INRIX, a company that provides real time traffic information to mobile phones, gps, maping services etc…, has released a report of the worst traffic in the US. Los Angeles, New York and Chicago are the top three most congested metro areas. They also make up 23 of the top 25 worst bottlenecks.

Not surprisingly for the most part the larger the metro area the worse the traffic. My own metro area, San Antonio, is 28th in size and 26th in worst traffic. Though, there are a few that don’t. Austin is 37th in population but is listed as 21st on the worst traffic list. Looks like opportunities for traffic engineers.

Check out the list and other reports at http://scorecard.inrix.com/scorecard/

It’s always important to tryout new technology. But keep in mind the benefits of old technology. And never underestimate the ability of someone to not do the right thing. Here’s an article about how LED signals at a signalized intersection may have been a contributing factor in a collision.

Did Oswego driver die due to LED signals?

What happened is that the city replaced the old style bulbs in the traffic signals with LEDs. On a snowy day in April the signal was completely covered in snow. Traffic on the main street continued to go because they couldn’t see that the light turned red. Traffic on the side road went when their light turned green. They were hit by the main street traffic.

According to the article, since regular bulbs get hot they melt the snow. LEDs don’t get very warm so the snow didn’t melt. Because of situations like this, us engineers will be asked to develop solutions so that it doesn’t happen again.

I, like most of you probably did, learned that if a traffic signal is out, then you should treat it like a four way stop. Whether you believe the accident is the fault of the city for not making the signal clear or the fault of the driver for driving through without being able to see a green light, this is one example of why we design the way we do.

What do you think? Whose fault is it? What could we, as engineers, do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

Traffic jams are certainly not limited to Big City, USA.  Traffic problems are pretty much a given anywhere that lots of people live.  No matter where you live traffic engineers are constantly looking for ways to solve the problems.  Private companies are looking for ways profit by helping people through the traffic.  When you combine those efforts some interesting solutions emerge.

For example, South Africa has gridlock that can rival any American city.  To give you an idea; Johannesburg, a major city in South Africa has a population of nearly 4,000,000 people, the metro area is 10,000,000.  Pretoria, the country’s capitol, is only forty miles away and has a population of almost 2,500,000 people.

Recently engineers and private corporations have come together to develop a work around for those willing to pay a little bit.  Three companies: Cellfind, a cell phone locating company; Trafficnet, an online traffic update service; and Tracker, a vehicle locating service similar to LoJack here in the States, have developed miTraffic.  For 12 South African Rand per week, about $1.50, you can get live traffic updates.

Basically, they use the locating technology that Tracker already has in about 100,000 vehicles to determine the road they are on and the speed they are going.  Then send your cell phone the average speed on each road.  You can read an article on it called Say Goodbye to Gridlock.  Here are the links to the companies involved to read more. miTraffic Cellfind Trafficnet Tracker

Now for my two cents.

The Cons
This is certainly a bandage not a solution.
There will need to be at least one vehicle on the road that you’re interested in to get any data.
Could you save $6.00 a month by driving around traffic?
How fast exactly is it updated?

The Pros
This is a cheap possibly effective response to the problem.
The number of vehicles with tracking devices will probably consistently increase.
$6.00 a month is pretty cheap compared to the time you could save sitting in traffic.

I think the idea is a good one.  It’s a very inexpensive possible solution to the problem.  As engineers we not only need to find the best solution to a problem, we need to find a solution that is practical and cost effective.  Tearing up all of the streets and replacing them with the perfect design may be a great idea, but nobody is going to be willing to pay for that.  And nobody will want to put up with that much road construction.

We have similar technology here in the states.  However, it’s been my experience that it takes so long to update that it has never actually helped me at all.

Anybody here ever tested this system?  Know of any other systems that work well?  What about theories on things that might solve theses kinds of problems?