MyWHaT

Still playing in traffic this morning…

anyone want to play traffic engineer?

The Institute for Transport & Economics has put together an online microsimulator for road traffic that can really suck up some free-time if you’re not careful…

The 3 screen grabs at right are the effects of closing a lane and the congestion impact that occurs behind it.

The variables to play with:

• vehicles in an hour
• percent of truck traffic
• speed limits (must convert to MPH)

Then, simply adjust the speed of the simulation, and hit start. For the simulation shown in the screen grabs at right, lower speeds helped reduce congestion. Obviously, the number of vehicles also have a major impact.

If you’re really into it, use real Traverse City’s traffic counts.

The simulator let’s you explore the impacts on a ring road, traffic lights, lane changes, uphill grades and on-ramp traffic.

Mainly for highway use, but fun to explore nonetheless.

Put on your engineer’s hat for a few minutes and explore. If you discover anything interesting, let us know with a comment.

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Phantom Traffic Jams via CBS news, set to El Cielo by Radio Citizen

Phantom Traffic Jams are those congested times on the road with no apparent cause… other than some idgit at the front slowing down to read the last text message that came in.

Basic reason: inconsistent speeds

Sometimes behavioral, sometimes caused by the design, but each time a there is a slow down, there is an inevitable lag in time it takes for cars to speed back up–speeding up takes longer.  This causes a ripple effect behind the slowdown.

Many factors create the context: speeds, traffic density, number of lanes, awareness of drivers…fun mathematical stuff.

Do you see this on any Traverse City streets? Division? 8th?

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