Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekecs!paulsc From: paulsc@tekecs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.physics,net.auto Subject: Re: physical laws of freeway traffic? Message-ID: <1401@tekecs.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-Jun-83 11:47:03 EDT Article-I.D.: tekecs.1401 Posted: Tue Jun 14 11:47:03 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 16-Jun-83 01:11:23 EDT Lines: 36 You might be interested in reading: Herman, Robert, and Keith Gardels. "Vehicular Traffic Flow." Scientific American, pp. 35-43, December 1963. or Wetherell, Charles. "Etudes for Programmers." Prentice-Hall Inc. 1978, pp. 64-66. Actually the Scientific American article is the reference in the Etudes for Programmers chapter. The idea that "if everybody drives more slowly, everybody gets home sooner" [Wetherell78] is an interesting concept. Of course everybody doesn't refer to each individual person, but to everyone put together (i.e. the average). The idea is that traffic flow has some of the same properties as (nearly?) incompressible fluid flow. (At least I don't think of my car as being very compressible.) The Scientific American article shows results from experiments performed in New York using real people in real traffic. I thought it was interesting enough that I performed a computer simulation for a project for a simulation course I took. (I got the idea from the Wetherell book.) The shockwaves set up by one slow driver, or one stall propogate and dissipate very slowly on a busy highway. The busier the highway the more slowly things clear up. Paul H. Scherf P. O. Box 1000 Del. Sta. 61-201 Tektronix Engineering Computing Systems Wilsonville, Oregon, USA UUCP: ...!XXX!teklabs!tekecs!paulsc (where XXX is one of: aat cbosg chico decvax harpo ihnss lbl-unix ogcvax pur-ee reed ssc-vax ucbvax zehntel) CSNET: tekecs!paulsc @ tektronix ARPA: tekecs!paulsc.tektronix @ rand-relay