Traffic Experiments -- How to clear traffic jams

In northern America, I think most of the cars have automatic transmission. In France, (where I live), we mostly (maybe 99% ?) have manual transmissions. Have you ever experimented a traffic jam with a manual trans. car ? You have to switch gears every 10 seconds and it's very very very annoying.<p>I'm telling you that, because as a frequent driver (well, today I drive a bike but still) in Paris, and kind of very observant, I clearly see that most people are not doing what these drivers do in this experiment. Most of the time, everybody will let a huge space between the car behind them in order to avoid changing the gears too frequently.<p>On the contrary, on automatic cars (I had one and drove another for 6 months in Canada), that's easier to go &#38; stop &#38; go &#38; stop &#38; go &#38; stop, etc...<p>Not sure if it's related, but I think it is, in a small proportion.<p>edit: my english

Where I live there's something called 'block driving' (I haven't found a better translation for the Dutch word 'blokrijden'). On busy summer days, when the highway to the coast is jammed, a police car will block the highway, then drive at a constant speed (and slower than the maximum speed), with no one being allowed to pass the police car. Apparently this helps to resolve the traffic waves.

An oldie, but a goodie.<p>I base my commuting style on this guys articles. Drive <i>slightly</i> slower than everyone else and let large spaces grow in front of your car. It's a <i>lot</i> harder than it sounds (for me anyway) but when I get it right, it makes my drive much more enjoyable.<p>People that just HAVE to drive as fast as possible will go around you (you should never do this in the left lane) and everyone else will sort of get in line after you... it looks a bit like those nascar groups where all the cars go exactly the same speed.

I used to do this every once in a while. One thing to be aware of, are large trucks behind you at the top of hills. They tend to want to increase speed going down hills to use their velocity to climb the next. It's probably a good idea to accommodate this.

Interesting observation is that what TFA calls the "cheaters", ie those who drive to the end of their lane before merging at the last minute, may actually be doing the right thing. See Tom Vanderbilt talk about it here <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/6779064" rel="nofollow">http://www.vimeo.com/6779064</a>.<p>If you're interested in this there's a nice longer interview with Tom at Streetfilms <a href="http://www.streetfilms.org/tom-vanderbilt-talks-traffic" rel="nofollow">http://www.streetfilms.org/tom-vanderbilt-talks-traffic</a> or an hour long Google talk.

I had the good fortune to do a three month internship in Seattle last spring. And I have to say - after growing up in Dallas, now living in Florida, and seeing traffic in other places... Seattle drivers are unique.<p>I've seen this [appear to] work in Seattle. While I was there, I tried it, and it appeared to work.<p>However, while I lived in Dallas, I was aware of this idea, and tried it there - and no way. People cut in, people tailgated - it completely doesn't work.<p>So I think it partially depends on the nature of the city's drivers. And there is something special about Seattle.

The solution to traffic jams is to not leave transportation in the hands of clueless, distracted, reckless drivers. The solution is fast, reliable, ubiquitous public transit.

I've tried this in Boston. Mass-holes will not stand for you to screw with their traffic jams.

Heh, I didn't realise that it had such an effect, but this is the exact same game I play when caught up in a heavy traffic: the how-long-can-I-go-before-breaking game! ;-)<p>It could be related to driving a manual and being lazy, but it helps your concentration no end :)

I've actually spent quite a bit of time pondering this. Here are my completely unscientific conclusions.<p>Imagine a [moving] wall, on an interstate, moving at 30MPH. No matter what is happening behind this wall, it is impossible to maintain an average speed faster than the wall. You can try any amount of tricks to smooth out traffic, but it will be impossible to ever move past this wall. As long as there is a steady stream of traffic, no car will ever do more than 30MPH until this moving wall gets out of the way.<p>So now let's, more realistically, replace the wall with a bunch of slow drives, and ask 2 important questions:<p>1. How to get out of this situation? -- We want these drivers to all SPEED UP! It's really as simple as this. Until these bottleneck drivers move out of the way, you can only smooth out traffic, but never increase the speed.<p>2. How to avoid this problem in the first place? -- In general, there will be some bottleneck. After too many cars are going through this bottleneck at once, there will be slowdown. Ideally, these bottlenecks should be identified and no more than the maximum amount of cars at a time should enter the bottleneck to decrease the speed of traffic.<p>Of course, that's easier said than done, but I think the important thing to take away from my ramblings is this:<p>The best way to get rid of a traffic jam is: if you are in the front of the pack and have a chance to accelerate, you should do so as quickly as possible. If everybody were to do this, average speed could then be increased.

Yes, absolutely. This is my experience as well. Related: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785498" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785498</a>

Somewhat different from the commuter-oriented topic of the article, I've seen attempts by truckers to enforce a similar pattern in construction zones (traffic reduced by one or more lanes) on long stretches of highway: In a situation where one lane has to merge because it is closed in the distance, the "nice" drivers all merge far ahead of time, while the aggressive drivers attempt to go all the way to the end of the lane and then merge ahead of everyone, causing the kind of grinding gears described in the article. To combat this, a couple of big rigs driven in parallel in the open lane and the lane that is closed ahead block all traffic from passing. This prevents the aggressive drivers from attempting to merge at the last second, smoothing out the wave. I've seen this happen several times on cross-country trips; I wonder if the truckers coordinate over radio or just choose to do it independently.<p>On a related note, I wonder if "lane closed ahead" signs placed too far ahead actually make this problem worse, since many drivers will immediately merge out of the closing lane far ahead of time, causing a wall of traffic if the front of the line has to slow down for aggressive last-second merges.

I remember reading this article while back: "Traffic jam mystery solved by mathematicians". <a href="http://www.physorg.com/news117283969.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.physorg.com/news117283969.html</a><p>So now when I'm in a jam, I just slow down instead of engaging the speedup, break pattern. Haven't looked behind me though to see if I had any effect on the traffic behind me.

In Melbourne, Australia, a similar concept was used to ease congestion entering freeways. We had a peak-hour problem where cars would flood the entry ramps, but struggle to merge with the existing freeway traffic - this caused people to brake/slow down which resulted in major jams.<p>To alleviate this issue "there are traffic lights at some freeway entrances to control the flow of vehicles onto the freeway when the traffic is heavy. When operating, the lights will change quickly, so that when the light is green only one vehicle in each lane will be able to enter the freeway." (taken from VicRoads website)<p>The lights basically cycle from red to green every 2 seconds. That's enough to regulate the flow onto the freeway and minmises jams on the entry ramp and at the merge point between the freeway and entry ramp.

The problem with slowing down miles in front of a traffic jam is that those who normally gets of before that space now has to suffer too.<p>In addition, most people would cut you of if you drove slower than the maximum speed.

So, what would happen on major interstates if highway patrols kept a steady pace? Is that a viable solution? Wouldn't they eventually run up on another wave of cars and ruin everything?<p>I would be really interesting to see if this actually improved interstate bandwidth during rush hours. But even more interesting, I bet a good portion of drivers would get upset at the fact that there are huge, unused gaps. I wouldn't be surprised to hear from people who think it is grossly more inefficient than regular old traffic jams...

The success of this technique can't be accurately measured by the driver who's trying "smooth" out the waves. It needs to be witnessed from outside of traffic. It usually just moves the problem to behind the "helpful" driver as other drivers can very easily continue to drive competitively and recreate the effect. Even if he's successful in removing the "wave", it's just by decreasing the average speed of traffic.<p>Please don't try this in the left lane.

As a side note, I remember reading articles on this author's webpage almost 15 years ago. Some awesome stuff from a long-time netzen!<p><a href="http://amasci.com" rel="nofollow">http://amasci.com</a>

A side effect of doing this is that it is much more fuel efficient to not have to go into a cycle of breaking and accelerating again.

Maybe the author never heard anything about green waves. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_wave</a>

Thats what those changable speed limit signs on the motorway are trying to achieve.<p>(I've also seen markings to keep cars 10 metres apart on some roads).

Old.