McFilter

The M25 variable speed limits might actually work

For ages I've wondered whether my attempts to smooth out traffic flow in jams actually improve matters at all. I do it as much because I'd rather maintain a constant speed as an attempt to reduce the jam, but I always thought it'd be a nice little project to write some simulation to show people that although the maximum speed would be lower, trying to keep to an average speed would have a much higher minimum speed (i.e. not stopped :-) and we'd all get there a lot quicker.

From Critical Section today, I found that someone else has already done a load more analysis than I'll ever get round to in SCIENCE HOBBYIST: Traffic Waves, physics for bored commuters. And he reckons that I'm right.

Plus there's a link to this cool traffic simulator which lets you see what happens in different scenarios with different speed limits, and traffic densities, etc.

So leave gaps, and destroy build-ups of traffic with anti-traffic!