Eliminating Traffic Waves
I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve always found traffic very fascinating because of its complexity. This is a really interesting post on how someone was able to eliminate persistent traffic waves by keeping a large distance in front of him and just consistently driving the average speed. This was able to wipe out the traffic stall for everyone behind him. This is really interesting to me because a lot of times traffic waves develop and slow down traffic because of an accident or something, but remain there long after everything is long gone. Boughter once told me about his theory of preventing traffic by not braking, and this seems along the same lines, but goes a bit further by trying to maintain a constant speed.
The other thing he talks about is that some traffic is just created because people are trying to get across to an exit lane. Because people close up gaps in front of them so that people can’t cut in front, a car who is trying to merge is forced to hold up traffic in both lines in order to get across. By keeping space and allowing people to merge gracefully, traffic is much improved–the people who need to get off the highway can get off and the traffic is lighter for everyone who’s staying on.
