Algorithm Challenge: Burning Man Vehicle Exodus

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "A year ago, getting ready for Burning Man, I read that the cars in the exit line sometimes have to wait in the sun for hours to get out. I came up with an algorithm that I thought would alleviate the problem. Do you think it would work? If not, why not? Or can you think of a better one?" Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

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).

Comments

wont work

[Anonymous Coward]

because of people their egotism when under the influence of drugs

Pave the Playa!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about instead we just pave the playa and then create 65,000 lanes all the way to San Francisco!

TLDR: "why doesn't anyone listen to me?"

[tomlouie]

TDLR: "I think I have the answer, why doesn't anyone listen to me?"

Re:TLDR: "why doesn't anyone listen to me?"

[kruach aum]

I see you have cracked the Bennett Haselton code! All of his posts are like this, all of them get a platform they don't deserve, and I still don't know how he manages to get them there. What kind of skeletons does CmdrTaco have in his basement?

Re:TLDR: "why doesn't anyone listen to me?"

[redmid17]

I wish I could use mod points to down vote entire articles. How the hell does this clown keep getting his shitty ideas published week after week.

Re:TLDR: "why doesn't anyone listen to me?"

[vought]

Because like most people who have something to say about Burning Man, this guy only understands half od what he's talking about.

The principal constraint has nothing to do with moving vehicles off the playa. It is Washoe County road 34, which is a narrow, poorly-graded two lane road that goes to Gerlach, there it joins with Nevada SR 447, a wider, less poorly-graded two-lane highway that runs through a town of less than 500 people. From there, it's still 90 minutes to Interstate 80.

Old US 49, Jungo Road, cannot be used by 99% of the vehicles at Burning Man, although those of you looking at the Google Maps are already thinking you've got an answer.

The 'answer' is: Don't plan anything - including being at work - for the Tuesday after Labor Day. Or leave before the Man burns. And if you're going out, consider volunteering to help the Gate, Perimeter, and Exodus Crew. Lots of good people work for free (or nearly so) to make sure the flow into and out of BRC stays as efficient as possible.

Another note: stereotyping anyone's lifestyle or motivations for attending Burning Man is an exercise in being an idiot. (Except for the feather headress-wearing Coachella fratkids. Everyone at Burning Man HATES those assholes.)

Re:tl;dr

[GodfatherofSoul]

I think it was a cool idea that got hit by gentrification. Once the profiteers take over and law enforcement starts camping out, it's over. Now mentioning it is like a hipster street cred cliche.

I demand transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I demand transparency

[squiggleslash]

For a long time, there's been a dispute between the admins of Slashdot, who wanted it to be taken more seriously in its own right by hosting content, and the users, who generally feel Slashdot's columnist choices leave a hell of a lot to be desired. Everyone remember Jon Katz? Exactly.

BTW, as I understand it, the best algorithm to deal with traffic at Burning Man is a Hash Table. The joke is somewhat obvious so I'm just going to leave it at that.

The playa exit is not the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[leptons]

This is the correct answer. The other biggest problem is everyone wanting to leave at the same time. Staying an extra day and leaving at 6am will get you right out of the gate with no wait at all.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

This AC nailed it. The OP up above was written by a first-year, barely-contributing Burner. He took the Burner Express...otherwise known as the "Sparkle Pony Express" because people can't bring that much stuff and typically the people on it are tourists -- people with little connection to Burning man, who contribute little, just coming to check out the party and bless us with their presence.

Bennett really has no idea what he's talking about here and very little Burning Man experience...word to the wise, Bennett, you need to join a real camp, and actually contribute to Burning Man..not come up with nonsensical ways of changing traffic management that misses the bottleneck of a 2-lane road entirely.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

I addressed this in the paragraph beginning "It's important to note this does not actually increase the rate at which drivers can exit from Burning Man..."

Regardless of whether the bottleneck is in place at the exit of the playa or in the single lane road leading away from the playa, the goal of the algorithm is not to increase the exit rate. It's to reduce the amount of time people have to spend sitting in their cars (as opposed to wandering the playa on the last day making new friends, etc.).

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

I was in the Totenkitten camp and worked multiple three-hour shifts helping to keep the Charcade running.

I assume the people who run the big projects like that want a certain number of people to come to Burning Man who volunteer with existing projects instead of running their own, because otherwise where are you going to get the volunteers from?

Yes, you can't bring that much physical stuff on the Sparkle Pony Express a.k.a. Burner Express bus. That means it's probably best for people who want to contribute their time to keep an already-existing project going.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

You really are a tourist, eh? Monday at BM, during breakdown is not really the time you make "new friends"..it's usually a frentic and desperate effort to cleanup moop, burn any burnables, pack up vehicles, etc etc. The only people wandering around looking for "new friends" are tourists who don't have anything to pack up or camp responsibilites to attend to.

Last year, the year you went, DPW advised everyone to get off the playa due to the threat of rain....that's why the line was so long -- there was a massive rush to get off the playa before rain set in. I've been on the playa when it rains -- it's pandemonium, messes up electronics, gets vehicles stuck in playa mud...

After the temple burn, the playa really calms down and the party is over. It's time to leave no trace. Once you've done that, you'll likely be downright exhausted and sitting in the car trying to sleep is really the logical thing to do. Thus, your system doesn't offer much advantages.."pulsing" already is taking care of gas consumption etc. You're just making it so tourists spend less time in exodus. I don't think BMORG will be receptive.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[CityZen]

Then the answer seems obvious: Schedule the last day's events in order from most to least interesting, making sure to have a decent progression towards inanity as you get towards the end. People will naturally trickle away, as they decide the next events are not worth attending. (Perhaps the whole week should be scheduled with the most interesting events in the middle, and the more inane towards start and finish.)

Another possible answer comes up as well: treat the exit line like a Disney theme park entrance line: make it interesting enough to be in, but never interesting enough to hold anyone up.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

In that case I retract my comments about barely-contributing and will make it "typical first year contribution." Most of the people working "shifts" in various camps are new to Burning Man. Eventually, most second- or third- year plus Burners will either stop going, or stop trying to build someone else's dream and make their own offshoot camp/project/etc.

I've got news for you though -- most of the people who run big projects (I've been a core part of two Esplanade theme camps, and now helped build an art car (you may have even ridden on it), want people not so much for the on-playa labor but the camp dues. Getting first-year sparkleponies to pay camp dues is a major method of financing for many camps. The Burner Express helps those people get to the playa on a budget while requiring minimal camp management/resources..and not trapping anyone in a vehicle with those people. That makes it so you can get randoms to join your camp and pay dues with less drama.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[michelcolman]

That's exactly what I thought, why don't they all just wait until everyone's gone?

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[vought]

Don't shit all over him just because he's clueless. Even the clueless become helpful when given time and motivation.

For example, he could become a Greeter.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[vought]

"I was in the Totenkitten camp and worked multiple three-hour shifts helping to keep the Charcade running."

How about volunteering for some real shifts - six hours at the Gate - so you can see how the operation is actually run?

Positing solutions in absence of all the facts isn't completely helpful. You should ask more questions instead of simply observing.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[vought]

Mod parent up. Burner wisdom. On Monday, Burning Man is over. Pick up everything man made you brought with you, and leave. It helps the people who are working for free accomplish their jobs of getting you all off playa and cleaning up after your feathered friends.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[vought]

"It's to reduce the amount of time people have to spend sitting in their cars (as opposed to wandering the playa on the last day making new friends, etc.)."

Most of the reason the exodus goes so slowly is because people are doing exactly this. Zoned out, not paying attention, idling their car out of gas, listening to the radio and killing their battery in the heat, etc. When the lanes begin to move and compress, tempers get out of hand. Last year when BLM stopped the Exodus on Monday because of rain, the line extended to the apex, and getting things going again was horrible. People were taking showers in their RVs, blocking lanes. Getting stoned on someone else's car, then losing theirs. Getting jump starts before pushing their vehicle out of the lanes. Etc. Every boner move you can think of that destroys the ability of the column to respond to being let out.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Richy_T]

I see what you did there...

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[idontgno]

Wait, what?

Burning Man has greeters like Wal-Mart has greeters?

O_o

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

Yes, except they spank you if you're a virgin. And make you ring a bell.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

Well whether you spend the last day making friends or doing things that need doing (like cleanup), wouldn't those both be an argument in favor of my system, which means less time sitting in your car and more time that you could spend doing either of those things.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

It sounds plausible that people would want to start running their own project by their third or fourth year, but do the numbers work? Even given the sheer number of camps and projects that I saw, it doesn't seem like there was anywhere near enough of them there for even 10% of third- or fourth-year burners to be running their own projects.

Besides, couldn't you be a major contributor and co-organizer of a camp project and contribute a lot in the pre-production stages, and still take the Sparkle Pony Express to get there? There's no reason for more people to drive in than the necessary number of people to drive the trucks hauling in the food and water and whatever physical hardware you need to make the project work.

I've got news for you though -- most of the people who run big projects (I've been a core part of two Esplanade theme camps, and now helped build an art car (you may have even ridden on it), want people not so much for the on-playa labor but the camp dues. Getting first-year sparkleponies to pay camp dues is a major method of financing for many camps. The Burner Express helps those people get to the playa on a budget while requiring minimal camp management/resources..and not trapping anyone in a vehicle with those people. That makes it so you can get randoms to join your camp and pay dues with less drama.

OK, but is this bad, if it enables people to get out to Burning Man and feed and water themselves with minimal hassle? If you're worried about camps gouging people on the prices for camp membership, presumably the solution would be a more transparent marketplace for "public" camp memberships so the competition keeps the prices down.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

The whole article was posed as a question: "If this wouldn't work, why wouldn't it work?"

Very few people have made much of an effort to answer the actual question.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

Bennett, your heart is in the right place but you're really missing the mark on Burning Man culture. It used to be that before people went to Burning Man, they were often connected to Burner communities in their home area, perhaps gone to regional burns/festivals, or numerous BM-related parties in their area. Now, people with few ties to Burning Man are just jumping right in..and I think because you're that type of Burner, that's the source of your misprognostications. I'll explain...

Even given the sheer number of camps and projects that I saw, it doesn't seem like there was anywhere near enough of them there for even 10% of third- or fourth-year burners to be running their own projects.

Bit of a straw man here..I said offshoot camp/project etc, meaning they work on a contribution either of their own or done with a small group of people on the same page. This is in contrast to the typical first to second year experience, where they get invited to join a camp and decide they're gung-ho about that and do what the camp tells them to do, like work shifts. Big camps have "pods" within them that may work on individual art installations or do their own thing..many do that. Additionally, people who remain with larger camps tend to be more of the type of the person that does the recruiting/camp organizing at that point..in such a case, they've made the camp their own thing and usually cause changes to happen in what the camp does.

Besides, couldn't you be a major contributor and co-organizer of a camp project and contribute a lot in the pre-production stages, and still take the Sparkle Pony Express to get there? There's no reason for more people to drive in than the necessary number of people to drive the trucks hauling in the food and water and whatever physical hardware you need to make the project work.

While this is theoretically possible, it's not at all plausible. Typically major contributors or co-organizers come via early arrival. Early arrival usually involves bringing massive amounts of stuff for the project. There are few playa projects that do not require transportation of large items. Typically, it's the core contributors/organizers that come with the truck and do the unpacking and camp setup. That's becuase they've organized the transportation of the ride and it makes the most sense for them to come along with it.
The Burner Express also only does EA starting on Friday..very limited early arrival service, and many organizers come before Friday. By Friday EA, the black rock city roller disco is in full swing and already partying.

OK, but is this bad, if it enables people to get out to Burning Man and feed and water themselves with minimal hassle? If you're worried about camps gouging people on the prices for camp membership, presumably the solution would be a more transparent marketplace for "public" camp memberships so the competition keeps the prices down.

Of course this is bad!! If Burning Man was easy to get to, and attending was as simple as using money to purchase things rather than organizing/creating things on your own/contributing, it would become Coachella. The fact that Burning Man is so difficult to get to, has a harsh desert climate, requires you to bring your own water etc helps ensure that more committed/invested people attend rather than tourists. Making it easier for people to get to the playa cheaply and without connections to Burning Man culture would increase the number of tourists on the playa, and change the festival drastically. It would also surely increase the amount of people in the medical tents and put a strain on emergency services, since they are unlikely to read the guides/adequately prepare.
I've met first-years who merely skimmed through the guide and thought it was "exaggerated" and came with no warm clothes and summarily froze every night. They later ended up in the medical tent for dehydration and a broken ankle. How c

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

No, if you've been working on cleanup, you probably don't leave on Monday and don't have to worry about the exodus line. You leave Tues-Wednesday.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

Sorry, I didn't mean "official cleanup". I meant things like helping to clean up around your own camp.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

I did not mean "official cleanup" either....few camps are done cleaning up by Monday, at least registered theme camps. I can't recall a single registered theme camp I've seen without a skeleton crew of cleaner-uppers around Tuesday/Wednesday.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

If Burning Man was easy to get to, and attending was as simple as using money to purchase things rather than organizing/creating things on your own/contributing, it would become Coachella. The fact that Burning Man is so difficult to get to, has a harsh desert climate, requires you to bring your own water etc helps ensure that more committed/invested people attend rather than tourists. Making it easier for people to get to the playa cheaply and without connections to Burning Man culture would increase the number of tourists on the playa, and change the festival drastically. It would also surely increase the amount of people in the medical tents and put a strain on emergency services, since they are unlikely to read the guides/adequately prepare.

I've met first-years who merely skimmed through the guide and thought it was "exaggerated" and came with no warm clothes and summarily froze every night. They later ended up in the medical tent for dehydration and a broken ankle. How could you think going to a web site and easily booking a flight and then bus ride to Burning Man would not increase the number of clueless tourists, who are potentially a safety hazard to themselves/others?

OK, you're right, my goal was to make it easy to get to Burning Man, and if you're assuming that in itself creates problems, then yes that changes everything.

But maybe a way to stop people from coming unprepared is to give them preparation advice which is really, actually correct. The official Burning Man website still tells people that there are community bikes lying around that you can use to get from place to place:
http://www.burningman.com/on_t...
NO YOU CAN'T!! There are never any community bikes available!! What they should have said is that if you're not driving in with your own bike, you can pre-pay to rent a bike from a bicycle camp. But despite three different pages on the site about bikes:
http://www.burningman.com/on_t...
http://www.burningman.com/prep...
http://www.burningman.com/prep...
they never mention the on-playa bike rental option once.

Some people did show up unprepared -- they found the bicycle rental camp and hoped that they could rent a bike, only to be told that the bike rentals were all booked up long ago -- and the reason they showed up unprepared is because the Burning Man website lied to them.

If you want people to show up prepared, let's at least try the approach of giving people correct and complete information on how to be prepared.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

The bike rental on playa option is VERY new. You used to have to bring your own bike, and rentals took place off-playa in Reno etc. They don't consistently update the web site as well -- it's not really well designed and if they update one area they often fail not to check for cross references. All the more reason these first-years need camps of veteran burners to take them under their wing rather than reading on the internet, booking plane tickets and bus rides and thinking they got it figured out. This isn't programming -- you can't just google stuff and think you'll be good. Burning Man censors eplaya as well significantly -- notice no talk about drugs? :)

You probably have never had to deal with the BMORG, but virtually all veteran burners (fourth+ years) are frustrated with them in some way or the other. Usually first to second years think they're doing a good job, until they get into the politics/camp organization etc and realize these people are really difficult to work with and of questionable moral scruples.

The green bikes suck and are often broken, also people steal them and decorate them and put their own locks on them etc. I personally think the program should be abolished, but Google donated them and has a lot of clout in BM politics.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

The reason I wrote the original article at
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
was because so much of the advice I got from veteran burners was unnecessarily difficult. Not a single one of them told me I could just bring a storebought tent and stake it to the ground, they all said that tents didn't work and you had to build a structure from PVC and tarp, or a hexayurt, and sleep in that. (The true answer is that tents don't work with the stakes provided, which are not secure enough to anchor them to the ground, but you can combine a storebought tent with rebar to anchor it down, for the drop-dead easiest way to build yourself a place to sleep, which was the question I was trying to get answered.)

I think if you want people to be prepared, you have to give them a trustworthy information source, and the way for the information source to earn that trust is to actually give the reader/listener the information they're looking for, and not steer them down a path that is more difficult than necessary. When I realized that the veterans were telling me about "hexayurts" to puff themselves up and not to be helpful, I stopped listening to whatever else they had to say.

To this day, do you know of any information source that gives complete and useful information about preparing for Burning Man (at minimum, for example, telling the reader to pre-reserve a rented bicycle, instead of telling them to use "community bikes") and also provides a checklist of things to bring? Then maybe that's the checklist we should point people to.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

I think that might be because you talked to a wealthier crew of veterans..not sure what your social circles are like, but definitely looks like an older and more moneyed crowd if they say that. The tent w/ rebar is the most common method of housing at BM -- I do recommend, if people can afford it, to get canvas tents, or at least tents without mesh etc..but I've never heard of anyone saying you have to build a hexayurt etc. Typically, hexayurt building is for when you want to put in an air conditioner etc.

Also, last year was the BEST weather on the playa I've ever seen -- most years, tents get far more playa'd out and subject to much heavier winds etc. So, don't base your tent recommendations on last year....four years ago, there were walls of dust blowing across the playa with incredible force, that's what you have to plan for.

I think the official BM survival guide is just fine if read through. It doesn't provide this false information that you cite -- and covers tents very well. Here's the quote:

A good camp tent or other shelter and warm sleeping bags and bedding. The winds can exceed 75 mph , and the midday temperature can exceed 100F. Evening temperatures can be in the 40s

Please don't take it upon yourself to write a BM survival guide or produce any material to this end yet. Last year's experience was extremely atypical with night temperatures the highest I've ever seen. I know you want to contribute somehow to BM the way you're used to working -- from your armchair by writing on the internet -- but seriously dude, you need more experience before you're an expert of some kind and people will listen to you. All of your comments, including this original article, are very reminiscient of "virgins talking about sex.." ..your'e writing a lot about the subject, but you have yet to have beyond a cursory understanding of Burning Man. I think you should endeavour to contribute to Burning Man in different ways than writing this stuff.

By the way, I saw your original article (about your summer at BM) and definitely did a double-faceplam at the time. The way you talk about camp dues and recruitment..making a "Burner Resume"...that's not how most camps form, that's how you get a job in IT. Obviously, your own armchair-Burner biases are shining thorugh here. Typically people are connected through local Burning Man communities that exist IRL. Recruitment happens at regional burns, fundraiser parties, etc, which happen all over the world. Very few camps do a significant amount of recruiting online. Also, camp dues can go as high as $1000 for art-car camps etc, but those are typically very exclusive.

Again, my overarching point is that you write all this stuff, but you just don't know what you're talking about it yet. Until you have more experience, your writing product will be obviously sophomoric, or the writings of a wise fool. I know your whole thing seems to be trying to seem smart and get people to respect you, but you're not going to get that writing stuff like this. It's going to be the opposite.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

Most people have not been saying that anything in the original article was actually wrong; mostly I've been getting complaints that the advice makes it too easy for "tourists" to get there. Is there anything in it that you think is incorrect? (Re-reading it now, I probably should have emphasized to try and camp with friends before creating a "Burner Resume" and trying to get matched with a camp, but I figured that would be obvious to most people -- first try and find friends who are going, if you can. But even then, what's wrong with the "Burner Resume" approach? You said "That's not how you do it." Why not? You create a resume, you get matched with a camp, you pay them dues, you save some hassle and they come out ahead -- what's the problem? Unless you're still objecting to the fact that I'm making it "too easy".)

By contrast, the Survival Guide is wrong insofar as it tells you that it's highly recommended to bring your own bike, instead of mentioning the bike rental option, which is much more convenient for people who are flying and taking the Burner Express.

For heaven's sake, I just realized that last year's Survival Guide, in the section "Getting To And From Black Rock City", doesn't even mention Burner Express. I know you're not thrilled about the Sparkle Pony Express, but it's run by the official Burning Man corp. No, I would not call the Survival Guide a completely up-to-date source of the most useful information.

I'm aware of the fact that my original article sounds written someone who has only been to Burning Man once. But it still contains information that is missing from the Survival Guide and that none of the veterans told me when I asked them, but that I think is useful. In a way, that's one of the intended subtexts of the article: that a lot of BM veterans are so unhelpful to outsiders, that here I am having only been one time, and I'm still giving people more useful information than they would get from talking to a lot of the old-timers.

If you think I'm wrong, then again: Do you know of any written preparation guide for first-timers that is accurate and reasonably complete? (At minimum it should mention the Burner Express and the on-playa bike rental option.)

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

Most people have not been saying that anything in the original article was actually wrong; mostly I've been getting complaints that the advice makes it too easy for "tourists" to get there. Is there anything in it that you think is incorrect?

I agree it is mostly accurate, however it is widely and dangerously incomplete. It's beyond getting tourists to the playa -- it's preventing cloggnig up emergency services with helicopter medi-vacs for these people, which happens more than you think. There's also the general ignorance of culture through omission of any IRL Burning Man events/information. Carrying around a water bottle to spray people occasionally should not be considered how you "participate" in Burning Man. If that's all most people did, BM would not exist and not have the things that people come to enjoy there -- simply put, it would not be sustainable.

(Re-reading it now, I probably should have emphasized to try and camp with friends before creating a "Burner Resume" and trying to get matched with a camp, but I figured that would be obvious to most people -- first try and find friends who are going, if you can. But even then, what's wrong with the "Burner Resume" approach?

You said "That's not how you do it."

Strawman. I said:

.that's not how most camps form, that's how you get a job in IT

Some camps may accept resumes from people online, but most of the time, they get information from a friend of a friend or forwarded via some email/social network etc..there's usually connections there. People don't go around "applying" for camp membership with resumes usually, it's very rare. But if you search the internet and get your information only from the internet, the bias is there.

By contrast, the Survival Guide is wrong insofar as it tells you that it's highly recommended to bring your own bike, instead of mentioning the bike rental option, which is much more convenient for people who are flying and taking the Burner Express.

For heaven's sake, I just realized that last year's Survival Guide, in the section "Getting To And From Black Rock City", doesn't even mention Burner Express. I know you're not thrilled about the Sparkle Pony Express, but it's run by the official Burning Man corp. No, I would not call the Survival Guide a completely up-to-date source of the most useful information.

That's because its such a new option with limited carrying capacity. Burner Express was started in response to numerous private companies doing bus rides of their own and profiteering off of Burning Man. Additionally, Playa Bike rental's 300 or so bikes is not enough of a capacity for the demand, and were they to advertise this in the official guides, they would be overwhelmed with orders. This would create a whole bike market at burning man..people get upset about the fact BMORG sells coffee, this would lead to them having to take over bike rental and sell bikes/rentals themselves. Also, the bike rental price is about the cost of the bike, if not more, so it's not a very good deal. It used to be you'd buy a bike, and if you didn't want it, drop it off in Gerlach to be donated. Now someone else just takes the money and re-rents. So really, this is an experiment that in a way runs contrary to decommodification and BMORG is taking baby steps on this, and I think rightfully so, to protect the ten principles and culture that makes BM what it is.

that here I am having only been one time, and I'm still giving people more useful information than they would get from talking to a lot of the old-timers.

No, you're being arrogant and self-important. You're giving people useful information mostly if they come to BM as a tourist and don't contribute, which is destructive to BM culture and the event. You are also omitting important

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[bennetthaselton]

Let me address your objections separately: (1) that you think making it easy to get to Burning Man would lead people to come dangerously unprepared; and (2) that letting people get there with to little effort would ruin the culture.

Regarding (1), I did say, "These points should be taken in conjunction with a more comprehensive guide to preparing and packing; I'm not writing a full guide to getting ready for Burning Man. These just happen to be the points where I wasted the most time going down the wrong path during preparation, taking advice too literally from the BurningMan.com website and/or grizzled veterans who thought that you honor the event's heritage by doing things the hard way, before realizing there was a much easier option." I think a reasonable person could have interpreted that to mean they should read elsewhere for safety tips.

But let's say it's not inconceivable that by giving people an easy way, I encouraged some people to come who were less prepared. On the other hand, if you steer people towards the hard way of doing things (driving there from Louisiana, bringing a bike on the back of your car), that has safety consequences too. Driving that distance, you might have an accident, your car might break down in the heat, etc. Your own bike might be in less good shape than you think, and might cause an accident at BM or fall apart leaving you to make a long and strenuous walk back to camp.

A lot of those incidents could be avoided by people using the shortcuts I recommended. Those incidents, including safety hazards, are a cost of doing things the hard way, and I think it's a fallacy not to count them because either (a) they happen outside the gates of BRC or (b) people see a bike break or cause an accident and it never even occurs to them to think that it could have been avoided by steering that person towards a rental bike.

As for (2) the culture, I don't know of any camps that let you just "pay and show up". They're usually running a theme and require you to contribute a certain number of hours towards participating in the theme, immersing you in the aspect of culture that they are contributing to Burning Man.

Perhaps Burning Man could pre-emptively disallow "motel" camps that allow spots to the general public where you just "pay and show up". Presumably that would alleviate some of your concerns about pure tourists. But everybody has to start as a first-timer, and if a camp requires first-timers to spend time contributing to the camp project -- well, what else would you have them do?

And no, I never once thought either of these articles would ingratiate myself in the existing Burning Man community. On the contrary, as I said one of the subtexts was a critique of communities that won't give straightforward, helpful information to outsiders because they intentionally want to make things difficult for them. It's not just directions on how to get to Burning Man. Most directions, of all kinds, in all categories, suck, in the sense that you can tell the author did not, even once, show them to an outsider and say, "Read through these directions, and if there's any place where you get stuck or where there's something missing, tell me and I'll fix it." This shows a certain contempt for people who are outside the privileged community of insiders.

Re:The playa exit is not the problem.

[Midnight_Falcon]

I think a reasonable person could have interpreted that to mean they should read elsewhere for safety tips.

The underlying assumption here is that burning man first time attendees will all be reasonable people. As I've said, I've seen first-years disregard the guide and get injured, dehydrated etc. The drinking water thing really needs to be drilled in because most people have little experience in desert climates -- loosing water without perceiving that you're sweating, etc. Then again, one man's modus pollens is another man's modus tollens.

There are seriously crazy people who show up to Burning Man. Some dude in 2003 stabbed a dude to death in a van on the way there and then tried to join DPW looking for work.

But let's say it's not inconceivable that by giving people an easy way, I encouraged some people to come who were less prepared. On the other hand, if you steer people towards the hard way of doing things (driving there from Louisiana, bringing a bike on the back of your car), that has safety consequences too. Driving that distance, you might have an accident, your car might break down in the heat, etc. Your own bike might be in less good shape than you think, and might cause an accident at BM or fall apart leaving you to make a long and strenuous walk back to camp.

You're right about this, but statistics are not available on road injuries and accidents etc. Anecdotally, I've never heard a story about any of these type of problems happening to anyone. However, the general incidence of these problems is far lower than the proportion of people who get medical treatment at Burning Man. At Burning Man 2012, there were 5,758 people who needed medical attention out of approximately 60k attendees, that's about 10%.

A lot of those incidents could be avoided by people using the shortcuts I recommended. Those incidents, including safety hazards, are a cost of doing things the hard way, and I think it's a fallacy not to count them because either (a) they happen outside the gates of BRC or (b) people see a bike break or cause an accident and it never even occurs to them to think that it could have been avoided by steering that person towards a rental bike.

There are no statistics for (a), so who knows -- but anecdotally I've never heard about such incidents -- and (b) is rather imaginary. I have heard of zero accidents on the playa due to a bike breaking. You usually just come to a stop if the thing breaks. It's far more likely the operator of a bike involved in an accident was highly intoxicated and crashed into someone else highly intoxicated, that will occur regardless of rental or not bike usage.

As for (2) the culture, I don't know of any camps that let you just "pay and show up". They're usually running a theme and require you to contribute a certain number of hours towards participating in the theme, immersing you in the aspect of culture that they are contributing to Burning Man.

Again, your inexperience is really showing here with this wildly inaccurate declaration. This is a major issue that's been raised even on the official Burning Man blog and was the main story in the BRC Weekly newspaper in 2011 . There are many camps like this that cater to "plug and play" campers. When I first started burning, this was largely restricted to the super-wealthy (we're talking $5M+ net worth), but catering has gone downmarket. There are people who will get you an RV, load it with costumes, supplies, and have professional staff members getting paid to help you in camp.

Perhaps Burning Man could pre-emptively disallow "motel" camps that allow spots to the general public where you just "pay and show up". Presumably that would allevia

Re:tl;dr

[glasshole]

Exactly. Maybe it isn't just that I got older...

Doesn't solve fundamental problem

[PktLoss]

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.

Re:Doesn't solve fundamental problem

[gewalker]

As is often the case, the real answer is the monetize the solution. Charge for parking access / egress priority rights. Those in first class pay more, but get to exit first. The money problem solves how you get the resource for parking attendants, etc. needed to enforce the rules.

Now, you may even collect enough funds to make it worthwhile to improves the access to the local highways to increase flow rates significantly via additional lanes, etc.

A bunch of hippies won't like this solution, but they are probably used to it by now.

Re:Doesn't solve fundamental problem

[bobbied]

A bunch of hippies won't like this solution, but they are probably used to it by now.

Works for the Rednecks at NASCAR races, why not for the this?

Only, I'd add that for the individual driver, you can choose to travel off peak. Leave early (Like the NASCAR fan that doesn't stay to watch the last 10 laps or so) or plan to stay until the rush is over (i.e. the NASCAR fans that bring the camper and don't leave until the next day.)

Re:Doesn't solve fundamental problem

[bennetthaselton]

I think this would be a problem on a normal road merging two lanes of traffic, but Burning Man exodus already works by "pulsing" -- a whole bunch of cars move forward and leave, then everybody waits a while, then a whole bunch more cards move forward and leave, etc.

With "pulsing" (as opposed to a normal merge of continuous traffic), it seems like you could avoid the inefficiencies of the lane merge, because you could just alternate pulses from lane 1 and lane 2.

Why do I bother reading this shit

[OzPeter]

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.

Re:Why do I bother reading this shit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Slashdot: where Burning Man rejects go to post.

Just about sums it up, doesn't it?

Re:Why do I bother reading this shit

[Anonymous Coward]

And why the fuck do we care about micro-optimising the Burning Man departure queue?

If 1000 anarchists can't find their way out of a desert without authoritarian intervention, they weren't very good anarchists to begin with.

Considering what Burning Man is supposed to be...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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

Maybe, but how about solving it with late events?

[raymorris]

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.

Still made their manpower problem worse.

[gurps_npc]

Your system has the disadvantage of requiring at least three more people as manpower - a spotter to spot issues, and a two stoppers - with a vehicle to block the cheater. They mentioned having problems filling the bare necessity of flaggers, so this won't work.

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.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[ThatAblaze]

Burning man is specifically anti-money. Buy your way to the front solutions have no place there.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[gurps_npc]

Like I said, probably not an acceptable solution.

Of course, it also points out the flaws in Burning Man.

If you don't want to do X, then you look stupid complaining about Y when X is an obvious solution.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[bennetthaselton]

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.

Not sure how they handle people "jumping the line", but presumably with the existing egress system there is already a way to stop people jumping the line.

I think your money idea would work, and that's what I would do too, but I assumed it was off the table because of the anti-money mentality as you said. (It never does any good to point out to people that pumping more money into the system would enable them to pay for more things -- discounted low-income tickets, or not running out of hand sanitizer at the porta-potties, or whatever.)

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[dentin]

Only the cars in the priority line would have reduced wait times. Because the bottleneck is actually the highway, that reduction comes at the expense of raising the wait times for everyone not in the priority line - unless the lure of the priority queue is so strong that there's enough people waiting for the priority queue to clear the highway bottleneck.

The only thing that will reduce the wait time in a fair way is to stagger departures more, so that there's lower peak load. Micromananging the current exodus process, a process which is already a nearly perfect queue, will only serve to make things worse on average, in addition to requiring more manpower to manage.

Frankly, even though you've been to Burning Man, I don't feel you're competent to be suggesting improvements to the exodus traffic problem. You've been there once, and you came in and left on a fast-track bus which was able to bypass the entire process you're trying to critique. Had you been through it a few times and seen how traffic exodus works for people who are actually in the thick of it, I doubt you'd have bothered trying to micromanage the queues.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[bennetthaselton]

Only the cars in the priority line would have reduced wait times. Because the bottleneck is actually the highway, that reduction comes at the expense of raising the wait times for everyone not in the priority line - unless the lure of the priority queue is so strong that there's enough people waiting for the priority queue to clear the highway bottleneck.

It depends on what you mean by "wait time". If you mean the elapsed time from midnight on Saturday until the time when a car gets off of the playa, then yes this algorithm does not reduce the wait time, because as long as cars can only leave at 1,000 cars per hour, then no matter how you re-order cars, the same number of people have to get out later rather than earlier.

On the other hand, if you define "wait time" to mean "time waiting in the actual physical car queue", then this algorithm does reduce the amount of time that people have to spend sitting in their cars, for people in the priority line. And that extra time saved doesn't come at the expense of the people sitting in the non-prioritized line (because the non-prioritized line will always grow to the point where the convenience of getting out just barely outweighs the convenience of waiting in line -- but no further). It doesn't come at anybody's expense at all. It's a genuine free lunch.

The only thing that will reduce the wait time in a fair way is to stagger departures more, so that there's lower peak load. Micromananging the current exodus process, a process which is already a nearly perfect queue, will only serve to make things worse on average, in addition to requiring more manpower to manage.

It depends on what you mean by "a nearly perfect queue". If you mean "a queue that follows the theoretical algorithmic properties of a queue", then obviously yes. If you mean "a queue that minimizes the amount of time that people have to spend physically sitting in their cars", then no.

Frankly, even though you've been to Burning Man, I don't feel you're competent to be suggesting improvements to the exodus traffic problem. You've been there once, and you came in and left on a fast-track bus which was able to bypass the entire process you're trying to critique. Had you been through it a few times and seen how traffic exodus works for people who are actually in the thick of it, I doubt you'd have bothered trying to micromanage the queues.

This is not an answer to the question posed in the article, which was, "Why wouldn't this work?"

Your previous paragraphs were presumably an attempt to answer that question. However I clarified that I think it was based on a misunderstanding of what I meant by "reduced wait time".

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[dentin]

(because the non-prioritized line will always grow to the point where the convenience of getting out just barely outweighs the convenience of waiting in line -- but no further)

... and this is why I don't feel that you're competent to be suggesting improvements, without having gone through at least one proper exodus.

The fact of the matter is that the above assumption is largely false - people leave when they have their stuff packed, and once they get in line, they don't get out of line - because there's literally nowhere else to go. You leave when you're ready, usually on the day you planned to leave with the people around you, and you don't have any idea how long it's going to take, you just get in line. If you have to be to work on monday, you have to leave sunday. If one person in your camp of ten has a deadline, then you have to leave at a given time - and that's all there is to it.

That's not to say that there's no feedback at all for the long lines, but usually that feedback is either premediated (people who leave at 5 am based on the previous day's exodus), or forced (traffic gridlock during peak times). There's virtually none for 'this line is too long, I'm going to wait', in large part because nobody actually knows how long the wait will be, and everyone expects it to be long. Your solution -will- result in globally longer queue times, not because your solution is theoretically imperfect, but because it relies on perfect behaviour of the people in the queue.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[bennetthaselton]

Oh, when you said it was already a "near-perfect queue", I assumed you meant a queue where people had information about how long the line would take and only got in line when the wait was worth it. (Otherwise, what did you mean, that the queue is last-in-first-out? I would have thought that was too obvious to bother saying :) )

If everybody in the regular queue just "gets in line when they're ready" but it's no longer the only queue to get out, then that factor will tend to make that queue longer. On the other hand, with the license-plate-prioritized queue, the regular queue will have fewer people in it, which will tend to make it shorter. Meanwhile the queue time for people in the prioritized line is almost zero. Only the first factor increases the average queue time, the other two factors reduce the average wait time.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[dentin]

Sorry, I should have clarified, as it's somewhat 'inside knowledge'. I meant that the queue was almost perfect in that once you're in it, it's pretty close to FIFO. The reason it's not perfect is because there's sections that are split into subqueues in the middle - there's two subqueues which merge to a single, then split into half a dozen independent lanes that remerge near the highway. (Changing lanes happens, but is discouraged.) The remerge process is also imperfect.

General FYI regarding your second paragraph: the wait time is never 'almost zero'. Even with no traffic whatsoever, exodus will rarely if ever be less than half an hour to get to the highway. Typical times with no traffic are 45 minutes.

Otherwise, regarding your second paragraph: putting 3% of the main queue into a priority queue does mean that the priority queue is 3% shorter; however, the wait time for the main queue doesn't depend on that 3% ratio - it depends on the ratio of priority exits to non-priority exits. If 3% of cars enter the priority queue, then it is true that a minimum of 3% of the cars leaving through the exit choke point will be priority cars - however, that's a minimum value, and it's very easy to end up in states where the it can be much larger. Consider a worst case scenario: if the exodus point can only handle 3% of the total load, you end up with all exodus cars being priority cars, and the wait time in the regular queue will increase linearly until the priority queue is empty. There are clearly situations where the wait time for the main queue is increased, and your explanation does not recognize this - it merely states that the increased wait time will be offset by a reduction in queue length, which is clearly false in this scenario.

Also keep in mind that the exit queues are almost never in steady state, which your analysis largely depends on. They are either 1) empty (parts of nighttime), 2) backing up (7 am through 9 pm some days), or 3) clearing (afternoon and night.) At a minimum, revision of your idea should probably include non-steady-state performance, not just idealized steady state operation. A large yet fixed number of cars must leave through a small, fixed rate gate, and those cars enter the queue at various times with very little understanding of the queue length or expected time in queue.

If you really want to push this idea, I would recommend creating a set of simulations which show that your idea or some derivative of it does actually work the way you claim it should. These problems are hard, and simulations are considered a minimum standard for good reason.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[sfcat]

Frankly, even though you've been to Burning Man, I don't feel you're competent to be suggesting improvements to the exodus traffic problem. You've been there once, and you came in and left on a fast-track bus which was able to bypass the entire process you're trying to critique. Had you been through it a few times and seen how traffic exodus works for people who are actually in the thick of it, I doubt you'd have bothered trying to micromanage the queues.

This is not an answer to the question posed in the article, which was, "Why wouldn't this work?"

I have an answer for why wouldn't this work. It takes about 60 minutes under ideal conditions to drive from a camp in BRC to the edge of the playa where you get on the little 2 lane highway. Packing times for an average carload of burners hitting the road is about 5 +- 3 hours. The ability of any group to predict when they can head out is highly variable given that they can really only choose when to start packing. Having 30 minute windows is a recipe for disaster. Nobody would hit their window. There would be disputes about what window we were currently in, etc. Practically, to anyone ever in exodus, this idea is patently absurd despite the solid mathematics. The problem is that the mathematically model used to do this analysis is woefully simplified from the actual complexities of exodus. Everyone ever been in exodus would know this. That's perhaps why burners keep suggesting you try it before trying to tell everyone else. There are perhaps 1000 burners who understand queueing theory better than this guy. Why do you think you understand something about the situations that we don't?

If you have ever been in the core of a major theme camp, you will recognize this situation instantly. Running a major theme camp is a huge undertaking with a 5 or 6 figure budget and a lot of complex engineering. Last year, our camp had 4000 amps of power distributed over 3 acres. There was a water system for processing several 1000 gallons of grey water, a full gourmet kitchen and facilities for 300 people. Every year some newbie comes up and tells us we are doing something wrong and we should do it differently. What they don't understand is that we tried their approach several years ago and it doesn't work for reasons that might not be so obvious. After awhile, it gets tiresome re-explaining the same things to different newbies each year and the crew starts getting jaded and starts just telling people if they don't like it, don't camp here anymore. Basically, this guy is getting the same response, just at a playa wide level.

Re:Still made their manpower problem worse.

[bennetthaselton]

Thanks. This is indeed a valid objection -- I just think it depends on the proportion of people who are in this situation.

After all, if everybody has no idea when they're leaving, then they'll just all use the non-priority queue, which will just become the regular queue, and we'll be no worse off than we already are.

On the other hand, I met a lot of people who drove there but were not running a major theme camp, they just drove there and parked because that's how they got there. I think they could probably pack up on a fairly predictable schedule. When you move people out of the old-style queue into the license-plate-priority queue, you reduce average wait times for everybody, and you at least don't make things worse for people in the old-style queue (at least, as long as the gatekeepers are still letting people through the old-style queue while merging them with the license-plate queue).

My suggestion was based on the information in the Burning Man FAQ:
http://www.burningman.com/prep...
which says that the main reason they don't use a priority express-lane system is that registering, and verifying registrations on exit, would be a huge hassle. So I was trying to come up with a way that avoided a registration system or a cumbersome verification process. If there are other problems with a scheduled registration system, then yes, that changes the problem. If most people have no idea how long it will take them to pack up and leave, then the idea falls apart. It seemed to me though like a lot of people who came in cars wouldn't take that long to pack up.

Problem with License Plates

[abelenky17]

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).

Enforcement

[ZombieBraintrust]

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.

Re:Enforcement

[LordLimecat]

Absurd. Youre implying that people attending Burning Man might have issues subscribing to a system of norms and rules? I dont believe it.

Re:Enforcement

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Forklift.

A big one.

Re:Enforcement

[bennetthaselton]

"stubburn"... I see what you did there

But I figured the existing egress system has to have a way of stopping cheaters as well, so it would work the same either way.

Re:Enforcement

[Toad-san]

I'd personally recommend Molotov cocktails.

But then everyone would want to slow down and stare at the burning vehicles, and that would just compound the problem.

Re:Enforcement

[vought]

"Forklift.

A big one."

Obviously someone who has worked with HEaT crew. :-)

Re:tl;dr

[GodfatherofSoul]

No, it's definitely changed. Burning Man isn't my bag, but I have an artsy crowd of friends into that sort of thing and the change from just 15 years ago (when I first heard of it) is profound.

Re:tl;dr

[jareth-0205]

burning man? really? if you are beyond your early 20s and haven't realized how dumb burning man is....

Ahh... anti-Burning Man. The new Hipster movement.

How about enforcement?

[fyec]

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.

Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[jnelson4765]

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.

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[ThatsDrDangerToYou]

Speaking as someone who's gone for a few years, and now volunteer at the event, I can give you the perfect answer.

So, is it still worth going? I've never been, but it's on my list for the future. Should it be? What's the best (and worst) thing(s) about it?

Thanks.

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[mcappel]

Haselton, what jnelson4765 said.

Join the Gate Perimeter & Exodus Dept., work in the lanes for a few shifts, and then I imagine you would see the enormous flaw in your proposal. All participants need to buy into any Exodus plan, and abide by its rules voluntarily. This is spelled out in the FAQ. I doubt all participants would abide by your idea voluntarily, and once a few start busting lanes, everyone else will and all hell breaks loose.

The GPE people, and I'm one of them, work hard to make event entry and exit as quick and painless as possible. It's in everyone's best interest to do so. Join GPE, and you may see another idea once you're part of the team. Contact me privately and I'll talk you through the department sign-up process, and become part of the solution.

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[mcappel]

So, is it still worth going? I've never been, but it's on my list for the future. Should it be? What's the best (and worst) thing(s) about it?

Yes. It's still worth attending.

The art is amazing. It's unlike any other. Some is utter crap, but for the most part, the art is difficult to describe in type and scale.

The art cars and art bikes are also unlike anything elsewhere. Imagine steampunk, but operational. With flame effects.

The raves are fine if that's what you like. I don't, so I ignore them.

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[davecb]

To be fair, he's proposed a classic solution to a queuing problem, albeit from outside. My usual response to "I suggest X" in such a scenario is a quick sanity check followed by "do you volunteer to implement it?"

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[bennetthaselton]

Well the question was "Is there a reason that this wouldn't work and save people a lot of time waiting in the queue?", so this is not the "perfect answer" :)

But, in general, if you only take ideas from people who have worked Exodus, that limits the pool if ideas. The defining trait of fields that care about getting the right answer, is that ideas are judged on their own merits, regardless of where they came from.

However, yes, fuck ePlaya. But then shouldn't the volunteers and insiders have a public-facing forum where snark is strongly discouraged and people can submit ideas for discussion of whether they might work? Where should we post that the hand sanitizer dispensers by the porta-potties are always empty? (On the last day, I had a lot of hand sanitizer left, so I stood next to the empty dispenser for a while in the morning while nothing else was going on, letting people use some of my leftover hand sanitizer. So according to your rule of "You have to volunteer on it before anyone will listen", does that mean I'm now allowed to suggest having more hand sanitizer?)

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[bennetthaselton]

Sure, I would volunteer to be one of the license-plate-checkers. (Although, same thing I said to jnelson4765: that's irrelevant to the merits of the idea, the idea should be judged on its own terms, not on whether the person who came up with it, is willing to stand out in the dust seeing if it worked.)

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[jnelson4765]

The thing about the decisions made by the various departments at Burning Man is that they are done collaboratively. People who want to be involved get together, and make those decisions, and they're made by people with years of experience.

Happens in every department. I work in DMV. BMIR is the same way. DPW probably makes decisions by knife fighting, or drinking contests, or something equally rough and tumble...

Those snark-free areas you're looking for are the mailing lists maintained by the BMORG for the various departments, and you can always contact the Volunteer Coordinators or Council for that department.

However, if they don't know you, as someone who cares enough to volunteer their time and see the problems you face out there, you will not get a very good reception. After a year or two working out there, you get understanding.

You want more hand sanitizer? Organize people to do it. Find out who sets the contract up with the port-a-john company and see how much more it'll cost to get the sanitizer increased. Then help raise the funds to make it happen. These things don't happen in a vacuum, and it's up to the participants (I. E. all of us) to either make it happen or accept that it's not perfect and stop worrying so much, and bring our own sanitizer...

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[bennetthaselton]

The thing about the decisions made by the various departments at Burning Man is that they are done collaboratively. People who want to be involved get together, and make those decisions, and they're made by people with years of experience.

Happens in every department. I work in DMV. BMIR is the same way. DPW probably makes decisions by knife fighting, or drinking contests, or something equally rough and tumble...

Those snark-free areas you're looking for are the mailing lists maintained by the BMORG for the various departments, and you can always contact the Volunteer Coordinators or Council for that department.

However, if they don't know you, as someone who cares enough to volunteer their time and see the problems you face out there, you will not get a very good reception. After a year or two working out there, you get understanding.

I understand that. That's why I said that if you only listen to ideas from people who have stood out there in the dust, that limits the pool of ideas.

You want more hand sanitizer? Organize people to do it. Find out who sets the contract up with the port-a-john company and see how much more it'll cost to get the sanitizer increased. Then help raise the funds to make it happen. These things don't happen in a vacuum, and it's up to the participants (I. E. all of us) to either make it happen or accept that it's not perfect and stop worrying so much, and bring our own sanitizer...

I did try to contact the Burning Man organization about this, and never got a response.

Do they only listen to ideas from someone who Knows The Right People? Again, that limits the pool of ideas.

Re:Hey, join the Exodus team and you get to help!

[Midnight_Falcon]

I did try to contact the Burning Man organization about this, and never got a response Do they only listen to ideas from someone who Knows The Right People? Again, that limits the pool of ideas.

Of course you didn't. What you're doing is the equivalent of trying to write a letter to your congressman and expecting actual action as a result instead of a pre-canned "Thank you for your letter" response. Losers expand the scope of conflict, as you're doing here by blowing it up on slashdot, to bring in more actors and hopefully increase their power. Instead, the reaction has been from myself and many others "this idea sucks, it doesn't do very much to help due to the bottleneck two lane highway, and you don't know very much about Burning Man."

Case in point: you tried to contact BMORG telling them to change the way they do things and thought you'd get a response. That's like writing a letter to Mark Zuckerberg to complain about possible Facebook privacy enhancements - think he's going to listen? What happens when you do this? Well, if you ever try to place a camp, they're going to be sure to put you in the back....etc.

Burning Man is very cliquey, and the BMORG is the #1 clique and definitely caters to elitism. Read about "First Camp." It is not this free-love, open hippie festival..it's in many ways a battle of egos and one-upsmanship that makes it what it is. BMORG is used to herding cats and dealing with big egos (usually by nodding, saying "that's cool," and then disregarding), and you're not going to get in edgewise by posting stuff like this. If anything, that will make them resent you and do more squash your goals. Not saying this is a good thing, but it's how it is, it's their festival, you're just a participant. And it's never been very open to participant ideas on changing institutions, it is not a democracy, it is an oligarchy.

My algorithms for getting out of parking lots.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:My algorithms for getting out of parking lots.

[bobbied]

Works for the Rednecks at NASCAR races... Plan ahead and figure on waiting unless you leave before it's over.

Re:My algorithms for getting out of parking lots.

[nospam007]

"Lave early before the rush.

Hang out until everyone else leaves - like I do on airplanes."

Rent a RV instead of using your car, then you just take nap, cook and eat something, watch a movie or take a shower until everybody has left.
We always do that for big concerts too.

Re:Not having been there

[lcs-150]

It takes place in a flat desert yes, but that desert is also the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, and there's only one road in or out of the area, meaning that letting people just drive off over the desert will tear up the earth (and damage the ecosystem there) and allow people to try to jump on to the road anywhere they please, leading to slowdowns and accidents.

Re:Considering what Burning Man is supposed to be.

[jareth-0205]

...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.

Some issues

[ThatAblaze]

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.

Re:Some issues

[bennetthaselton]

I don't think that would be a fatal flaw as long as other states have plates following other patterns so that the queue segments end up about the same size.

I realize some people make a social experience out of waiting in line. But then if you had less time waiting in the queue, you could wander around and meet other remaining Burners instead. Presumably people would prefer that -- otherwise, people would just sit in their cars during the entire event, if that was the better social experience :)

Re:Some issues

[Hognoxious]

Ignore the [numbers|letters]. Then count the first or last [letter|number] how you would have done before.

Retard.

Cost of buying front page placement

[BitZtream]

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?

bad idea

[Irish-DnB]

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'

Re:bad idea

[spire3661]

The license plate system as described by this idiot would not work.

Re:bad idea

[rHBa]

Eh? I may have misunderstood but if you are saying that the comment by Irish-DnB:

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'

...would never work then please explain further? I grant you 10 times is a stretch but license plates aren't random so you can't assume there will be an even spread of letters/numbers.

The current UK license plate system, introduced in 2001, has two non-random groups of characters*. If these characters were at the end of the plate (they aren't but they could have been) then you could easily end up with a disproportionate number of cars whose plate ends in the same character.

* The plate starts with a two letter area code followed by a two-digit age identifier, which changes twice a year.

On another note, the article mentions there being 36 possible 'last characters' of a number plate. That may be the case in the USA but in the UK certain letters aren't used on plates (IQ) because they are easily confused with other letters/numbers (10) when being read in a hurry.

Re:bad idea

[spire3661]

We have 50 states, all with different plates and numbering schemes. Not only that but in California alone i can choose from almost a dozen different plates, all with different numbering schemes i.e. certain plates like veteran or purple heart use a different numbering format then a traditional plate. Your database would have to account for all of it, and be updated yearly.

No point; BMorg doesn't want to solve the problem.

[SvnLyrBrto]

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.

Re:Not having been there

[Wycliffe]

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?

They are only allowed to let 1000 cars per hour leave. This seems like a simple solution. The license plate is about as good as any
but a drivers license, etc.. might also work. If there are 26k cars and only 1000 cars can leave an hour then letting random letter X
go the first hour, etc... seems like a good solution. If there are 13k cars, then letting 2 letters go per hour would work, etc...
Basically the same as airlines do. with group 1, group 2, etc...
For people who need to catch a flight, etc... and didn't get a good slot you could also allow line jumping for a fee.

Distributed, cooperative method

[greywire]

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.

Re:Distributed, cooperative method

[njnnja]

Something like this is probably the best idea. Or simply put up a big sign that says "Expected time to exit is [ ] hours". You can update that sign however frequently you want. People will make their own decisions about their own time management. If they don't want to wait in line for 5 hours, then they won't get in line when the sign says you will wait 5 hours.You won't need to coordinate with organizers or anything, just watch and update.

Re:Distributed, cooperative method

[ThatAblaze]

Yes, people act cooperatively like the OP said. And yes, there are frequent announcements on the radio about what the expected wait time is. Finally, yes, the best solution is probably to make no changes.

Re:Distributed, cooperative method

[bennetthaselton]

I assume this is approximately what's already happening. This means that the line will grow to the point where the convenience of getting out just barely outweighs the inconvenience of getting in line. Having totally accurate information about the length of the line, won't change that.

But if you subdivide the population into groups that are allowed to leave at different times, then it's no longer the case that the queue grows to the point of convenience-cancelling equilibrium, if each individual population segment isn't large enough to cause that.

Re:tl;dr

[hawguy]

burning man? really? if you are beyond your early 20s and haven't realized how dumb burning man is....

Ahh... anti-Burning Man. The new Hipster movement.

Yeah, now there are 3 groups of Burning Man hipsters - those hipsters that are cool enough to enjoy event and go every year, those hipsters that are way too cool to ever go to Burning Man and take great delight in telling you all the reasons they won't go (most of those things (except the heat, dust and sometimes mud) don't actually exist at the event), and of course, the group that says "Well burning man was cool back in XXXX, but it's too commercialized now" where XXXX varies from 1986 to last year, depending on when they last attended.

I don't think I'd enjoy Burning Man, but I have friends that attend every year and sounds like they have a fantastic time. To each his own.

um

[Charliemopps]

If you go to burning man, you're a tool and deserve to wait in line. :-p

Re:Have you considered not going to Burning Man?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no! It's Bennett!

Solving the wrong problem

[JanneM]

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.

Re:Solving the wrong problem

[PortHaven]

What you want to do is evaluate when a peak time is, and encourage the spreading out of departures. And a fast lane can encourage that. But I think use of color cards with a time is far easier and simpler than a registration. Drive in, handed your random color card, trade card with someone else for a more desirable time, use fast exit.

Re:Solving the wrong problem

[SvnLyrBrto]

Unfortunately, that wouldn't work; at least not for reasonable people. Remember, Burning Man takes place in an otherwise uninhabitable desert. You're required to bring everything, including water, you need to live in that desert in with you; and cart it out, along with your trash, at the end of the week. That's not too difficult if you have a car. With a bus? Your 60-person bus just became a 12-person bus when you add in peoples' supplies and gear. It's not much of an improvement.

Of course, there's the option of NOT going prepared and being a parasite on those who happened to bring extra. And, yes, there are already bus services that cater to those people. But I, for one, would never, ever, join their ranks.

Re:Solving the wrong problem

[bennetthaselton]

1) For the regular (non-prioritized) queue, I don't see any reason why the people in that queue would wait "even longer". When everybody is allowed to join a queue, the queue grows to the point where the convenience of getting the reward at the end (in this case, getting out) just barely outweighs the inconvenience of waiting in the line. That's true of the current queueing system and it would still be true of the non-prioritized queue, even if the alternate prioritized queue also existed.
2) Yes, the total number of exits per hour is fixed, and this would just re-shuffled the queue. The idea is not to make the queue move faster. The idea is to reduce the total amount of time that people have to spend waiting in the queue. You can accomplish this by allowing different groups to queue up at different times.
3) I think off-site parking is a great idea. I just think you could probably accomplish the same thing if more people were aware of the option of flying in to Reno airport, taking Burner Express to the playa, and pre-paying for a camp membership and a bicycle rental so that you can fly in. I suspect a lot of people drive there unnecessarily, because they ask people "How should I get to Burning Man?" and they get burnier-than-thou assholes telling them the hard way to do it, instead of the simple way.

I do not support doing things the simple way just to make Burning Man a breeze. I support doing things the simple way so that you have more time, energy, and money left over to do something more interesting at Burning Man than sit in a car.

Bus

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Bus

[mcappel]

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.

Green Tortise still operates. The event also contracted with a bus company last year to transport more participants departing from the Bay Area. It is my understanding this will continue to expand.

Re:Bus

[ThatAblaze]

Most people have to haul in and then back out the supplies that they needed in order to survive for a week in the desert. Busses only work for the small subset of people who got someone else to manage their supplies.

Re:Bus

[bennetthaselton]

Yes, although you can also just fly in to Reno Airport and then take the shuttle bus from Reno to Burning Man, and pre-pay for a camp membership and a bicycle rental so that you can get to the playa without having to haul in everything yourself. This is the hack I described in my last article about Burning Man:
http://news.slashdot.org/story...

Better answer

[whoda]

Camp out one more night, leave the next afternoon and avoid the mass stampede.

Re:Better answer

[bobbied]

Works for the Rednecks at NASCAR races so why not?

Point missed

[Lightborn]

Hey guys, I know the quickest way back to the default world. Follow me!

Unenforceable

[wcrowe]

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.

Re:No point; BMorg doesn't want to solve the probl

[Amazing Proton Boy]

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.

Re:Better solution

[bobbied]

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.

Proxy encampment and pre-lane spools

[advid.net]

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.

Re:Proxy encampment and pre-lane spools

[bennetthaselton]

I think this is a great idea. Maybe the first one I read here that I like better than my own idea :) The main question I had upon reading this, is whether there is space for the buffer parks. I was working under the assumption that we just had to use the exit road lanes that already exist. But if there's space for the buffer parks, your idea would work great.

Also, in your idea since people are waiting in the same spot in the buffer parks for several hours, they have time to set up barbecues or volleyball courts or whatever. That's better than the existing exit line, where people keep getting moved forward so there's no time to set up anything. (On the other hand, in my idea they get to keep strolling around the remaining setups at Burning Man until it's time for their queue segment to leave. That may or may not be better, depending on how much interesting stuff is left, compared to what kinds of interesting things people might set up in the buffer parks :) )

Re:Proxy encampment and pre-lane spools

[advid.net]

The main question I had upon reading this, is whether there is space for the buffer parks.

You may have a look to aerial views of the event: there is plenty of space in the desert. However I don't know if they are limited by law or regulations.

This idea is indeed a mitigation, you perfectly understood my point.

Re:Not having been there

[OverlordQ]

> meaning that letting people just drive off over the desert will tear up the earth (and damage the ecosystem there) and allow people to try to jump on to the road anywhere they please

As if Burning Man itself hasn't done enough of that already?

Alternative suggestions: Encourage bus use

[davidwr]

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.

A few reasons why it won't work:

[Darth Muffin]

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.

Re:A few reasons why it won't work:

[fsterman]

However, couldn't this be implemented as a priority queue? When the the priority queue empties, the general queue gets out. People whom are able to break camp early, without waiting for others in their group, do so. If the group *must* leave camp at the same time, they all file into the general queue.

The length of the priority queue will fluctuate, but you could plan for fewer slots later in the day (for example).

Re:A few reasons why it won't work:

[fsterman]

Oh, and it should be simple to enforce: have the priority queue queued up before their allotted time. You have to be there X minutes before the queue is scheduled to let out or you won't get into the queue. That gives you X minutes to inspect all of the vehicle plates.

Re:A few reasons why it won't work:

[bennetthaselton]

1, 2 & 4) If a group of cars really wants to travel together, they could use the general non-prioritized queue (which I said should remain as an alternative to the license-plate-priority queue).
3) I assume enforce it the same way the enforce the existing lanes (no jumping the queue, no cars in the lanes reserved for the Burner Express buses).
5) Not sure how to deal with these. In theory, these problems should weigh equally on both sides when comparing two options (with the existing exit queue and with the license-plate-prioritized queue, in either case you could have people trying to jump the line). In practice, I think you're right that the priority queue would lead to more people trying to cheat and plead special circumstances.

The paradox is that by adding an option that will be better for some subset of people (while leaving nobody else worse off), this should theoretically be an unambiguous improvement -- but not if it leads to squabbling over who gets the benefit, which leads to inefficiencies that cancel out the gain.

At least, you could require people to pull their car over while arguing with the enforcement staff over their "special circumstances", so they're not blocking everybody else.

Re:Better solution

[hjf]

Heh when my mom goes to church she just waits, sitting down, for THREE MINUTES (OH GOD!) until everyone rushes out the door.

The sun?!?!?

[Known Nutter]

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!

solution: busses.

[nimbius]

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.

Re:solution: busses.

[ThatAblaze]

Ignorance combined with stupidity, and topped off with elitism.

Re:solution: busses.

[bennetthaselton]

Yes, my previous article on this subject could be subtitled "Why I went to Burning Man on a plane and a bus, and you should too":
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
This one could be, "But for those of you who want to or have to take cars, they should try this. But seriously, take the bus."

Good idea.

[egarland]

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.

Re:tl;dr

[leptons]

Your statement is ignorant
Tell me, what is burning man? Whatever you say will be wrong, because Burning Man is, and always was, what you make it.

No, it isn't a party. No, it isn't a drug-fest. No, it isn't a hippie love-fest. No, it isn't anything that you say it is, because my burn is what I make it, and it isn't any of those things.

I'm in my 40's, btw. Whatever age you are, you seem to be dead inside.

No registration...

[PortHaven]

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.

Re:No registration...

[bennetthaselton]

I think this is a good idea but they might be easy to forge. Having a convincing-looking fake plate over your license plate, might be harder to forge. Plus with license plates, if you get caught with a fake one on your vehicle, it's an arrestable offense (compared to just a reprimand from Burning Man if you make a fake flag), which would deter cheaters even more.

Re:No registration...

[PortHaven]

Have a unique QR code printed on them to scan....that will limit forging.

Re:No point; BMorg doesn't want to solve the probl

[Anonymous Coward]

"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).

Didn't Cthulhu already solve this problem?

[Snufu]

http://www.southparkstudios.co...

10:50.

Re:tl;dr

[jareth-0205]

To each his own.

Ooo... very dangerous sentiment 'round these parts...

For all you TL;DR, here's your summary...

[Lorem_Ipsum]

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.

This needs a standard form

[Megane]

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.

Re:tl;dr

[kamapuaa]

I remember "fuck you Burning Man" parties in the year 2000...

Re:tl;dr

[roc97007]

> Tell me, what is burning man? Whatever you say will be wrong, because Burning Man is, and always was, what you make it.

That doesn't scan. It should read "Whatever you say will be correct, because Burning Man is, and always was, what you make it. If to you Burning Man is a negative experience, you should look inward for the reason." I'd add, "and stop trying to be an annoying hipster" but that would be snarky.

Re:Easy

[roc97007]

It's the only way to be sure.

Stringent adherence to the authority's algorithm

[wonkey_monkey]

Because nothing says "Burning Man" like stringent adherence to an authoritarian algorithm.

Re:Maybe, but how about solving it with late event

[spasm]

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 :)

Re:License Plates == Uniform Hash?

[Megane]

Not only can you not guarantee an even distribution, you can't even claim there are 36 symbols being used, since most licence plate numbering will not use both letter I / digit 1 and letter O / digit 0, except maybe on vanity plates. And you have failed to account for vanity plates at all.

You are also assuming that the last character is always chosen from the entire alphanumeric sequence (often each digit in a sequence of plates is either specifically numeric OR alpha, but not both), and you are assuming that the last character is always the most rapidly changing position. Then there are skips in the sequence (like XXX or FUK), though those will probably have a relatively minimal effect.

I suppose you could put the whole plate number through a hash algorithm, but that would require everyone directing traffic to have a battery powered device to confirm hashes, and some not-inconvenient means of entering the plate number to check hashes. And that still fails to account for people willing to pay extra for a priority exit slot for whatever reason.

Slashdot: mind reader

[wonkey_monkey]

Bennett again.

Funny, that's what I was thinking. With appropriate trailing punctuation.

Already is a monetary express

[SuperKendall]

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.

cell and wireless spotty at BM

[peter303]

So I've heard. The BM guidebook/FAQ says dont count on it. It is in the middle of a desert after all.

Non-Uniform Distribution

[ImprovOmega]

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.

Actually...

[Netdoctor]

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?

Throttling mechanism is all wrong

[KJSwartz]

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.

Re:Have you considered not going to Burning Man?

[Midnight_Falcon]

In the entire northern california and Reno area, all car rental companies make you sign an agreement NOT to bring the vehicle to Burning Man. You have to specially request a burning man rental. They make you sign a "cleaning agreement", up the price, and if you bring it back too dusty/etc they pack on more fees. It's a way, especially in Nevada, to profit off of Burning Man and fleece some tourists (a long standing Nevada tradition).

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.

Re:tl;dr

[Midnight_Falcon]

The "old people" (defined in OP as being past early twenties) at Burning Man include Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Elon Musk, Puff Daddy, Mark Zuckerberg, the Winkelvosses...the list goes on and on....are all these people idiots? They seem to be doing pretty well.

Re:tl;dr

[Collective 0-0009]

And SxSW is heading down the same path, if not already there. Some have already setup alternate events in Austin. It's inevitable.

Re:Have you considered not going to Burning Man?

[AvitarX]

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.

Euler has yet to be mentioned even once

[Sunkist]

not. even. once. i call "cuban slashdot"

Dirt Simple

[craighansen]

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.

Re:Dirt Simple

[ThatAblaze]

BRILLIANT! Ohh wait... this is exactly what they do. Maybe this problem has already been solved.

My guess...

[argStyopa]

...is that the main barrier to efficient algorithms for exiting Burning Man would boil down to "Rules are a drag, man."

Re:My guess...

[ThatAblaze]

BM has lots of rules.. made up streets, leave no trace rules, public bikes which people manage not to steal. People at BM follow rules a lot better than people in your average rural town. Your ridiculous assertion is obviously based on something you saw on TV. Southpark perhaps?

My license ends with T and it's 7AM

[Ken_g6]

But I was in line for the express lane at 6:30, I swear!

Won't Work

[sexconker]

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.

Re:Won't Work

[dentin]

Actually my biggest complaint with airline boarding and exit are idiots that hold up the entire line by taking 30 seconds to pack or retrieve their luggage while there are waiters blocked behind them. I make it a policy to stow and retrieve luggage as quickly as possible, while standing out of the aisle if possible, so others can go past. I also make it a policy of not politely waiting for people in rows before me unless they're physically in the way or clearly have all their stuff in hand.

Remember: when you wait for the oblivious mom or obnoxious businessman to take 15 seconds to retrieve their stuff, you've just delayed five people with their stuff in hand from leaving the plane.

Simular to the Sturgis motorcycle rally

[Jombieman]

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.

Gathering of the Tribes, Rainbow Family, etc.

[Roblimo]

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.

Re:tl;dr

[Midnight_Falcon]

An "idiot" means a stupid person..not just someone you don't like..these people are smart, capable, and have done a lot in both business and for some of them in science as well. You can't be an idiot and succeed like that, and classifying successful people that you don't like as just 'idiots' might make you the same..

Re:Maybe, but how about solving it with late event

[bennetthaselton]

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.

Re:tl;dr

[Hognoxious]

Yeah, contradiction is totally Zen.

It's "in" again, BTW.

Life underground, perfect disguise above.

[Hognoxious]

letting people just drive off over the desert will tear up the earth (and damage the ecosystem there)

Use horses then. Preferably anonymous ones.

can't get 200 passengers boarding a plane worked

[vpness]

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 ...

Re:tl;dr

[Desler]

SXSW is not a concert.

"They"? Who is this "they" you refer to?

[klek]

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.

Theorem might not matter, magnitude does.

[raymorris]

> 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).

Re:Theorem might not matter, magnitude does.

[bennetthaselton]

> 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.

Actually, if you subdivide the population into small enough segments, you'll reach the point where the cost of wait time is much less than the benefit of the prize at the end of the line -- but that only kicks in if you divide the population into sufficiently small segments.

Suppose I'm handing out spoonfuls of free ice cream to a crowd of 1,000 people. Everybody decides that the spoonful is worth approximately 1 minute of waiting time. The line will grow to 1 minute long, and stay there, and on balance the ice cream benefits nobody.

Suppose I announce free ice cream for all the men at 9 AM and for all the women at 3 PM. Even with a population of 500 in each group, the line will still grow to the point where it's 1 minute long, and the ice cream still benefits nobody.

But now suppose I have different line-up times for groups defined by first letter of your name. Now I've divided the population into groups of about 40 each, where the queue is much faster to get through, and only now is there a net benefit for the users, because benefit of the ice cream is more than the price of the waiting time that they had to pay.

The benefits of the queue don't kick in as soon as you start sub-dividing the population. They only kick in once you've sub-divided the population into groups small enough where now they can't form lines long enough to cancel out the benefits of the prize at the end.

Re:Not having been there

[vought]

Given that it's a dry alkali lake bed with virtually no life upon it, the impact on the playa from vehicle traffic is negligible from year to year.

Now, let's talk about all the hippies with leaky bussesand the folks from LA who show up in motor coaches carrying two occupants...that's a huge environmental impact. But they're usually the ones treating Burning Man as a weeklong party while ignoring all the staff who work their asses off.

You know people stay out there for over a month after the event cleaning up, so that the only thing left after the winter rains in December are a few ruts in the playa, right? Maybe know what you're talking about before posting.

Re:tl;dr

[vought]

they're also resented by much of the volunteer staff, as they tend to set up resource intensive camps or fly in/out every day.

Butno judging. That's kind of at the core of the ten principles. Everyone is welcome in BRC as long as they don't shit all over anyone else.

Re:No point; BMorg doesn't want to solve the probl

[ThatAblaze]

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.

Re:Considering what Burning Man is supposed to be.

[vought]

" - 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.

The solution: Ride a motorcycle

[Cthefuture]

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.

Re:Not having been there

[OverlordQ]

Sounds like you're part of those hippies if you think they leave no trace.

How about reading a real report about the impact.

I think you were saying something about "Know what you're talking about before posting"

Re:No point; BMorg doesn't want to solve the probl

[vought]

So, there's a two-lane road 90 minutes away from the nearest Interstate at Disney? News to me.

So much ignorance.

I'm a Transportation Professional and I say...

[eepok]

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.

Re:tl;dr

[idontgno]

I think you're missing the point.

As far as I can tell, the point is "You're wrong, because I, and only I, am right. It doesn't even matter if you agree with me. You're still wrong, because you're not me."

Yeah, doesn't make sense to me, either. Probably all the heatstroke and pharmaceticals.

Re:tl;dr

[Midnight_Falcon]

I definitely agree with you from a normative perspective -- Puff Daddy at Robot Heart is not cool or good for Burning Man. Elon Musk's massive plug-and-play RV camp in the back is hardly a contribution. But since these people are well known as being successful and accomplished, the goal here is to show that not everyone above their early 20s on the playa is an "idiot."

Re:tl;dr

[Collective 0-0009]

How telling is it that a newb says SxSW is a "pop concert". That just goes to show it is not the same as 10 years ago (or probably 5). It's actually hard to say what SxSW is anymore as it has grown so big... it's a tech conference, TONS of definitely not pop concerts, parties and drinking, pot smoking, some parts like TED, others like CES, some like the shady bar on the bad side of town. The latter was what made it awesome and has probably dwindled to nothing making it just another huge conference, but it's based in one of the top cities for music and booze with one of the largest public universities in the country. I bet the cops kick out the homeless guys nowdays. That may sound weird if you've never been to Austin, but it's normal there.

Bennett Haselton = Sheldon Cooper

[wired_parrot]

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.

Re:Have you considered not going to Burning Man?

[oatworm]

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.

Re:No point; BMorg doesn't want to solve the probl

[bennetthaselton]

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.

hmmm, leaving isn't optional. marginal utility

[raymorris]

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!"

Re:hmmm, leaving isn't optional. marginal utility

[bennetthaselton]

I think it is more complex and it does get interesting.

I was responding more to your specific statement: "The above statement ['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'] is STILL true when the wait is 30 seconds."

My argument was that this is not true if you divide the population into small enough groups. Past a certain threshold, the wait time drops while the value of the prize at the end stays the same, and the difference is a free lunch, a pure benefit to people in the queue, at nobody else's expense.

that is a good point

[raymorris]

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.

It's the exceptions that crash the system...

[Collin]

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.

Avoid the queue

[CmdrTamale]

Travel by air?

Re:tl;dr

[CurryCamel]

Thankyou for that.
Now I know SxSW is not a pop concert (because an anonymous person on the internet told me so). If I only got ten thousand replies like yours, I could start guessing what it actually is, by process of elimination.

Re:tl;dr

[BitZtream]

You may be in your 40s, but when you start the 'its is what you make it' we just hear something from another pretentious yuppie.

You probably should try growing up a bit yourself.

Re:Not having been there

[sfcat]

Well, the population of the towns of Gerlock and Empire would be financially devastated if they did that. See, up road 447 is basically a few ranches and some old mining towns full of older folks who have lived there for decades and are now largely stuck there. Empire was largely supported by a gypsum mine that closed 3 years ago. If BM didn't occur once a year and inject about $5-10m into their economy, those towns would entirely collapse. The BORG is sensitive to that but over the last few years local government officials have become more and more greedy (the brand new $75,000 police cars for a town of 500 people didn't help). If the BM decides to pull up stakes and move, that area will be ruined and the locals will suffer greatly.
Also, the Black Rock Desert isn't really something that needs protecting. The leave-no-trace ethic is more of a political statement than a practical effort at 0 trace. Many people have misinterpreted this into an absurd standard. The rest of the year on the Black Rock Desert is largely unused except for the occasional small rocket launch, attempt at a land speed record, or a filming commercial that usually leaves about as much trash behind afterwards as the week of BM does. Largely due to the fact that they don't have to care if they litter as the local government is dependent upon them to get a bit of $$ to help support a largely failing local economy. Its absurd to think 50,000 people can be in one place for a week without leaving any mark. Its also absurd to think that BM isn't the closest thing that we have in the US to a true leave-no-trace event. If you've ever been around after a large event and seen entire stadiums covered in trash after a 2 hour concert, then the bit of trace BM leaves after a week is absolutely amazing. If you want to blast them for that, they you are entirely missing the point (perhaps they are too), but the ones that put the idea of leave no trace in to their head have accomplished their goals and then some. Its the cleanest gathering of people in the US every year when measured by the amount of trash or trace left afterwards. That's actually pretty amazing.