Begin with a normal street map. Collect traffic data from a large number of cars. Mark street crossings to show the amount of traffic turning into any one place, showing "where cars usually go" when flowing from small capillary streets into larger streets, something that isn't always visible on normal street grids.

(Imagine time lapse photography at night; there would be a big bundle of red lights turning one way, and only a few small streaks turning the other way.)

On a smaller and more dynamic scale, it would be helpful to have a "trace" of the traffic, say, from one hour ago to now. Such a map would show: cars circling a block and all vanishing in the same parking garage entry that right now you can't seem to find; whether this short cut works at this time of day; and where the party is.
-- jutta, Oct 03 1999

Intelligent Transportation Systems http://www.uswcorp..../its_whitepaper.htm
You could use cell phone traffic to track the cars. [egnor, Oct 03 1999]

Using buses as probe vehicles to measure traffic. http://www.its.wash...ansit_probes_tn.pdf
Buses also have location tracking systems (not GPS) that you could use. [egnor, Oct 03 1999]

traffic agents http://www.halfbake...ea/traffic_20agents
[egnor, Oct 03 1999]

speed maps http://www.halfbake...m/idea/speed_20maps
[egnor, Oct 03 1999]

I would want two maps, for the two rush hours of the day, because one-way streets make the travel anisotropic.

I would like to be able to find the clever shortcuts that limo drivers and locals learn to avoid congestion or shorten the trip.
-- ches, Nov 14 1999


If everyone had access to the shortest and least congested routes that the locals used, they'd disappear - right? Isn't a shortcut's very existence owed to the fact that not everyone knows about it? Otherwise it becomes just another congested thoroughfare...
-- loomar, Mar 03 2000


FedEx trucks have both GPS and two-way data links, right? That's enough information, and they have enough trucks to make a real-time congestion map showing where traffic is slow or stopped. Unless they have a magic way of avoiding the congestion in the first place... Um, now that I think about it, when's the last time you saw a FedEx truck stuck in traffic?
-- rmutt, Mar 14 2000


just follow the FedEx truck!
-- ps, Mar 17 2000


[loomar]: It's true the shortcuts would disappear, but all the routes would be used more efficiently and traffic would be spread lightly everywhere. Everyone would move at the same pace, rather than people with local knowledge getting to move faster, and the average pace would be higher. Unless the knowledge of alternative routes encouraged everyone to drive a whole bunch more and traffic just expanded again to fill its container, which it might.
-- Monkfish, Nov 18 2000



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