Supercomputers Used to Study Urban Traffic

itachi writes "This is a great article in the [Washington] Post about using supercomputers at Los Alamos and physics modeling to study traffic jams. The basic notion is that light traffic is a fluid state, with cars instead of particles, and traffic jams are sort of equivalent to a change of state to a solid. There is even talk of trying to simulate traffic along the east coast from DC to Boston, using a computer along the lines of Blue Mountain. "

Comments

Mathematics of traffic flow: URLs and demos

[Tackhead]

In addition to the article on Traffic Waves that someone posted up here a few moments ago, here's another one from the same author on another site, discussing practical applications: Curing lane-marge traffic jams.

To give you an idea of the scale of the modelling problem itself, there are commercial companies selling software in the $500-1500 range (and up, no doubt) for analyzing these problems. Here's an example: http://www.trafficware.com. In addition to demos (sadly, only for Windoze) it also contains many links and information on the mathematics behind traffic modelling.

All I can say is that I modified my driving habits after reading these sites, not out of any altruistic desire to improve traffic flow, but because it was fascinating to experiment with the theory that even a single car in a large traffic jam can act as an "antiparticle" and singlehandedly improve flow in two or three lanes. The improvement in traffic flow behind me (and my reduced blood pressure as a driver) was just a happy side effect.