26 ms·

How we can reduce traffic congestion

• wetpaws 3mo ago
  [dead]
• gruez 3mo ago
  >During “treatment” days, the modified routing guided all trips that encountered the pre-selected congested segments toward alternative routes with similar travel times. Why would they specifically need to route people away from congested segments? Presumably if a segment gets congested enough, it'd be considered slower and therefore won't get picked in the first place?
  • ezfe 3mo ago
    Because those roads are still maybe 30 seconds or 60 seconds faster on paper and critically they're the major roads with minimal intersections, which all apps prefer.
  • glalonde 3mo ago
    Probably many reasons but here’s one demo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox Every actor acting rationally in their own interest can get to a worse equilibrium than if they were coordinated(in this case, to completely ignore the new edge). There are many other examples of this in game theory, you should look it up.
  • efavdb 3mo ago
    Another question: they say road speeds increased, great. But that’s a different metric than average drive time. Curious if that also decreased.
• dtgriscom 3mo ago
  Traffic apps only know about congestion if someone running the app goes down the congested road. Because of this, I've always suspected that the apps, from time to time, will route someone down a route they haven't gathered data on in a while, just to collect the data, and even if the route is likely to be suboptimal.
  • gruez 3mo ago
    >I've always suspected that the apps, from time to time, will route someone down a route they haven't gathered data on in a while, just to collect the data, and even if the route is likely to be suboptimal. I can't say this actually happened for me. For straightforward routes with no congestion I never saw random alternate routes being proposed. That makes sense, given that it'd probably tip people off. If this is happening, they must only be doing in cases where there's congestion and the difference is marginal, eg. it's rush hour and the "optimal" route takes 30 minutes but the alternate takes 33 minutes. Moreover you don't really need any deliberate effort to see this effect. If nobody is traveling on a side road, the algorithm will probably revert to historical patterns, which might turn out to be overly optimistic in congestion scenarios (eg. there's nearby road repairs and other people are already using it as an alternate), thereby giving you the impression that you got screwed over by the app.
  • teeray 3mo ago
    I wonder this same thing when I’ve been routed completely asinine ways off interstates at night when traffic appears calm. I always have to play the game of “is there horrendous traffic ahead from night paving / accident, or am I being conscripted as a traffic sensor robot?”
    • mschuster91 3mo ago
      Government data sources can input real time data into Google Maps [1]. So, it's more likely than not that local police or state DoT is behind that. [1] https://contentpartners.maps.google.com/ https://contentpartners.maps.google.com/
    • deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
  • tadfisher 3mo ago
    Doesn't have to be true. My state has public camera feeds for various highway stretches. Too low-detail to identify vehicles but easily enough to detect congestion.
  • 3mo ago
• jawns 3mo ago
  One of the things this type of intervention doesn't take into account is that different roads are built with different levels of hardiness based on the amount of traffic they are expected to receive. For instance, a few years ago, a segment of I-495 in Delaware needed to be unexpectedly shut down for emergency repairs. Drivers were rerouted. But because of the increase in traffic on the less-hardy detour route, that route needed repairs and repaving soon afterward, much more quickly than it would have ordinarily required. So yes, drivers can be better dispersed to ease congestion, but we also need to consider the secondary effects to the roadways themselves.
  • thomastjeffery 3mo ago
    A random factoid that will always stick in my brain is that the damage a vehicle does to a road is proportional to the weight on an axel...to the fourth power. I suspect rerouting semis to the roadway is by far the greatest factor.
    • dghlsakjg 3mo ago
      Another random fact is that Norman Mailer coined ‘factoid’ to refer to a fabrication presented as fact, but now means the opposite (as in, a fact presented as a fact, not a fact presented as fabrication). So it’s now one of those words like ‘literally’ which can be its own antonym.
      • thakoppno 3mo ago
        One factoid about Norman Mailer: he stabbed his wife.
      • Dylan16807 3mo ago
        My pet peeve is people claiming "literally" is now being used to mean the opposite. It is never used that way. When people use "literally" in the weakened and figurative way, they are not using it to mean "figuratively". They are using it to mean "very much".
• guessmyname 3mo ago
  For over a decade, I imagined that if I ever landed a job at Google, this would be my most significant project. It made me chuckle a bit when I read the announcement, they finally built it! confirming that my thoughts weren’t entirely delusional XD
• ltbarcly3 3mo ago
  Hey I patented this idea about a decade ago: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170184409A1 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170184409A1 (I'm not saying I'm the first or only person to think of it, but I did patent it, as well as the extra claim of compensating those people sent on the slower route).
  • spongebobstoes 3mo ago
    did you build anything tangible with this idea?
    • ltbarcly3 3mo ago
      nope, software patents are stupid
• alfiedotwtf 3mo ago
  The way to maximise traffic congestion would be to remove trucks off the road during peak times, banning trucks from the fast lane at all times, making it the social norm to toot someone in the fast lane so they move over.
  • theoreticalmal 3mo ago
    I have a lot of difficulty thinking those changes alone would solve congestion. I’m especially thinking is ski traffic along I70 from Denver to the mountains. The issue is just volume of passenger vehicles, and there are no other realistic routes
    • alfiedotwtf 3mo ago
      Just drive anywhere with more than usual density in traffic and you’ll find trucks in the fast lane when they stop and start create gaps in the fast lane where no traffic can go. If you took out trucks altogether during peak hours you wouldn’t have these slow bubbles of traffic at the worst times.. Edit: let’s think of this from a pure scientific point of view - if you had 3 lanes and split traffic across them based on a range of speed - that would be the most optimised in terms of throughput for all lanes. Now, consider a reverse Amdahl's Law… what’s the worst thing you could do to make the fastest lane crawl which in effect kills total throughput across ALL lanes? Put a slow truck in it! Put a few, and you’ve just turned the lane giving you the highest throughput to most likely the slowest lane. I just parked my car after another morning of commuting. Thought experiments alone in today’s traffic again confirmed my theory.
      • rchard2scout 3mo ago
        Contrary to this, if you only have two lanes available, and trucks aren't allowed to overtake, you'll eventually end up with a long train of trucks without any gaps, and it'll become impossible to merge onto the highway from an on-ramp.
        • alfiedotwtf 2mo ago
• bob1029 3mo ago
  If we could copy the traffic laws of a country like Germany to the US, I think that would have the biggest + cheapest effect. I am OK with automated/elevated enforcement if it means stop & go traffic evaporates into free flowing conditions. We should also take the idea from Finland where the traffic fines scale with each person's ability to pay. $100 for camping the passing lane or failing to maintain a reasonable following distance is not a big consequence for a lot of people. $100k covers the edges a lot better. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-businessman-hit-with-121000-speeding-fine https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-busine...
  • netsharc 3mo ago
    I wish there was more police presence to spot lane-camping and fine them in Germany, too many idiots do it and get away with it. If I ran Google Maps, I'd ask to route stupid drivers away from my routes. The GPS and phone accelerometer should be able to tell us who they are -- "Oh you have Google Maps actively navigating, GPS says you're going 50mph, and the app in focus is WhatsApp and you're using the phone keyboard? Fuck off! Also we recorded 5 swerve events in the last 10 minutes, hard to stay on your lane when you're texting!" It'd be unethical, but man it'd be magical... There's custom software for Elon's Tesla, I wonder if the cloud-based navigation system also directs people away from his routes so he can have a ride on emptier roads...
    • mqus 3mo ago
      People hate patronizing systems in their cars already, not sure this would help
      • netsharc 3mo ago
        The idea is the system would just judge terrible drivers quietly, and then route them away from my route whenever I'm on the road. Of course the first step of that is I have to gain control of Google Maps... Terrible drivers cause traffic jams and accidents, who wouldn't want to be segregated away from them?
    • 3mo ago
• dzuc 3mo ago
  Interesting, I always just assumed they were already doing this.
• andy12_ 3mo ago
  When Google Maps routes me using a smaller secondary road instead of the main road that I would otherwise have used , I've always wondered whether that significantly changes the amount of traffic that smaller road sees. It's funny to consider that arbitrary black-box changes to the routing algorithm can have a noticeable effect to people that live there.
• stevetron 3mo ago
  Where isn't there traffic congestion?
• wxw 3mo ago
  > For this study, the Google Maps algorithm was modified to prefer alternative routes with similar travel times and segment types, effectively guiding trips away from the pre-selected congested segments > Over a six month period, we adopted a city-wide switchback (also known as crossover) experimental design, alternating between this treatment and the control (unaltered) routing algorithm over consecutive days to appropriately measure the effect of this intervention > Averaged across cities, we observe a median increase of around 2% in driving speeds on targeted segments, corresponding to a median decrease of 0.5% to 1.0% in fuel consumption rates The cities were: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle. The data and code is also available (https://github.com/google-research/google-research/blob/master/congestion_dispersion/analysis.ipynb https://github.com/google-research/google-research/blob/mast...) from the paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-026-00443-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-026-00443-x). Kudos Google! Nice to see this kind of work. That said, let's just build more trains?
  • bravoetch 3mo ago
    I read the article and didn't see anywhere if they collaborated with city planners, or just ran this on their own. I get the techno-optimism of making traffic 'better' and also it may be concerning if trucks are being routed through neighborhoods where planners didn't build for it.
    • whoamii 3mo ago
      Found the European :)
    • deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    • ezfe 3mo ago
      I think that's already very much a problem, and given that they constrained it to routes that didn't have a significantly different drive time the risk seems low.
    • _vertigo 3mo ago
• pedrosuave 3mo ago
  Why cant we have smart stop lights. Nothing more annoying than sitting on a street with nobody coming and a red light for some arbitrary time period that's totally incorrect for the time period I'm currently in
  • tayo42 3mo ago
    They exist. Your city needs to set it up. They can also switch to flashing red lights.
  • cortesoft 3mo ago
    Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/277/ https://xkcd.com/277/ Most cities have some intelligence on their traffic lights, and they do have traffic sensors to know where cars are waiting. You might not see any cars and are annoyed waiting at the light, but you don’t know what downstream things they are trying to control for. Maybe if they send you through the light, you are going to join some other traffic event that will cause an issue. It could also just be suboptimal, but it very hard to know just from what you observe as an individal
    • waterTanuki 3mo ago
      I like XKCD but I don't really agree with the underlying premise of this one. When I was in the Netherlands, one of the global gold standards in terms of urban planning and design, I noticed it wasn't only more pleasant as a pedestrian or cyclist, it was more pleasant as a driver as well. Lights were smart and did not sit on red forever if you were the only one waiting at an intersection. This comic suggests there's some "invisible, massively complicated" mesh of signal interactions we can never possibly fathom, and therefore wasting precious hours over the course of our lives sitting at an intersection is the most optimal one. The Dutch have figured this out, why can't North America?
      • cortesoft 3mo ago
        I don't think the answer is as simple as "The Dutch have better traffic light engineers" There are a ton of factors that go into traffic and traffic patterns. For one thing, I would be curious to see total traffic numbers.
• zip1234 3mo ago
  Congestion can be solved by charging more for driving. Even a modest amount would start affecting how much people drive. The money could be used for better roads and improving other transit options that aren't so space-inefficient. That said, this would likely be unpopular to implement until the effects were visible. See congestion pricing in NYC as an example.
  • gustavus 3mo ago
    Won't that just unfairly displace the impact onto the economically disadvanteged as they are the least likely to have the flexibility in their schedule, inadvertently forcing more of the maintenance burden onto those who are int be least place to bear it?
    • Gigachad 3mo ago
      You wouldn't just charge more for driving. You do it in combination with funding public transport, building safer cycling routes, and removing roadblocks from building cheap housing near PT hubs.
    • ryan_lane 3mo ago
      Take the revenue generated from congestion pricing, and put it into public transportation. Make public transportation free to use. That would be far more impactful to the folks least able to bear an increase in driving fees. In most of the US, people are forced to own cars because they don't have public transit available, or the available public transit is too infrequent, or there aren't dense enough routes. The reason behind this is funding. Additionally, buses are less efficient because they need to sit in the same traffic as everyone else. Reduced traffic makes buses more efficient. Reducing car traffic is a win for basically everyone, and increasing public transit is additionally a win for basically everyone. Car infrastructure is heavily subsidized, and congestion pricing is one way to make car owners pay for part of the cost. Why is it fair for public transit riders to have to pay per ride, when car owners get to use the infrastructure for free?
      • rootusrootus 3mo ago
• pretzellogician 3mo ago
  "Hence, the efficient use of transportation networks is of paramount importance." Perhaps some sort of carpooling profile? That would be a dramatically bigger improvement than, say, routing users through residential neighborhoods.
  • fragmede 3mo ago
    Is this the comment for me to snarkily reinvent trains and trams and buses on?
    • TRiG_Ireland 3mo ago
      All attempts to reimagine transport are train but worse, except for the occasional bike but worse. Every now and then, an especially inventive inventor manages to do both at once. And that's how you get the Shweeb. https://youtube.com/watch?v=7qNOtgrIjO4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=7qNOtgrIjO4
  • cortesoft 3mo ago
    How would Google help with a carpooling profile? They are looking at ways they can improve traffic that are actually in their control. They can change how they route traffic that is using their app, they can’t change public policy or driving choices. They are working with what they have.
    • pretzellogician 3mo ago
      Much as they have features for walk / bike / transit traffic, they could suggest step-by-step carpool instructions: "1. meet with (other Google Map carpool user) X at location Y. 2. In one car, both of you drive to location Z." Obviously, huge challenges here (is person X a serial killer, etc.) But Google can handle moonshots.
      • mordechai9000 3mo ago
        > Obviously, huge challenges here Social credit score? I've seen that Black Mirror episode.
• asdff 3mo ago
  I got an idea: let people work from home again.
• cyberax 3mo ago
  Well, duh. Grid design that allows traffic to diffuse is a secret superpower of American cities. Along with stroads that seamlessly blend local and arterial traffic. One of unforgivable mistakes of Project Zero Vision is sabotage of stroads. If forced more traffic onto local streets, resulting in MORE pedestrian deaths.
  • financetechbro 3mo ago
    Do you have stats to support your statement?
    • cyberax 3mo ago
      Sure. Pedestrian deaths are above the 2015 levels in all the large West Coast cities that went full-on with the Zero Vision project. Numbers are for 2015 and 2025. Seattle: 7/18 Portland: 11/20 LA: 130/150 SF is unchanged at 24 (they had a HUGE drop from 2024, luckily). And no, the following excuses do not apply: COVID - deaths started growing _before_ COVID. Car size increase - cars did not increase significantly during this time. Population increase - ditto.
      • cucumber3732842 3mo ago
        This tracks with what's happened in my non-grid east coast city that adopted the same. Everyone has a path planner in their pocket that they mindlessly follow which takes them right around all the Vision Zero'd (TM) main roads and through everyone's neighborhood. The assholes who sell the big plastic speed bumps they've had to put on the residential streets to slow down all the traffic they diverted onto them are making out like bandits though.
        • cindyllm 3mo ago
          [dead]
      • nhinck2 3mo ago
        Pedestrian deaths are up all across the the US.
• ceroxylon 3mo ago
  Happy that research time is being put towards this, however a fuel use decrease of ~0.75% is a bit underwhelming for this particular endeavor, even when consumer cars/vans are 10% of CO2 emissions.
  • hinkley 3mo ago
    I think it's a mistake to represent average speed increase instead of characterizing the speed increase as as hours of full, moderate, and low speed traffic per day. Because an extra ??minutes a day of avoiding stop and go traffic is worth far more than the average speed increase it tells.
  • Gigachad 3mo ago
    I doubt there would be any improvement. What we have seen is traffic is a constant. If you make make the road network higher capacity or faster, people just move further out or drive to further away stores. People have an amount of time they will tolerate driving for, and adjust everything else around that.
• mips_avatar 3mo ago
  I think we need some law that if you are above a certain scale you have to publish traffic data as a gtfs feed, ie basically apple and google have to.
• ventana 3mo ago
  The same things keeps happening every time I find myself stuck in traffic on the interstate. Out of nowhere, a popup appears in Google Maps: a faster route is available! 4 minutes faster! Unless either the passenger or the driver are fast enough to hit "No thanks", the change auto-applies, and Google now wants me to exit the interstate at the nearest exit and drive some random road I had no idea about, to rejoin the interstate a few miles ahead. Of course, a bunch of other vehicles in the same traffic jam got the same notification, so that minor road now get a sizable fraction of the interstate traffic, all of which then struggles to merge back. Seeing this again and again. We call it a "Google detour" in the family, and rarely agree to the change of the route.
  • ericbarrett 3mo ago
    Same. This is why I switched to Apple Maps. Sometimes the Google detours would end in dangerous situations, like a left turn with no light across a major road. And it would be to save 2 minutes-ridiculous!
    • ezfe 3mo ago
      Apple Maps does this too but the threshold seems to be higher - it's a lot less willing to do it.
    • SoftTalker 3mo ago
      I've had Google try to route me across private property (an apartment complex parking lot) to avoid a signaled intersection and save a couple of minutes.
  • kahnclusions 3mo ago
    Me too. It’s infuriating and unsafe. I don’t drive often, but when I do it’s out of the city where I’m unfamiliar and need a map. So I also stopped using Google Maps for driving. Who at Google seriously believes that it’s good idea to 1) unpredictably change the route someone chose mid-drive, and 2) to distract them while driving with a pop up notification that must be interacted with just to maintain the route. If I choose a route, I chose it for a reason. Don’t change it while I’m driving.
• eucryphia 3mo ago
  [flagged]
• ctkhn 3mo ago
  Surely the top way to avoid traffic congestion would be communities where it's possible to live near where you work, shop, go out, etc. and not doing everything else exactly the same but taking a slightly different highway in your car
  • baggy_trough 3mo ago
    If you don't have a community like that, then the best way is congestion pricing.
    • antiframe 3mo ago
      The best way is to change our communities, even if that takes time and money.
      • denkmoon 3mo ago
        Like everything else community construction responds to incentives. So we need to structurally incentivise short distance commute communities. Congestion pricing seems like a reasonable first step.
      • collabs 3mo ago
        It is difficult for me to admit I'm an idiot but when I was younger and living in an apartment, I loved the idea of a single family home. And now that I'm living in a single family home, I feel like I was wrong all along. Not that I want to go back to the apartment I was in before. Dear lord no but the idea of a mixed use building not too tall only like first floor with high ceilings for business or shops with two or at the most three floors above for residential units feels like the ideal sweet spot. Ideally with a lot of these close together to have everything I need within a walking distance but also a subway station within a walking distance if I need to go farther.
        • SilverElfin 3mo ago
          Do you have kids? I feel like apartment living as a family is worse than a spacious single family home and yard and all that. I suspect that preference holds true for most people.
• CamperBob2 3mo ago
  Great, Google, you want to reduce traffic congestion? Give me the ability to say "Avoid left turns" in your Maps and Waze directions. Until you support a feature that simple and obvious, I don't have a lot of interest in your input on this subject.
  • gib444 3mo ago
    Well, Waze is Google
• nostrademons 3mo ago
  I've noticed that Google Maps has started sucking a lot lately, routing us onto routes that take 2-4 minutes longer when a faster route is clearly available or taking us on nonsensical detours, and I wonder if this experiment is a reason why. There's a hidden cost to this, and that's trust in the mapping app. I've stopped using Google Navigation for routine trips where I know how to get to the destination. It used to be worth it for the traffic information, but now that there's a good chance that it'll take you on a slower route for reasons that may be beneficial to Google but detrimental to you, it's not worth it. My brother-in-law switched to Apple Maps for similar reasons: he's finding it simply gives better results nowadays.
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  • dpacmittal 3mo ago
    I've noticed this too. It has gotten more frequent over last year or so. It will route me to narrow roads which I know for a fact will take me much longer. I had the worst experience about 3 weeks ago, when I kept driving on very narrow and congested roads for almost 3 hours and the destination was showing still an hour away. If I had just taken the normal route, it would've taken me only 2 hours total. But Google thought let's make this guy drive around for 4 hours because fuck him.
  • dr_kretyn 3mo ago
    Same. Though it's been happening for maybe a year? Or, at least since I learned where things actually are. I just can't trust the Google maps anymore! Many times I lost 10+ min because it took me through weird alley and then back to the main.
• SilverElfin 3mo ago
  One way is to stop the war on cars. I see many cities basically making driving purposely bad. Super low speed limits, speed bumps, unnecessary bike lanes, poorly timed traffic lights, no right turn on red, etc. It’s all the typical pro bike anti car stuff but it hurts traffic. They never measure travel times in a transparent way as they make these destructive changes.
  • halostatue 3mo ago
    The only way to stop congestion is to get cars off the road. Cars are the congestion. There is no other definition, and no other solution. HOW you get cars off the road is worthy of debate. Pretending that there's a "war on cars" is not and never has been. Cars and their drivers have been subsidized for more than a century, never paying the full cost of the damage that they do to the environment, the roads, etc. 1. Car taxes / registrations should be based on weight and energy usage inefficiency and ratchet up quickly for personal vehicles that are larger than some sensible size based on pedestrian safety at no more than 30 kph. (Drivers of modern pickup trucks and SUVs cannot see pedestrians shorter than ~1.7m at ~5m, and the fact that their fronts are basically walls mean that those pedestrians are more likely to be killed on impact or bounced under the tires.) 2. There should absolutely be congestion pricing to enter downtown locations during the day or other times when vehicular traffic will be high. Yes, that means that most deliveries by transport truck would need to be staged into smaller vehicles and delivered to the businesses needing them, or delivered overnight. 3. Uber, Lyft, and Waymo are part of the problem and should be treated as such. 4. There should be more investment in public transit. Paid for by increased registrations and congestion pricing, preferentially. Fares should be reduced, ideally to free. More use of public transit makes it safer and incentivizes making it faster. 5. There should absolutely be more bike lanes in pretty much every city. It's called induced demand and once the infrastructure is safe, you will see increased usage by all sorts of alternative mobility users (but mini e-motorcycles should be licensed just like regular motorcycles and should not be using the mobility infrastructure). 6. Pedestrian and wheelchair users matter first and foremost over any other road user (bikes, scooters, cars, etc.). We've had 50+ years of Robert Moses being proved wrong. It's time to design cities around people, not around cars. Call that a war on cars if you want, but it's not: it's a war for peoples' quality of life. Cars can be part of the solution, but they need to be treated like the problem they are first.
• thelastgallon 3mo ago
  100% remote unless absolutely required. Professions like doctors, cooks, massage therapists. This will clear 95% of traffic. Start with mandatory remote for all software jobs.
  • 0xbadcafebee 3mo ago
    It's estimated that only 37% of jobs can be done remotely, while 72%-86% of US workers rely on cars for commuting. The best solution involves creating a multitude of non-car transportation options, to allow workers to choose the most convenient mode of transport, maximizing potential non-car commuting. Bike/ebike, e-scooter, motorcycle/scooter, golf cart, bus, tram, subway, train, ferry.
    • sanex 3mo ago
      I would occasionally go to the office toward the tail end of covid and traffic was essentially non existent. We were well past the big lockdowns and shuttered restaurants at that point but RTO hadn't kicked in. It wouldn't take much to drastically change the traffic landscape.
      • 0xbadcafebee 3mo ago
        Traffic was lower after COVID because of how many people (who couldn't work remote) lost their jobs, an overall economic downturn affecting logistics chains, and people afraid of public transit. Not because everyone was blissfully working from home. It would indeed take a lot to change traffic (without causing significant economic harm)
    • Laurel1234 3mo ago
      37% is a huge amount though. Obviously fixing the problem would require many different solutions to come together, but that's an immense improvement that can be made with a mere law.
      • 0xbadcafebee 3mo ago
• Animats 3mo ago
  Do different people get different routes depending upon "dynamic pricing" type metrics?
• sota_pop 3mo ago
  Nice to hear Google is thinking about this. Was always of the belief that they SHOULD be considering things like scarcity in the various recommendations the apps in their offerings provide. Also reminds me of that guy in Berlin who caused traffic jams on Google Maps by walking around with a wagon filled with phones: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/berlin-artist-uses-99-phones-trick-google-maps-traffic-jam-alert https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/berlin-ar...
• thefoyer 3mo ago
  rm -rf
• MisterMower 3mo ago
  If they can do this with traffic, imagine what they’re doing with YouTube ads…
• qrush 3mo ago
  [dead]
• siren2026 3mo ago
  It's actually shocking they didn't do this before? Load balancing across multiple similar paths seems to be one of the first thing you would add once you hit some scale? I love how they congratulate themselves on that article (Google being Google, they still think they are the smartest people in the room). But I'm waiting to see the second or third unknown order effects.
• rconti 3mo ago
  Seems like you're playing a dangerous game if your navigation app becomes known for optimizing for the collective good rather than individual fastest transit time-- people will trust your app less, and use a different, more "selfish" app.
• schwarzrules 3mo ago
  [dead]
• cozzyd 3mo ago
  cool, now can you stop randomly having my google maps app go dim and dark as I'm biking making it impossible for me to see what I'm supposed to do next?
  • bbkane 3mo ago
    Not an exact solution, but you can set it so it tells you upcoming turns and directions. With that I haven't needed to look at the screen much
• trymas 3mo ago
  How we can reduce traffic congestion? 1. Extensive support of public transport: metro, tram, dedicated bus routes (separate from car traffic), dedicated paths for bicycles. 2. ... maybe whatever is this ... UPDATE: here's a good graph - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport#/media/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_different_Transport_Modes.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport#/media/File:P... , i.e. car traffic is often congested because of inherent low passenger bandwith. If google wants to manage traffic as internet routing - why then stick with outdated low bandwith ethernet cable?
  • ChadNauseam 3mo ago
    We definitely need more metro, trams, bus routes, and bike paths. I especially want the latter because I bike to and from work every day. However, I have to wonder about the cost of these projects. In SF, we recently spent $346 million on the Van Ness Improvement Project, which added 2 miles of bus lanes. I just can't see how that's a good use of funds. If someone gave me $346 million and told me to improve society, I could think of many better options than adding two miles of bus lane. So a prerequisite to the whole idea seems to involve solving whatever is making these projects so expensive.
    • fragmede 3mo ago
      Okay, how would you spend $346 million?
      • ChadNauseam 3mo ago
        If we had to stick to transportation-specific improvements, I would use the money to eliminate bus fare for a year. (muni generates about $100M in fare, so really it would be enough money to eliminate fare for ~3 years.) Unlike subway fare, bus fare doesn't prevent n'er-do-wells from getting on the bus (they just ignore the fare and get on anyway), and it probably increases ridership and gets some people out of their cars, which reduces congestion (public benefit and therefore deserving of government subsidy).
• andrewshadura 3mo ago
  How about not driving cars for every single journey? How about not having to go across the city for every errand? There are solutions to congestion, but they're not technological.
• reenorap 3mo ago
  So basically sending some people on worse routes for the sake of the “greater good”? I long suspected they did this and is not what I want. I don’t want to be forced to a worse outcome for myself just for the sake of the “greater good”. Taken to its logical extreme, lots of evil had been propagated because of the “greater good”.
  • pineapplepizza6 3mo ago
    [dead]
• techterrier 3mo ago
  The problem with cars isn't routing, its geometry. Cars cant be fixed. Build more trains and trams and busses and bike lanes already.
  • Laurel1234 3mo ago
    And enshrine remote working in law, so much of our commuting is utterly unnecessary.
• seu 3mo ago
  So much money spent to avoid the easiest answer: less cars (more public transport, more bicycle lanes, etc.)
• wodenokoto 3mo ago
  Isn't there a problem with rerouting that you push cars into community-roads that aren't supposed to be supporting commuting traffic? Wasn't there some articles a few years ago about communities that filled wheelbarrows with phones connected to Waze and moved them slowly down the road, stop waze from routing cars through residential areas?
• wegwerper 3mo ago
  Presumably not something so simple as walkable cities?
  • ratmeadow 3mo ago
    Uhh but then what am I going to do with my 7 cars?
• ggambetta 3mo ago
  I'm pretty sure I submitted this idea to the internal "file a patent" drive they were doing like 15 years ago. It was rejected. I thought it was either stupid or too obvious and they were already doing it...
• balderdash 3mo ago
  I can already see it - “For only $9.99/mo enjoy access to premium routings that that save an average of 15 minutes per trip!”
• rompic 3mo ago
  Welcome to the party google. At graphmasters we have been doing this with nunav for more than 13 years now.
• PeterStuer 3mo ago
  Next step? Maps Pro subscription 'blue' plan will guide you through the fastest routes, Maps Free users will be routed on the fast 'green' plan, but might ocasionally be diverted to other routes to 'balance' (free up blue routes') traffic under extreme congestion conditions. Yep, the virtual universal fast toll road option.
  • inigyou 3mo ago
    That's actually such a good idea I might have to apply to Y Combinator.
    • PeterStuer 3mo ago
      What is the minimum market share you need to make this work (a) assuming competition stays "neutral" and (b) assuming adversarial actions?
• chriswarbo 3mo ago
  This doesn't seem to account for Jevons paradox: if driving is made faster and more convenient, then more people will drive more; which can lead to an overall increase in CO2 emissions, collisions, etc. I'd imagine there would be a lag between the initial efficiency increase, and the subsequent usage increase; since drivers (current and potential) would have to actually notice the change and adjust for it (consciously or otherwise).
• mwexler 3mo ago
  I'm a fan of Beaty's work from 1998. Nothing I've seen has been as easy to implement: leaving space in front of each car creates smooth motion. https://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html https://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html or easier at https://web.archive.org/web/20260114173129/https://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html https://web.archive.org/web/20260114173129/https://trafficwa... https://web.archive.org/web/20251214172912/http://trafficwaves.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251214172912/http://trafficwav... has some nice visualizations. MIT got more press when they "rediscovered" this in 2017: https://people.csail.mit.edu/bkph/Traffic_Flow_Animation https://people.csail.mit.edu/bkph/Traffic_Flow_Animation I'm a car fan, so I'd rather reward drivers for optimal behaviors vs broad car-reductions. I'll probably turn out to be on the wrong side, but maybe we'll find a good compromise.
  • Tade0 3mo ago
    This is one of those things which would work beautifully if: -Everyone's creep speed was the same. -No one figured it would be more beneficial for them slip into that gap.
    • WarmWash 3mo ago
      The whole idea is to let people slip in the gap. It's the very lack of gaps that causes the whole jam in the first place.
      • Tade0 3mo ago
        I think something was missed in translation here. In my region of the world if someone creeps and leaves a wide gap between them and the next vehicle, eventually someone is bound to change lanes to occupy that space out of the perception that it somehow will help them get ahead in traffic.
• philipwhiuk 3mo ago
  The downside of these algorithms is they push traffic onto quiet side streets - using them as 'rat runs' to avoid the main thoroughfares. This significantly worsens the lived experience of those on the side streets.
• moomin 3mo ago
  TL;DR by controlling the route every car takes and traffic lights, we’d get a 2% reduction in traffic. I don’t think this heralds and great change in transport policy.
• matty22 3mo ago
  "The only solution to traffic is viable alternatives to driving." - NotJustBikes
• silexia 3mo ago
  Eliminate illegal immigration.
• nitwit005 3mo ago
  This will just result in cities making one way streets, blocking roads, or removing turns, because raw traffic throughput is rarely the only goal. My city already has some signs and traffic signals trying to prevent making a left turn after 5PM, because of maps apps attempting to redirect highway traffic through, which added a substantial delay to the commutes of everyone who actually lived there. That later resulted in a city council meeting about the safety problem caused by people making illegal left turns.
• queenkjuul 2mo ago
  I just want public transit that works, dammit.
• mwexler 2mo ago
  Also, just saw this mention of a new book from Vaclav Smil: Speed, which delves into some of these topics. https://vaclavsmil.com/book/speed-how-it-explains-the-world/ https://vaclavsmil.com/book/speed-how-it-explains-the-world/