Traffic jams – you can grumble, you can curse, you can shake your fist, but at the end of the day, most people accept they’re a fact of life that can’t be changed.
Brandon Watt is not most people.
“I just wrote a simple computer program. That’s what I do. I’m a computer programmer,” he said. ”It was really rudimentary, but it was mostly just showing that if cars stop more often than they accelerate, it would basically just cause traffic jams.”
Watt, 30, gets on E.C. Row at Lauzon Road and drives to work in the west end most mornings. Ever since construction started at Howard Avenue, it often takes 20 minutes to travel the six kilometres between the exits during the morning rush hour, he said.
Watt said he watched drivers butting in aggressively and even deliberately blocking the right hand lane to prevent cars from pulling in front of them. He knew there had to be a better way, so he created a computer simulation.
The simulation shows there’s a simple way to make heavy traffic flow smoother and faster, he said. If people would try to drive at a steady speed and leave enough space between the car ahead to let other vehicles merge in, everyone would get where they’re going faster.
“Everybody’s jockeying for position. If everyone would stop trying to do that, perhaps it would alleviate it,” Watt said.
John Tofflemire, a former City of Windsor traffic engineer, said that’s a fine idea – but good luck getting people to actually do it.
“That is the best way to maximize the roadway capacity. It’s a phenomenon that’s been recognized and understood at a technical level for a long time. The problem is how you implement it,” he said. ”The big bugaboo in traffic engineering is driver behaviour.”
Tofflemire said leaving lots of space between vehicles has safety and environmental benefits as well as making traffic go faster. But asking why people immediately accelerate to close up gaps in traffic rather than travelling at a steady speed with lots of space is like asking why people speed, run red lights or cut each other off.
Some engineers have tried designing highway on-ramps that meter traffic, only letting vehicles on at optimal times for traffic flow, Tofflemire said. People don’t like waiting, though, even when it actually helps them get where they’re going faster – so the idea never really took off.
Technology is in the works that would automatically adjust the position of vehicles on the highway in relation to each other to maximize efficiency, Tofflemire said. For that to work, however, every vehicle on the road would have to be equipped with the same computer system.
“It’s a ways out there, but it has to do with this very same idea,” Tofflemire said.
Watt was more optimistic. He said he hopes if the word gets out, people will work together for the greater good.
“It’s worth a shot,” he said. ”Everybody who’s stuck in traffic jams, try leaving some space.”
And failing that, the construction at the Howard Avenue exit is set to wrap up by Oct. 19.