Problem of the day: A bridge connecting mainland China with Hong Kong must solve for the fact that in Hong Kong, people drive on the left. In China, people drive on the right. This picture is a proposed bridge/solution. Pretty, too.

Via GeekPress

Via Infrastucturist a nice Monday video about the destruction caused to roads by cars and trucks being driven over them. Interestingly, no mention of frost heaves.

Thanks, Dave.

I’ve written before about “Fake Traffic” and a developed theory called “The Wave Theory of Traffic” and I’m happy once again to write that scientists have used math and science to prove that ‘Phantom’ Traffic Jams exist and they’re working to mitigate them.

The MIT team found speed, traffic density and other factors can determine conditions that will lead to a jamiton and how quickly it will spread. Once the jam forms, the researchers say, drivers have no choice but to wait for it to clear. The new model could lead to roads designed with sufficient capacity to keep traffic density below the point at which a jamiton can form.

Via Boing Boing.

While driving in the US is down a little bit, traffic and congestion is down a lot.

[T]raffic congestion is subject to a tipping point–what economists call non-linearities. Add an additional car to a crowded road at rush hour, and traffic slows down a bit, and then the “carrying capacity” of the road declines. Traffic engineers estimate that most roads carry their maximum throughput — number of vehicles per hour at about 40 miles per hour — so as traffic slows below that speed, the road actually loses capacity and goes slower and slower, producing a traffic jam.

When we were touring we were incessantly sitting in traffic, usually at 6 PM when we were late for load in or at 3 AM when we were driving at night to avoid traffic. The guys up front staring blankly out the windshield at the cars and trucks snaking in the distance, the crushing reality of the digital clock cutting short soundcheck and possibly dinner. The guys in the back were only mildly aware that we weren’t moving, knowing that while we should be somewhere by now, we weren’t, and it only really mattered if we missed dinner, anyway.

Once in a while, there would be a pileup or emergency vehicles or construction. But more frequently, we’d be sitting in brutal, mind numbing traffic, and all of a sudden, it would clear up and we’d be moving again. We called this phenomenon “Fake Traffic” and eventually worked out a complicated and detailed Wave Theory of Traffic. And now, via Matthew Yglesias, CEOs for Cities have gotten to the bottom of this theory for us. Thank you CEOs for Cities!