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The science of traffic jams
mcadambi - 27 September, 2008 | Traffic | Bangalore | Infrastructure | Roads | Media Reports
Good and informative article from 'The Economist' http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12202559 "Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Michael Gastner, of the Santa Fe Institute, analysed the effects of drivers taking different routes on journeys in Boston, New York and London. Their study, to be published in a forthcoming edition of Physical Review Letters, found that when individual drivers each try to choose the quickest route it can cause delays for others and even increase hold-ups in the entire road network. [...] Modifying the road network could reduce delays. And contrary to popular belief, a simple way to do that might be to close certain roads. This is known as Braess’s paradox, after another mathematician, Dietrich Braess, who found that adding extra capacity to a network can sometimes reduce its overall efficiency."
COMMENTS
picture from LA - 19 lanes bumper to bumper
silkboard - 28 September, 2008 - 14:20
Picture is courtesy transfuture.net. Thought it fits here, 19 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic on a freeway (aka expressway, motorway etc) near LA during Memorial day weekend. I have been in these several times few years ago, over-dependence on private transport in Americal is something that has to be seen to be believed.
[flickr-photo:id=2593195278,size=-]
Pic sourced from csmith @ flickr
Traffic flow modelling
mcadambi - 27 September, 2008 - 09:18
Traffic flow modelling in bengaluru is quite hapazard and not scientific. Wide use of trial and error without using advanced techniques. Thankfully, BTIS is a certain exception.
When Urban Freeway designs fail
asj - 27 September, 2008 - 20:06
Plenty of evidence on how urban freeway designs are useless. I have compiled a list. http://better.pune.googlepages.com/EvidenceBase-MoreRoadsDoNotReduceTra.htm ASJ
This looks like a cut and paste job. It definetly is not LA skyline at the far end. There arent freeways with 19 lanes near LA that I know of. Santa Ana freeway (i5) has 12 lanes in Orange county. San Bernardino freeway (i10) has 12 lanes for some streches near east LA.
The smog part of the picture (hiding the city skyline) did look suspicious to me (looks too dramatic to be true). Got the pic via an email which also had the 19 lane thing. Posted under excitement, will remove if folks object.
How true...
Ravi_D - 28 September, 2008 - 17:39
Fake picture or not, point is taken. I agree that there is no point building traffic infrastructure just to serve private vehicles. Without a good public transport scheme in place, a stand-still is inevitable sooner or later.
Ravi
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