Hello Kelcie. I found your presentation and particularly your data very interesting. I would like to offer another perspective on traffic flow. While the recommendation to keep one car length between you and the car ahead of you is valid, it is never followed. Why, because if you leave much more than two car lengths, in moderate to heavy traffic another car will always cut in front of you and the drivers behind you will get mad. Therefore drivers leave only enough space between them and the car ahead to prevent cars in the adjacent lane from cutting in regardless of their speed. I have personally done this while driving 80 mph and so were all the other drivers around me. The problem with this is that if there is something that causes traffic to slow down, traffic density is already at maximum so the flow must decrease. A reduced flow at maximum density necessarily means the speed must be reduced even more. And that reduced speed reduces the speed even further. This is why sometimes with smooth flowing traffic, it suddenly comes to a stop for no apparent reason.
Hello Kelcie. I found your presentation and particularly your data very interesting. I would like to offer another perspective on traffic flow. While the recommendation to keep one car length between you and the car ahead of you is valid, it is never followed. Why, because if you leave much more than two car lengths, in moderate to heavy traffic another car will always cut in front of you and the drivers behind you will get mad.
Therefore drivers leave only enough space between them and the car ahead to prevent cars in the adjacent lane from cutting in regardless of their speed. I have personally done this while driving 80 mph and so were all the other drivers around me.
The problem with this is that if there is something that causes traffic to slow down, traffic density is already at maximum so the flow must decrease. A reduced flow at maximum density necessarily means the speed must be reduced even more. And that reduced speed reduces the speed even further. This is why sometimes with smooth flowing traffic, it suddenly comes to a stop for no apparent reason.
From a maximizing throughput perspective, wouldn’t pricing all of the lanes be more effective?
YES! Politically tricky, but definitely more effective.
thanks for the reply. Yes, politically, even a single lane is admittedly a big hurdle.