Sort of traffic congestion System
So you may be familiar with the use of a congestion predictor on a Satnav, particularly when jams become prevalent, e.g. Obon festival and New year’s / Bank holidays and Christmas Holidays.
This the information which shows roughly where to where will be congested and the peak times.
The thing we get disappointed at every time we have to glance at it.
Yes, as per usual, lets apply BoI to obtain and use this predictive information. What do you think will happen?
First, type in the junction you’ll be joining the motorway and the time of departure, and then type in the exit nearest to your destination. Then, a graph showing journey time on the horizontal axis and the distance travelled on the vertical axis is displayed.
On the bottom left, the junction into the motorway, and on the top right, the exit, are displayed. Intermediate interchanges are also shown.
Now here’s what’s characteristic about BoI.
How you find out the information about congestion is by a colour gradient. If for example, a severe traffic jam is predicted between interchanges A and B, the area is highlighted with a dark colour. And this fades out with time and distance.
Suppose this looks like thermal imaging, which many people are familiar with.
However, that’s not all; this is the interesting part:
Using the information from the gradient plot, you build your own journey plan. Think how to avoid traffic, how to reach the destination in a stress-free way…
Since the horizontal axis shows time and vertical distance, a normal journey can be represented by a straight, diagonal line rising to the right. When encountering traffic congestion, the gradient of the line will become shallower as the car’s speed falls. Of course, if you decide to take a break at a service station- only time will pass, meanwhile the distance travelled stays the same- so the line will become horizontal. As long as you don’t make a terrible mistake, it’s impossible to drive the wrong way on a motorway, so it’s impossible for the line to fall downwards.
Having understood this, you can plan a smooth journey by reading off the colours. Of course, this means planning your journey around your needs whilst reading off an unfamiliar colourful graph and experiencing how time passes. As expected, you’ll need to repeatedly try and improve to master this.
But don’t you think it’ll be more fun to sort-of control your traffic jam experience, rather than staring at frustrating numbers?