Talking Traffic

Kaid Benfield of the National Resources Defense Council has a posting about the recently passed U.S. energy bill, land use, carbon footprints, and policy. It’s worth a read if you believe (as I do) that the current U.S. transportation policy is fundamentally untenable in the long term. Change will come, whether we want it to or not, and the best way to slide into that change gracefully is to start planning for it now. Better yet, start the changing before it’s a panic attack with all of the monetary impacts those imply.

In the age old days of yore, when there were no satellites floating through space in earth orbit, people were forced to navigate using “maps”. Now that GPS receivers and onboard navigational computers have been linked, companies like Garmin guarantee that you’ll never get lost on your way to a relative’s house again. However, you’re still dependent on those satellites in orbit. If you’ve got crappy sky views, or are driving through a canyon, you’re stuck.

Now Google has launched an application for their mobile maps product that relies on triangulation between cell phone towers to do exactly the same thing. Using signal time of arrival, the mobile device can pinpoint your location to within the bounds of accuracy needed for automobile navigation. I wouldn’t use this software for trying to find one particular spot (i.e., no geocaching) but for following a road map, pretty nice. This application will suffer from some of the same drawbacks as GPS, especially the low-coverage problem (not a lot of cell towers in the deep dark reaches of rural roadways), but it offers a second solution to the navigation problem.

This is not a new idea, but Google is, as usual, one of the first organizations to push it out into common use. There have been proposals to use cell tower triangulation for 911 geolocation, but I don’t know if there has been any progress on that front.

New Traffic Forecast Model in the Works: Bristol University is developing a new traffic forecast model. This is something that is decidedly non-trivial and depends upond good data. To quote from the article:

However, if you are using inductance loops that are close enough together, you can identify the driving patterns of individual vehicles and, with such data from the millions of vehicles on the motorway, you can build up really quite detailed models of driver behaviour.

The fundamental problem isn’t the modelling, or even the application of the model, it’s gathering enough real time data and crunching it within a useful amount of time. The first, gathering the data, is expensive and hardware intensive; the second still has some computing issues to overcome. Go Bristol, I say, because if they can make it work, my job becomes easier.

Conventional Traffic Signal Timing is So Last Century: Professor Helbing at ETH Zurich proposes a new type of compensative signal timing. The proposed system could work wonders, but only if government and drivers would buy in.

Don’t Shoot and Drive: Man is caught shooting out video detection cameras.

Topics: Americans with Disabilities Act: Accessible Road Design.

 

 Episode 7 - Americans with Disabilities Act [11:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Navigation Devices causing Havoc: An English village is complaining that since satellite navigation devices have started identifying their main street as the “quickest route”, the traffic has been a nightmare. It’s time to do some strategic networking with the various navigation companies.

Welsch Speed Bumps: I won’t even attempt to pronouce this word. Twmpath (/tʊmpaθ/).

Why is Israeli Traffic Different? Tali Aben answers that question on her blog.

Bicyles as Second Class Citizens: Bill Bean of Take the Lane points me to the website of Bob Shanteau, who is asking why there is such an engineering bias against bicycles in this country. He rightly complains that there is little data, and less reliable research that treats on how to effectively manage a bicycle/vehicle roadway project. I talked about the historically anti-pedestrian bias in road design in my last podcast, but I think we need to talk about bicycles soon.

I’ve been advocating for years that we cut rumble strips into our roadways that play songs! It would be simple to space out the grooves in order to generate simple melodies.

The Japanese have beat me to it.

I still dream of hearing the Muppet Show Theme as I drive down the interstate. Someday…

There was a news article yesterday about wire theft causing a signal outage in Washington state.

This comes on top of continuing news that copper piping is being stolen from construction sites (both before and after installation).

Like petty theft, muggings, and liquor store robberies, I wonder if the benefit-cost ratio of these activities is greater than 1.0 (for the thieves)?

I’m testing a new blog posting software called BlogDesk. It is intended for people who wish to post to multiple blogs simultaneously.

It seems to be working.

Crossposted to Evil Eyebrow and Talking Traffic

Last week I posted about a 2 hour shut down of I-75 to try and apprehend a bank robber.

There is an update in the case. The guy turned himself in.

The only given reason why the I-75 roadblock might have failed was a mention of the GPS device. “”He either defeated it, or it failed,” said the Cobb County police spokesperson.

Topics: Pedestrian Facilities: the give and take between pedestrian and vehicular design.

 

 Episode 6 - Pedestrian Facilities [9:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download