The next time someone complains about their commute, bring up Beijing's national expressway,
which had a traffic jam that lasted for almost two weeks!
Why do we have so much traffic?
Traffic is part of driving, but why does it exist?
Mathematically speaking, traffic happens.
Three things affect the inevitability of traffic along the best travel routes -- speed, density,
and flow.
A study in the SIAM Journal on Mathematical Analysis back in 2011 was the first to create
a mathematical model of every car on the road and how bottlenecks affect a jam -- like that
monster in Beijing.
Turns out one single car can start a backup, which affects all the cars around them and
continues in a wave throughout the rest of the traffic -- this wave is called Phantom
Traffic.
I don't know if you've experienced phantom traffic, but it's when cars on the highway
stop for no reason!
MIT researchers put drivers on a circular track, told them all to maintain the same
constant, slow, speed, and very quickly, jams formed!
Researchers call these jamitons -- because mathematically they're similar to waves called
solitons.
It can be frustrating, but it's just math!
When density reaches a certain point, research from MIT found, a single car breaking can
start a wave -- but to be clear, it's not that driver's fault!
Mathematically, if everyone followed the exact same rules, there comes a point where car
density is high enough, that the flow and speed are affected because of human reaction
speeds.
They happen not because one person screwed up -- but because of how humans observe and
react to traffic!
It's human nature!
Science loves to compare our experiences with animals around us; and when it comes to traffic,
that animal is the humble ant.
Have you ever seen an ant traffic jam?
No way!
A multi-country study from Universities in Germany, India and Japan looked at an ant
species from India to look at how ants manage traffic.
And, holy crap, they're basically perfect drivers.
Ants spread pheromone scents to indicate safe routes to forage.
Their receptors keep them on these pheromone "roads" and help them communicate with each
other while travelling.
Turns out, as more and more ants travel on the same road, they travel closer together,
but don't slow down as density increases -- unlike the cars in the MIT studies.
Remember, as density increases, humans tend to slow down.
Instead, ants go the same speed no matter how many are on the road.
And they put the needs of the many first.
Ants taking food to the colony are automatically given right of way; and though there are no
lanes, ants move out of the way to keep things flowing.
Humans have a hard time putting others' interests before their own quite so easily; which is
part of the problem…
See, ants are part of a colony, but humans are egoists… we're individualistic, and
that's another source of traffic.
If someone drives a bit slower than you on the highway, do you speed around them, or
slow down just a little and tuck in behind them.
I think we all know what happens here.
Speeding around them and continuing on our way!
Perfect little traffic ants, however, they slow down behind ants carrying things -- like
leaves.
The ants behind it will travel slower, but everyone actually got where they are going
faster overall because ants didn't have to compensate for all the other people speeding
around the slow cargo-laden ant.
Essentially, if we all made tiny sacrifices, we'd end up getting everywhere faster because
traffic waves, jams and backups would pretty much disappear; Phantom traffic waves too!