of the boarding group they're in.
I'm not hating on Burning Man. I think it is a great event that I think has just grown to big. As a "biker" I have attended the rally in Sturgis, SD every few years from 1984 up until recently. Back in the "old days" it was attended by people that actually rode their bikes to the rally. The rally was relatively small. Camping was usually just a spot in a farmers field where you could park your bike, and pitch a tent or whatnot. In town it was simple vendors with whatever they had, spread out on folding tables, sometimes just on a blanket on the sidewalk. The most common ticket violation was for public drunkenness. There wasn't any organized events other then the races and hill climbs. But at some point, being a Harley rider became the thing to be. People started showing up with their bikes on trailers, driving greyhound size RV's. Vendors in town became chain stores. "Venues" started up with tightly managed events, live bands, etc. People no longer went on rides with the original club (Jackpine Gypsies in case you were wondering), or even knew what the event was about. Most tickets were for public nudity. But the fad peaked and attendance is dropping off. I really hope that it goes back to a gathering of real riders, and not tourists that want to be cool. I see the same thing with Burning Man. Once the fad passes, it will go back to being an event that is attended by people that are there for what it is about, instead of people going to the cool event that they can brag to their friends about. I just hope it can survive until that time. Just my 2cents.
Remember the gatherings at Ferry Bar Park in Baltimore? Or the weekend drum-oriented jams in San Francisco's Dolores Park? I used to go to that kind of thing, but no way I'm ever going to go to something as huge as Burning Man. Not my thing.
This is an extension of the same idea that has been successfully used in the US for gas rationing (1970's) where it was odd or even you were able to buy gasoline (IF your plate ended with an odd number and it if was odd number day, you got to buy gas that day). Also used in California for water rationing to water your grass (odd address by last digit, and odd day you can water outside for the allowed amount of time).
In both cases you have violators, but most people would follow if it was promoted properly. Having not been at Burning man, I won't speak for that community if they would follow it or not with proper community promotion. To help promote they could have a ritual to pick the letters or numbers.
That's a pretty neat idea... Although you may still run into the problem I mentioned about how you have to sub-divide the group into pretty small segments before the benefits kick in (see the paragraph starting "In the theory of queueing...").
To oversimplify a bit, suppose 50% of people want to leave Sunday morning and 50% want to stick around for your blunt contest and then leave in the afternoon. As long as those populations are still both sufficiently large, the queue will still grow to the point where the convenience of getting out is just barely outweighed by the inconvenience of waiting in line.
The last-digit-of-license-plate idea subdivides the population into groups small enough that this might not be a problem any more.
Smart woman, I do the same thing on airplanes because I'm not a retard.
Use horses then. Preferably anonymous ones.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not sure the personalities who enjoy the event would be contented to be organized by license plate numbers (or be capable of timing their cars to reach the exit to the event in the proposed timeframes, given how chaotic things got).
Full disclosure: I ditched the event the afternoon of the Temple Burn so it was theoretically low density (though it was quite busy when I left and took a few hours to get loose of the crowds).
this whole proposal is predicated on folks agreeing to not cut in line. Until you're ready to take a crane and literally remove cars who cut in line without a T in their plate, then this'll be broken the minute some 'ohhhh, i didn't understand person' gets in the line. saying this as someone who travels monthly, and EVERY TIME there's someone who's not a 2 tries to get into the 2 line. Every time. and some times the gate crew lets em. but maybe, the burning man attendees are all compliant and play nice and all ...
Dear Sir,
It has come to my attention that you appear to be asking other people to do the work that you, yourself, have imagined as a solution to a certain alleged "problem" you claim to have witnessed.
Without any disrespect to either "you" or "they", I would humbly suggest that you cease offering suggestions of what *other people* *might* do, and join the Exodus team yourself, roll up your sleeves, and get to the very work that you propose being done. You ought be volunteering to make the event happen anyway, like the rest of us do, and you seem to have an affinity for Exodus, so this pairing seems like a natural confluence that can only benefit yourself and the masses at TEITD.
Good luck.
With respect.
Yours in God,
.
klek
(a Burner)
PS. If you want more hand-sanitizer, I would like to suggest that you simply bring some for yourself & carry it with you (& share it) when you go to the potties, like I do. Or alternately, raise some money, purchase more group sanitizer dispensers, and affix them to the posts yourself.
Why do you prefer to depend on --and use up-- the communal resources that are placed there for the simple-minded fools and sparkleponies who are so wrapped up in their own minds and "experience" that they didn't think bring any of their own? Additionally, why are you complaining to *other* people to do more work, when you can simply fix the problem directly yourself. Direct action, as they say, gets the goods.
DIY. Problem solved.
> the queue will still grow to the point where the convenience of getting out is just barely outweighed by the inconvenience of waiting in line.
True (sort of), but perhaps not as important as it first appears. The above statement is STILL true when the wait is 30 seconds. Yet, a 30 second wait is surely a success. Just because the two are theoretically balanced doesn't mean the plan wasn't a great success. Therefore it might make sense not to focus too much on that.
That does suggest a refinement, though. Announcing the winner of a contest would only take a couple of minutes, so yeah it only splits the group in two. Better would be something like a long performance or series of performances so that some people would stay an extra hour, some stay an extra two hours, etc. Maybe that could be combined with the volunteer issue, pack up / clean up thing. If you stay for the cleanup on Monday, you'll be there for _____ (good stuff, but not too good).
Please volunteer to work exodus. You'll be amazed!
Swing and a miss. Disney doesn't have to deal with a single two lane road. If there was a second way in and out of BM then there would be hardly any line at all.
Don't go.
" - communal effort
- civic responsibility
- participation
- immediacy"
None of these things makes 40,000+ cars fit onto a rural two-lane road any faster.
Thanks for not coming, though. We need fewer clueless folks and more self-sufficient people at Burning Man.
Fuck all these queues and other bullshit. Ride a motorcycle, split lanes and fuck all these idiots. Get in and out how you like. It's like walking except faster and more efficient.
As far as motorcycles and scooters go, America needs to adopt a more global attitude.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
So, there's a two-lane road 90 minutes away from the nearest Interstate at Disney? News to me.
So much ignorance.
The only way to make a difference is with sectional priority exit. Google an image of the playa and you'll see that their parking arrangement intertwined with exhibits, housing, etc. However, since we can't expect everyone in a section to be packed up at once and we want to give all sections a chance at leaving every "exit day", we need a rotating priority schedule.
Solution: Sectional Priority Exit on a rotating schedule. Assuming there are twelve wedges to the radial playa organization (there doesn't actually have to be 12), each section will get 1 hour at a time to send Burners away. At 6am, the 6 o'clock section's exit will be given priority. If the stream of cars thins out before 7am, the 7 o'clock section is allowed to begin its exit. At 7am, the 6 o'clock section exit is halted and the 7o'clock section continues until 8am, etc.
This allows for a predictable control of flow off the playa and gives a predictable exit to those who want to leave the soonest without requiring that those who want to stay another day to exit.
Hmm...have the entry and exit managers ever gone down to Disneyland to look at their parking scheme/methods? Coachella? SXSW? A Nascar race?
I bet you have no fuckin' idea if they have, right?
Are there things that they're prevented from changing because the participants howl? Or perhaps there are other reasons you cannot see as you spectate from the comfort of your air-conditioned vehicle? I bet you have no fuckin' idea, right?
I really wish assholes that make such comments, that have settled comfortably into a private echo chamber/circlejerk of their own supremacy, would actually...you know...try and come out and WORK it to understand what's happening and why. No...really.
And I guess we're supposed to applaud your friend that brought contraband that, if found, can give BLM the fuel to shut down the event while lambasting a hurried volunteer for not rifling through it during search?
I don't suppose it would help to tell you that, although you THINK it does, that the search on opening weekend isn't the controlling factor on traffic. But why let people that actually have the stats and do the work out there get in the way of your burnier-thn-thou crap.
Oh, and by the way Mr./Ms. Fancypants, milquetoast doesn't mean what you think it does.
Well with the priority line, cars spend proportionally much less time in the queue. That would presumably reduce the number of necessary flaggers, which would free up some people for the other flagging jobs.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Have you considered that, perhaps the reason everyone hates you is because your thoughts are so poorly thought out that they hurt our brains?
How does your mind work. Is any idea you can form into a sentence considered to be true? I mean, what goes through your mind when it considers whether the above quoted statement is true? Is it something like "well, less time in queue, and when things go down, other things often go down, so yes, fewer flaggers would be needed." That's how a three year old models the world, before they grow up and understand that just because two things are somehow related doesn't mean they're dependent upon each other.
Honestly, I hate to even reply since years of experience on the internet has caused me to have no hope whatsoever that idiots can become anything but idiots, but... ...fuck, sometimes I just have to try anyway. So here's what's wrong with your fucking idea:
People aren't fucking computers. You can't just "code up an algorithm" and suddenly observe improved performance. Would assigning everyone a departure time reduce wait time to zero? Yes, obviously it would work, if everyone stuck to their departure time and did what they're supposed to. ...but if you actually pay any fucking attention to what that FAQ entry is trying to say, it isn't saying "here are a few technical problems your new algorithm will have to deal with" but rather "people aren't going to do what you tell them to do."
So, since people aren't going to do what you tell them to do, what are they going to do?
As the FAQ says, most will simply fail to show up at the gate at the correct time. Your "license plate digit" idea does jack to address this issue. Indeed, you're obsessed with people gaming the system, since for some fucking reason you honestly think people won't just outright do the wrong thing, but will look for a way to "cheat" while technically doing everything you've asked of them. That's not going to happen. They're just not going to do what you ask. They won't show up at the gate at the correct time, whether it's because they tried and failed, or because they just need to get out sooner and your new line is so much shorter and, well, obviously their needs outweigh everyone else's. I mean, they wouldn't have cut into the wrong line if they didn't have a good reason.
So now we've got every other fucking person in this line arguing with the person controlling access to the fast lane about whether or not they should be allowed to proceed. At a rate of 1000 cars per hour, you have exactly 3.6 seconds to deal with every one of these motherfuckers. Remember, now, you're not looking to provide a route for a privileged few, you're looking to optimize the process for everyone. So everyone is going into your line at the full rate that they're allowed to exit, 1000 cars per hour. So you've got 3.6 seconds to deal with each person you have to kick out of the line. Honestly, what the fuck are you going to do that's going to deal with this problem in a way that gets any more than 60 people per hour through your fucking line? Can you explain to some jackass in less than a minute that, no, you don't give a rats ass about whatever bullshit excuse he's made up, but that you just can't let him leave at this time?
Have you ever fucking looked at license plates? The last digit isn't exactly random. Where I live, the last digit is ALWAYS a number, not a letter. What the fuck is that going to do to your "dammit why won't people listen to my brilliant idea, I'm so fucking smart so they should" idea? Or will states where the last digit is always a number just pleasantly average out with states where the last digit is always a letter, much like how dividing the crowd i
All of Bennett Haselton's post suffer from the same flaw: they're long winded, technical solutions for problems that are at their core are a social problem. Trying to impose a convoluted mathematical solution to a human/social problem is always doomed to fail. It's almost like I hear Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory" speaking through him when he posts: a complete lack of understanding of social interaction in the real world, and an obstinate belief that you can fix the real world if only people would use your methodically thought algorithms to plan their lives.
At least with CA plates, the last digit only has 10 possibilities, unless it's a custom plate.
There's also the issue of the existing infrastructure, versus how many people are out on the playa. Figure attendance is roughly 50,000 people or so, with an average of two people per vehicle. That's up to 25,000 vehicles leaving at a BLM-mandated 1,000/hour - a mandate, by the way, created to ensure that the two-lane road from Gerlach to I-80 still has some room to let the natives, both in Gerlach and "downstream" in Pyramid Lake", actually get out of their driveways and go somewhere that day. Do the math and some people are going to wait for a long, long, long time.
For those of you from Europe or those just generally not from the area, here's what's basically happening:
There is only one paved road to the Black Rock Desert - Nevada State Route 447 - which is only useful for most people if you take it heading southbound since that's the fastest way to an interstate (that's American for "large freeway") and is also the only direct route to Reno (nearest major airport) and the Bay Area. The total population served by this road is maybe 1,000 (I'm feeling generous), so the road is built accordingly - it's a two-lane highway that's generally straight thanks to the local geography but makes a rather firm point to go right through the middle of what habitation there is in the area (notably, Nixon and Wadsworth). The few towns served by the highway are consequently bisected by it - thus, if the highway gets overwhelmed, it's impossible for residents of the town to cross the street. Also, adding insult to injury, there's not a tremendous amount of freeway or onramp capacity once the highway reaches the freeway (no cloverleaf or anything), so excessive oncoming traffic can cause localized traffic issues on the freeway, too.
In short, Burning Man needs to somehow evacuate over 50,000 people using infrastructure built for less than 1,000 within 24 hours, and do in a way that doesn't paralyze the lives of every single town in the area. No matter how you look at that problem, people are going to have to wait - the only question is whether people are waiting with their keys in the ignition, whether they're waiting for their license plate number to come up, or some other means of queue management. It's either that or try to convince everyone to drive through Cedarville and Alturas to go home, not that they're equipped to deal with any significant traffic themselves.
That's true, as I said, the goal was not to increase the rate at which vehicles can leave Burning Man (which is impossible), but merely to avoid the amount of time that people spend sitting in their cars waiting in the exit queue.
In the American West, car rental contracts generally specify that you cannot take the car out of the state you rented it in. In the East, where states are smaller, they usually allow a handful of the nearest ones, but by no means all.
AC
That's true, as I've said in several places in these comments, your proposal is not an effective or detailed plan for accomplishing this goal, and suffers from several wrong assumptions due to your lack of basic information on the subject. This proposal is a nonstarter, I suggest further research or in-person experience before attempting to revisit it.
I'm thinking this through in writing, so tell me if I miss something.
In the ice cream example, the line gets to the threshold and stays there because if it's too long, people will skip the ice cream. They'll decide getting the ice cream is not worth the wait, just not get ice cream.
Getting home is not optional. People will not decide to skip getting home in order to avoid the line. The question is not "is it worth getting in line?" Rather, the question is the marginal utility of getting in line NOW vs hanging out another five minutes. So the options are:
A) Less time at festival, get home sooner, more/less time in line.
B) More time at festival, get home later, more/less time in line
That seems to be an altogether different calculation, with different results, and different number of variables than:
a) get in line and get reward
b) don't get in line
You could reduce the actual situation to simple scenario if "get reward" is defined as the marginal utility of now vs later. It's interesting that the difference between the two is:
(Home sooner) - (less time at festival) -+ (the line may be longer or shorter later)
The marginal utility, therefore, may be negative, the "reward" at the end of the line may be a punishment. In that case, no rational, sober person who studied the problem would leave at that time. Unless of course it was subjectively a positive _for_them_ to leave immediately because they have a chainsaw in their neck. Hmm, this is getting interesting.
Of course, we just assumed everyone at burning man is a rational, sober person who is carefully calculating their options. I'm not sure where to go from here, so let's bring back the ice cream, this time withmarginal utility. You have two lines, one for chocolate, one for vanilla. (A line to leave this morning vs a line to leave tonight). The student of game theory would point out that theory says the marginal utility of chocolate vs. vanilla must equal the extra waiting time for chocolate. The teacher of game theory would point out that some people don't like chocolate. Their kid will point out "free ice cream for everyone! Everyone pick your favorite flavor!"
That is a good point. Under simplified artificial conditions, the net value only cancels out if the queue is long enough that people forego the reward due to the wait. If the line is short enough that all interested parties get in line, it's a net positive, that's true.
I WAS thinking it was always true for the marginal value case of "leave now or leave later", but I think I had it backwards. The thereom always FALSE for getting in the Burning Man line at all, because it's ALWAYS better to get the reward at the end - getting out of the desert, even if you spent two weeks in line,. The alternative is to die of dehydration in the desert. Themarginal gain (or loss) of leaving at any specific time is more complex.
Your assumption is that all license plates have the same format. They don't. Different states do them differently. In California, there are 7 digit places in the format:
NAAANNNN (Where N = numeral, A = Alphabet character). So right off the bat, your system fails because all California plates don't end in a letter. Ok, so you say, change it to the second (or third or fourth) character instead. But then some other state might have a different format, then you need manpower to adjudicate exceptions, which takes more time and slows up the line, etc.
You also assume that each segmented population can be processed through within the time allotted. Some segments may have more members than others, making this another bottleneck to work through.
It's pretty hilarious that you think that is remotely feasible. Six minute slots?!?
I want you to imagine something. You and four of your friends are in an exit to a football stadium filled with thousands of people all pushing to get out. Your job is to organize them in Alphabetical order. Unfortunately, they're all deaf from shouting, literally can't hear anything at all(almost like they're inside a car--plus, half of them are currently tripping on acid) Your job is to keep these people from just rushing out the gate, sort them into alphabetical order, and monitor their egress speed. Also imagine that you guys are fragile like Mr. Glass in that Bruce willis movie, if you touch one of them, you will probalby die, and you can barely see because you're in a dust storm. Every six minutes, the ordering of the alphabet changes and you have to start over.
enjoy!
Stop smoking that "fortified" weed, Haselton; the distribution of license plate letters is probably one of the worst stat distributions you could possibly select for a "hash" (heheh) function, ya ignant!
Travel by air?