
Cities to Untangle Traffic Snarls, with Help from Alphabet Unit - ph0rque
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/technology/cities-to-untangle-traffic-snarls-with-help-from-alphabet-unit.html
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robbiemitchell
First time I've seen a headline mention Alphabet, and it feels forced -- like
either Alphabet PR demanded it in exchange for the exclusive, or NYT editors
felt they couldn't get through the lede without referencing the connection to
Google.

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swehner
Sounds like total nonsense.

More capacity ⇛ more traffic.

Example reference, if one is even needed
[http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/11/californias-dot-
admit...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/11/californias-dot-admits-that-
more-roads-mean-more-traffic/415245/)

Not hearing that that is part of the thought process here.

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_greim_
Spot on. The constant in the equation isn't the number of cars on the road,
but the tolerance people have for time spent in traffic.

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swehner
Hey that's a good way to put it!

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shizcakes
If effectively used, this seems like a _fantastic_ use for this data. I think
everyone's sat at a light and gone "damn, why don't they do X to make this
more efficient?". The reason why might just be that they don't know about that
particular problem :-)

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phkahler
>> I think everyone's sat at a light and gone "damn, why don't they do X to
make this more efficient?"

After doing that countless times, I'm convinced that our roadways are laid out
all wrong. The average speed on the EPA city drive cycle is just shy of 20mph.
The reason for that is in large part due to stopping or waiting.

Think about this, to be efficient you probably want easy access to the routes
you're going to be using soon. The most obvious road you'd want is the one in
front of you, followed by branches to the left or right. The LAST direction
you're going to want to go is back the way you came from, and yet we place
traffic in that direction right next to us. Now if you want to make a left
turn (right in the UK) you have to stop and wait to cross that traffic. Yes,
this is an argument for one-way streets.

I've been pondering ways to cover large areas with one-way streets that are
still efficient. If you can design things with no conventional intersections
(or roundabouts) but with lots of branching and merging type things I think it
can be a win. Even if your route is 10-20 percent longer, if you can drive
more than twice as fast on average it's going to be a win. And with higher
average speeds you'll spend less time on the road, and that means fewer cars
on the road at any given time and a reduction in the number of lanes needed to
support traffic.

Unfortunately we'd really need to design a city from scratch to get the best
efficiency. And there would need to be rules enforced - like not putting
shopping centers right at the intersections - that may be unpopular.

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bryanlarsen
That would totally suck for pedestrians and cyclists. Optimizing for cars and
not for pedestrians and cyclists is what gave us the awful suburbs of America.
No thanks.

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phkahler
>> That would totally suck for pedestrians and cyclists. Optimizing for cars
and not for pedestrians and cyclists is what gave us the awful suburbs of
America. No thanks.

One thing I keep coming back to is a separation of pedestrian and vehicle
traffic. The idea of having sidewalks right next to the roads is just as
stupid as having opposite direction traffic side by side.

Imagine a long high density urban area with pedestrian areas down the middle,
and roadways around the outside. This is speculative of course, but the idea
is to start with high level concepts like: keep the people away from the cars,
make sure traffic doesn't cross, use only high density construction (because
it makes public transit work). You get lots of conflicts, but I think we could
do a lot better than what exists today.

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Thlom
Some cities in the Netherland does it like this. There's high speed ring roads
around the city, but in the city it's a maze of one way streets and dead ends.
Basically, if you are in the city and want to drive to another part of the
city you have to drive out on to the ring road and in again from another
angle. Pedestrians, bicyclists and public transport can move freely inside the
city.

This discourages driving within city limits, and encourages bicycling, walking
and public transport.

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r_sreeram
Related: Strava (a popular mobile app used by fitness enthusiasts, especially
bicyclists) also tries to do something similar with their Metro program:
[http://metro.strava.com/](http://metro.strava.com/)

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jseliger
That's a very cool system. I suspect that Vanhawks
([http://www.vanhawks.com](http://www.vanhawks.com)) will attempt to do
something similar, though they're starting with a smaller data set and just
started shipping bikes a couple months ago.

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solotronics
This is really coincidental.. last night I was sitting at a traffic light
looking at my phone and started thinking that google maps data about car
traffic would be really good to use to fine tune traffic lights.

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azinman2
I predict in about 15 years drones will cover the cities for various purposes
including real time traffic and accident monitoring -- smart phone data is
helpful but drones get you deeper.

