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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.
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?
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).
"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...
until you can figure out how to fix india's drivers
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
I couldn't even point to it on a map. But as an American, I know everything about it anyway.
--
AK Marc
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
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