Comments on: Three reasons we don’t understand traffic

By: sandra742

sandra742 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:29:50 +0000

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:33:25 +0000

Point 1 doesn’t seem valid. We have a pretty good routing system for a more complicated and larger network–the Internet. There exists “oblivious routing schemes”, which mean that every individual can make their decision about which route to use (using this scheme) without knowing what everyone else is doing, and yet some global congestion parameter can be made quite low (w.h.p.) compared to a globally-optimum solution. Can’t we use these for routing cars?

By: Mike McDooby

Mike McDooby — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:45:24 +0000

“That’s why traffic patterns are the domain of chaos theory; no mathematics could have predicted that.”

Maybe mathematics can’t predict the result, but I can certainly predict the result as it applies to rush hour traffic on the freeways in and around Phoenix, Arizona. Police cars and just about any notable vehicle parked on the side of the road will virtually always cause massive slowing during rush hour. The result of that observation is that police (and the like) should be very strongly discouraged from causing distractions during rush hour. It strikes me as incredibly unlikely that the value of a $200 speeding ticket and any deterrence it might provide is worth the many thousands of hours lost as a result of the disturbance.

By: Lyndell

Lyndell — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:38:11 +0000

That leads into my question of what route selection algorithm is used in the point one, traffic is a network problem. One passenger ask why I didn't take the shorter route? I don't like unprotected left turns, especially in traffic.

By: minute prologue » Blog Archive » Suicidal Man falls off china Bridge !!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:03:56 +0000

[...] EcoStreets » Blog Archive » Three reasons we don't understand traffic [...]

By: Aisha

Aisha — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:06:26 +0000

Ha! I’ll use that photo in the post

By: Three reasons we don’t understand traffic « Gravity and Levity

Three reasons we don’t understand traffic « Gravity and Levity — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:36:44 +0000

[...] give a guest post on the traffic blog http://ecostreets.net. So I did. Please go check it out: http://studentdev.jour.unr.edu/ecostreets/?p=653. The topic is “three reasons we don’t understand [...]

By: gravityandlevity

gravityandlevity — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:34:08 +0000

Of course, I left off the biggest reason we don’t understand traffic. Drivers are human, and humans can be idiots: http://lh3.google.ca/abramsv/R5ACWkKUpeI/AAAAAAAAEOg/i8Au9M_SkZQ/s1600-h/deadlocknajkcomafarialibh3.jpg