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Could Technology Companies Solve Traffic Congestion? (bloomberg.com)
As the Indian city of Bangalore "grapples with inadequate roads, unprecedented growth and overpopulation," can technology companies find a solution? randomErr writes:
Tech giants and startups are turning their attention to a common enemy: the Indian city's infernal traffic congestion. Commutes that can take hours have inspired Gridlock Hackathon for technology workers to find solutions to the snarled roads that cost the economy billions of dollars. While the prize totals a mere $5,500, it's attracting teams from global giants Microsoft Corp., Google and Amazon.com. Inc. to local startups including Ola.
Bloomberg reports that the ideas "range from using artificial intelligence and big data on traffic flows to true moonshots, such as flying cars... Other entries suggested including Internet of Things-powered road dividers that change orientation to handle changing situations. There is also a proposal for a reporting system that tracks vehicles that don't conform to the road rules..." And one hackathon official says a team "suggested building smart roads underneath the city and another has sent in detailed drawings of flying cars." Any more bright ideas -- and more importantly, do any of these solutions really have a chance of succeeding?
Bloomberg reports that the ideas "range from using artificial intelligence and big data on traffic flows to true moonshots, such as flying cars... Other entries suggested including Internet of Things-powered road dividers that change orientation to handle changing situations. There is also a proposal for a reporting system that tracks vehicles that don't conform to the road rules..." And one hackathon official says a team "suggested building smart roads underneath the city and another has sent in detailed drawings of flying cars." Any more bright ideas -- and more importantly, do any of these solutions really have a chance of succeeding?
My entry:
Reward companies (and people) who work from home with incentives to keep them off the road.
Can I have my $5k now?
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Heinlein gets it right again.
Yes, they could have their employees work from home. Can I have my $5,500 now?
I lived in Bangalore for six months.
Traffic there is like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Lane markers... they're just suggestions. Speed limits? What's that? Traffic lights, well, maybe, if there's a cop handy.
What's amazing to me is how the congestion isn't as bad as it could be, because traffic in Bangalore, and well India as a whole, is compressible. When a traffic light turns red, cars and auto-rickshaws and especially motorbikes, move in to fill the space as tightly as they can. Then when the light changes, everyone moves out and traffic flows. What that means is that while North American traffic behaves a lot like a liquid, my observation in Bangalore was that traffic behaved much more like a gas.
Who, me?
I've never been to Bangalore. But I have been to other places in India. And I don't think I have seen a car reach 55 mph. The average speed seems closer to 15 with peaks at 40 due to a massive number of cars on a complete under-scaled under-maintained road infrastructures.
Congestion problems in India and in the US are probably very different problems. I heard stories in Bangalore of a congested one way street progressively change way during the day when there is an opposite flow of cars pushing their way through in opposite directions.
Granted I only saw a very limited part of Bangalore, which I enjoyed because everyone was so nice, a technological solution seems impossible. You have multiple motorcycles in one lane, and everyone ignores the traffic lights, if there are any. Everyone just turns at the same time. My friend who was driving explained they have more accidents when they have traffic lights.
Figuring out how to solve traffic congestion, that's the easy part. There's lots of ways, mostly in two categories: reducing the volume of traffic needed to move a given number of people, and optimizing the flow of traffic.
The hard part is getting people to actually let the solutions do their job. Everyone wants better traffic flow, but they don't want to change their own driving patterns to ones that optimize traffic flow (especially if it means giving up even a second's advantage over anyone else).
On the plus side it's easier to anticipate what the traffic will do if you're trying to cross the road. If you get in the way they will simply continue and run you down.
Self-driving cars with smart traffic light are the most sensible solution to the problem. The technology is almost there, but it will take at least 10 years before it is widespread enough to be of any use. In the meantime, favor telecommuting,ride-sharing as much as possible. Flying cars may be the futuristic, hyped solution, but they are unfeasible, dangerous, and impractical. -- Do not ever use slashdot deals. Unless you want to be ripped off.
"grapples with inadequate roads, unprecedented growth and overpopulation,"
And there is more: sewage in the streets, hunger, sickness, pollution of every kind...
There is only ONE problem really. There is only one solution. Family planning. All of those little 'problems' are simply symptoms of the ONE problem. Without family planning, every one of those symptoms will get worse.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The thing about traffic congestion in large cities is that it increases the opportunity cost of driving (which is essentially proportional to the delays caused by the congestion). When the opportunity cost exceeds some threshold, people will stop driving and use alternatives like public transport, walking, etc., or just change their plans. That threshold varies across the population. So what happens if you reduce the overall congestion? The opportunity cost goes down so some number of people who would have previously not driven get on the roads and suddenly your congestion is back exactly where it was. This happens no matter how you reduce congestion unless you somehow manage to adjust things so total demand is less than the capacity of the system.
In a small enough system, simply expanding capacity (adding lanes, more efficient intersections, etc.) can have a substantial impact. Also, if a single bottleneck is causing problems for a large portion of the network, improving the bottleneck can have a significant impact. Some of those technological measures may work for identifying cases where that will help. Unfortunately, there are only two ways to reduce congestion: increase capacity or reduce demand. Increasing capacity has diminishing returns and is not possible in many situations due to conflicting traffic movements or simple lack of space to make any expansions. (Everything from smart road networks to self-organizing traffic are all measures to increase capacity.)
Ultimately, the only long term solution to congestion is to reduce demand. Ironically, the congestion itself is a force in that direction, but, unfortunately, it negatively impacts activities that must use the road network (transit buses, goods transport, etc.). The measures that will have the most impact on congestion will be the ones that remove the demand for driving. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers there. It seems like that requires a massive cultural paradigm shift, especially among the urban planners.
All that said, maybe this competition will result in something novel that can actually be implemented.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
until you can figure out how to fix india's drivers
There is only ONE problem really. There is only one solution. Family planning.
Correct, and education for women is the best way to solve that. I've never given into a man by letting myself be talked into doing something I don't want to do. All of my Indian friends that are women, say they don't have a choice in the matter. They need to be educated so they feel strong enough to not agreeing to doing what we do not want to do.
Let AI drive the cars. "self-driving" cars follow the road rules and cooperate better. Maybe tracking via WAZE can help in the interim.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
But the good people of Bangalore should perhaps Bang-a-bit-less.
#DeleteChrome
Raze some buildings and install more/bigger roads.
Yes, it's expensive. But it's a tiny price compared to having everyone waste millions of person-hours sitting on inadequate roads. Just multiply those person-hours by any plausible dollars-per-person-hour, and you have a figure for how much it's appropriate to spend fixing this problem.
Seriously, how is this a difficult question?
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You have to charge people for using the roads, that's all. (as if it's so simple) And it can take on variants like having fast toll lanes, dedicated bus lanes, pay per use/congestion zones, etc. But you have to make people feel the pain in $ for driving.
Unfortunately, I am pretty sure Indian policy makers don't have the appetite or means to put in those kinds of measures against the tidal wave of protest that would erupt. They can't even keep cows off the road, how are they going to do anything that requires even more discipline?
I've seen third world traffic firsthand and the people are prone to cause gridlock, it is in their genes. I'm going to enter this intersection even if it is backed up and I can't cross it. Fix that and traffic flow improves by 50%
that carry Tata Air Pod size cars. The buses never turn off the arterial that is their route. They let pods off at cross streets. At the farther from the city end of the route they swap batteries and move to the other lane. At the city end, a crane moves them to the other lane.
Designated Shitting Streets.
I couldn't even point to it on a map. But as an American, I know everything about it anyway.
--
AK Marc
Reducing deaths on the roads by 99% will not be sufficient for widespread short-term legalization and adoption of self driving vehicles. People will still point at unlikely complex situations where humans might avoid an accident where the AI would not. Humans, emotionally, do not want to admit that AIs are better drivers than they are, though the best self driving vehicle technologies undeniably are already much better then the average human driver.
Singapore sets strict quotas on total vehicles, by type, using a simple auction system. So let's suppose the quota is capped at one million vehicles of all types. Private cars might represent 600,000 of that total. (These numbers are approximately correct for Singapore.) If you want to buy a car, you have to get a Certificate of Entitlement (CoE), good for 10 years. As a car comes off the road and is scrapped or exported, its CoE is returned to the public pool and auctioned. The highest bidders win. Currently (mid 2017) a CoE is fetching about US$35,000. That's not the car or anything that goes with it. It's merely the cost of a 10 year license to place a new car on the road. You also have to buy, register (with ample tax), insure, park, and fuel the car, and that costs money, too. You also must have an electronic toll device, and congested areas (primarily the central business district) have variable tolls to enter. If you get out of line the penalties are severe, and you cannot bribe your way out of such problems.
Do those basic things (a strict overall cap on the vehicle population at an appropriate level, and variable electronic tolling for the areas most prone to congestion), and you have eliminated traffic problems. Public buses can then run on reliable schedules, road construction doesn't cause too much agony, and there's an excellent revenue source for both.
This problem is well solved if people want it solved. Just copy Singapore.
Tech companies would worsen the problem. They will make commute time more predictable and adjust the flow, divert in real time to reduce congestion. All this will lead to more effective road capacity. All the secondary roads that carry less traffic will be used as load balancers and fill up with traffic. All this will make people realize they can live even farther away from the city and supersize their McMansions. In the end there will be more vehicles on the road.
Real solution is allow market to determine the cost of commute. A contested valuable resource, priced at below market levels, unresponsive to rising demand will always lead to wasteful usage. Water and road access are the most heavily underpriced government owned resource. Any private company would have raised the price of accessing the prime working areas, and raised the prices over time. Businesses would respond by moving out, spreading out, commuters would pay the true cost of access to downtown and business districts and consider rational alternatives.
While taking advantage of free road access to business districts, the very same car commuters fight tooth and nail any subsidy to public transportation.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Betteridge wins this one. No special snowflakes or unicorns could "fix" India's traffic, because of:
(a) The hilariously complex and incompetent bureaucracy, which leads to
(b) Rampant corruption at all levels, plus
(c) Totally dysfunctional government at local, state and national level (so no effective urban planning) and of course
(d) India's drivers - people who are normally friendly when you meet them at social events but who collectively transform into total psychopaths when you put them in charge of any form of motorised transportation...(especially the bus drivers...)
Congestion charging? Carpool lanes? In India? Good luck with that.
Solving traffic issues is unlikely without regulating population size and location. We are experiencing a population bomb and drowning in over population. A fairly quiet town can become totally clogged if people locate in that town suddenly. The best solutions simply can not be applied. For example a building code might allow one bed for every three acres a home occupies. That would push people outside the city limits and reshape the very nature of a city. But doing that has the side effect of swallowing up more land outside the city in a dreadful expansion that consumes and destroys nature. So the very first thing about traffic control is to control human reproduction rates.
Actually encourage staggered works schedules. Traffic congestion tends to be the result of rush hour, and by having some workers work earlier and later schedules, you disperse that traffic. Makes everything more efficient, and lets those awful "morning people" deal with each other.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This is actually a myth: http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
The global fertility rate is nearing zero growth. The world population is still rising because the people already born are living longer so there are more generations alive today than ever before, but it is levelling off.
The only way to do what you suggest would be to actually create a decline in population, which has other extremely negative consequences for the economy and society.
Fortunately all we really need to do is plan better. Get rid of 5 year budgets for roads, go to 50 years. Build new towns around public transport, and fix old ones by demolishing a few things to put some in. Plan for the pay back to be in the 50 year range, not shareholder dividends after breaking ground.
We have enough resources, we just don't allocate them well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Once someone is driving on a road, it stops being empty. Throughput is completions per unit time; if you are talking about cases of extremely low congestion, increasing speed increases throughput by reducing the unit time. Moreover, doing so reduces latency, which is the real concern for the travelers (and their employers, and so forth) -- subject to the accident rate being approximately constant.
At the levels of use that people are talking about in Bengaluru, cars are turning on and off the streets far too often for traffic to flow at 70-80 (or even 45) mph, and increasing speed limits will not improve either throughput or latency.
AI cars can defeat all of our current traffic congestion. But this, combined with AI cars allowing for easier travel, will invite new uses for the road. We will have more people and more miles traveled per person, creating new congestion.
For example, I would expect a huge increase in road trips. Why spend extra money on a 4 hour flight from Philadelphia to Florida , with an extra 3 hours prep time traveling to the airport + waiting on lines, when you can get in your car at 11 PM, sleep 8 hours, then watch a movie or two, eat breakfast, and get to a beach in Florida by 11 AM. Currently a bus does that, but it is a different when you can do it in a car you already own, without driving.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Exactly. Traffic in North America is relatively incompressible, whereas traffic in Bangalore was surprisingly compressible.
and noisy. You wouldn't believe how much they use their horns.
Who, me?
Maybe some other company could solve the problem using technology. A "tech company" doesn't know anything about traffic or how people behave, it only knows about technology.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
FTFY
Think about how many people aren't taking the roads now because they are too congestion. Reduce the congestion, and more people will show up to congest it further.
The problem isn't the roads, it's the city congestion. There is such a thing as too many people in an area. The roads become the bottleneck -- often intentionally because you'd prefer the congestion to be in the roads, rather than elsewhere.
But if we're talking about far-flung transportation solutions, I enjoy the idea of a ballistically-launched bus-sized pod of people fired by canon/catapult over a city.
"We have enough resources, we just don't allocate them well."
Who is this 'we' you're talking about, white man? I take it you've never been to India. And you have the nerve to quote World Bank propaganda? The same World Bank that has bankrupted most third world countries?
The current government of India is a mess, a nuclear threat and an anti Muslim sword rattler. Whatever 'we' you might imagine does not exist- they are not part of any worldwide consensus.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Put most people into bus, streetcar or train networks very early each morning to get to work.
You misunderstand the definition of 'work' in most Indian cities. Sure, you can take their commuting cars away. But cars aren't a large part of the problem on city roads there. People will just find other means* of transporting themselves and their goods. And I don't think mass transit is going to work for that.
*I don't think that was the sort of Indian motorcycle this web site had in mind.
Have gnu, will travel.
Are you a liquid?
Yup, self-driving cars will be a game changer for traffic. Since the majority of traffic in most places is local day-to-day traffic, like getting to/from work, stores, restaurants, etc. I don't think the increased car utilization will come close to outweighing the improved traffic efficiency.
You have me pretty excited about road trips though. I hadn't really thought about it, but clearly cars will be designed more for passenger comfort. It'll be like first class or better travel, with privacy, at your convenience, with complete control over making stops and route changes. If efficiency improves enough, we can have fewer lanes that are wider so cars can have more interior room.
On the other hand, self-driving buses are also going to be a game changer. According to this article operating expenses for buses are huge, and about 70% are for employees. Self-driving buses will mean we can have twice as many buses, or maybe 10 times as many cheaper buses with lower capacity. If the bus came every 5 minutes instead of every 30 minutes, and went to more places, a lot of people are going to stop owning a car.
How does someone who cleans toilets work from home?
India is people rich. They have a culture of paying people to do jobs that other countries buy machines to handle for the most part. There are exceptions, but ....
dishwasher is a person.
clothes washer is a person.
Lunch delivery is a cartel of people with neighborhood bosses in control - sorta like the NYC taxi companies.
Create variable cost travel options - higher during peaks, lower or free off-peak. That would apply to trains, subways, taxis, and toll roads. High congestion areas need an added fee just for entering - like they do in London.
Let the added fees and people wanting to avoid those fees work out the problem.
The hardest part of the problem will be all the corruption for the govt overseers who allow _some_ organizations to violate the new rules after payoffs. Corruption of govt employees is taken to a new level in India. Everyone expects a little extra payoff, just to do their jobs. For just a little more, your paperwork moves to the top in India.
When everyone's job has been replaced by AI, no one will need to commute to work anymore. Problem solved!
I like the idea of catapulting humans around and catch them in nets,..
(this might also help with over population)
Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like
You say black I say white
You say bark I say bite
You say shark I say hey man
Jaws was never my scene
And I don't like Star Wars
You say Rolls I say Royce
You say God give me a choice
You say Lord I say Christ
I don't believe in Peter Pan
Frankenstein or Superman
All I wanna do is
Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle races are coming your way
So forget all your duties oh yeah
Fat bottomed girls they'll be riding today
So look out for those beauties oh yeah
On your marks get set go
Bicycle race bicycle race bicycle race
Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle bicycle
(I want a) bicycle race
You say coke I say caine
You say John I say Wayne
Hot dog I say cool it man
I don't wanna be the President of America
You say smile I say cheese
Cartier I say please
Income tax I say Jesus
I don't wanna be a candidate
For Vietnam or Watergate
'Cause all I want to do is
Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle (c'mon), bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like
Only I can judge you.
Of course! Why didn't they think of that? The REAL cause of congestion is everything that happens to annoy Joe Dragon in his personal commute! Brilliant!
While doing my masters in transportation engineering, I did a class in traffic. One of the very first proofs that you do is a fairly simplistic model of traffic flow, but just complicated enough to show that for most traffic engineering problems the condition for finding a globally (network) optimal solution is that every driver can improve their own travel time. So basically it is not "if" it means giving up an advantage - giving up an advantage is how you know it will help. If you look at all traffic control measures they are trying to force people not to act first dangerously then second selfishly. I've since tried to avoid traffic engineering as much as possible.
Its pretty simple, if you are in the left lane and there is someone behind you (or approaching) and nobody in front of you, you need to pass and get over as soon as possible.
Ideally, you shouldn't be hanging out in the left lane at all unless the road is completely saturated. If it's possible for people to pass you on the right, and especially if people are actively passing you on the right, then you have become a legitimate hazard to others and need to move over.
I was recently disappointed to see a sticker on a semi truck that said "Do not pass on right". Passing a semi on the right is indeed very dangerous, but professional truck drivers should know better than to continually create situations where people are passing them on the right enough to put such a sign on their truck. If a car can pass a semi on the right, then the lane to the right of the truck is pretty fucking empty and they should stop obstructing traffic.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I am getting a kick out of this thread. But, suffice to say, you hit the nail on the head. Most traffic problems stem from piss-poor driving. In theory, we could pretty much eradicate the need to stop traffic. Alas, we're way too stupid for that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
India is right full of, comparatively speaking, efficient, public, mass-transportation. You should see their commuter rail infrastructure. Even really remote villages are often reliably serviced by both rail and bus.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This makes the cost of congestion payable by those causing it, deterring their behaviour. The medium tech solution is to require additional payments to enter specific areas, enforced by cameras. The high tech solution is to have cars fitted with a transponder that charges for the distance you move through the congested area.
The massive capacity of underground trains enables London and New York to operate high density areas reasonably efficiently - as long as you keep the trains up to date, as NY has failed to do.
Some answers here.
How does someone who cleans toilets work from home? It depends. Do they have to go to the office first every morning and then out to customer sites? If so, eliminate the trip to the office. My point was to eliminate travel when it is not necessary for tasks that can be accomplished remotely, not to just "have everyone work from home from now on."
As for the "surge pricing" (I'll borrow a term from Uber here), I think that would be an interesting approach. The corruption problem would certainly throw some monkey wrenches into the system, but I like where you're heading with the concept.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
I am forced to conclude that you've never been to London and used the amazingly efficient, clean and safe means of travelling around London that the Tube provides. Its only problem is one of success; there are too many commuters trying to use it. But in general it is reliable and a very fast way of getting round a big city. Yes, it does cost a lot to keep it maintained, and that is a charge on tax payers. But the benefits are very real. For visitors it is all that most need.
Liquids do compress, but in general we say they don't because it's so tiny and such huge pressures.
The pressure you feel in the water has nothing to do with compression. An "incompressable" metal anvil still feels like pressure the more anvils you stack on top.
What you feel in water, is literally the weight of the column of water directly above your 2-D silhouette viewed from above.
A trucker told me those signs are intended to warn drivers tempted to pass on the right at intersections. Often there will be a right turn lane but the truck needs to turn from the straight lane in order to fit into the intersection. If cars attempt to pass in the right turn lane they will get smooshed. Even with turn signals and the sign you still need to be careful of people.
Man, you really need that seminar!
And bus's are among the first that will benefit. Speed is less relevant, the routes are pre-planned, the state can install special radio signs for dangerous areas, and most importantly, the government that chooses to do this can pass legislation to deal with any legal or insurance matters as part of the authorization. About the only better use is garbage trucks (they can get rid of the driver but keep the other garbage men, so they have a back up in an emergency driving situation.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In my area, there is already only 1 person per garbage truck -- the driver, who also manipulates the grabber arm. I'm sure that arm can be automated.
Mail trucks shouldn't be too far behind, which would sure help with the post office's budget issues. We will have a few million newly unemployed/unemployable people to think about though when this all pans out.