[FRIAM] Controlling emergent properties of traffic

[James Steiner]

I read this paper years ago, and I have tried this on every occasion
possible--it seems to work. At the very least, it gives me something
interesting to do while stuck in traffic. At the middling, I can often
remove most of the stop-start traffic-waves I hit, leaving a line of
traffic behind me that may slow and speed up, but never actually
stops. At the very best, one or more other drivers near me start doing
it too, and together we can completely dissolve traffic-panic standing
waves and pulsed traffic waves--at least between our current location
and the next merge ramp behind us.

~~James

On 11/26/06, Ross Goeres <rawscores at yahoo.com> wrote:
> When I lived in Maryland I found that my commute times when I was relaxed were
> the same or shorter than when I was in a hurry (and it's better for the
> nerves).  Others who repeated this "experiment" reported similar results.
> Given that FRIAM sometimes discusses the mathematics of cooperation, you may
> find this story interesting:
>
> TRAFFIC "EXPERIMENTS" AND A CURE FOR WAVES & JAMS
> http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html


~~James
http://www.turtlezero.com
(JA-86)