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Greetings, all --
You may recall that this is a favorite subject of mine. This simulation may be of interest. This is via WIRED's blog Autopia.
- Claiborne Booker -
Autopia
Master of Your Commute By Mark Durham Have you ever wished you could tweak the CO2-spewing crawl of your commute to get it flowing like Han Solo? Or automagically bring the truck-to-car ratio on Interstate 80 down to a Lamborghini-friendly level? If so, Martin Treiber is your new fairy godmother. Treiber, of the Dresden University Institute for Economics and Traffic, has created a Java-based road traffic microsimulator that lets you toy with traffic models to your heart's content. Choose from such scenarios as Ringstrasse (ring road), Zufahrt (onramp), Spursperrung (lane closing), and Deterministisches Chaos (which sounds suspiciously like drivetime on California's Highway 280). Then nudge the slider up to, say, 4,000 vehicles per hour, kick the Zufluss der Zufahrt (that's "ramp inflow" to you) up to 1,800 v/h, and see what ensues. Look and feel familiar? We feel your pain. Of course, all this virtual Schadenfreude has a serious purpose: to help traffic planners test the effects of speed limits, traffic lights, new rules, and new infrastructure on congestion without actually putting them into place. It can also help model the effects of adaptive cruise-control systems: "If an increasing precentage of vehicles has such systems, does traffic become more stable? Can the traffic flow per lane be increased?" Enquiring minds want to know. Optimistically enough, new longitudinal and lane-change variations use the Intelligent-Driver Model (IDM) to simulate "the longitudinal dynamics, i.e., accelerations and braking decelerations of the drivers." Lane changes take place, notes Trieber, if: the potential new target lane is more attractive, i.e., the "incentive criterion" is satisfied, and the change can be performed safely, i.e., the "safety criterion" is satisfied. If only.
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