Yes, and it's at the drums that the merges should take place. In
Michigan, the drums stay up all summer, so drivers start merging
sooner and sooner. Eventually, they're merging mile before the drums
and giving the finger or worse to anyone who waits until they get
close to the barrels. It's lunacy, and it's counterproductive.
Paul
On May 8, 2009, at 2:37 AM, Joseph McAllister wrote:
How do you explain the Dept. of Highways procedure, when they have
to close lanes on a highway, of placing the drums that force the
traffic to merge miles ahead of the work zone then? Slowly
eliminating a lane at a time until some 1000 yards prior to the
actual construction.
Think someone somewhere has done the math on this before? Not to
mention many years of experience in controlling traffic flow through
restrictions. If your conclusions were valid, they'd just leave all
the lanes open until a few hundred yards before "the merge", eh?
On May 7, 2009, at 15:21 , Bob W wrote:
The issue of fairness is dealt with at the time of merging,
whenever it's
done, by the drivers all letting one person go first. If the merge
is at the
last possible time and everybody plays by the rules there can be no
unfairness.
Each traffic lane is equivalent to a server in a queueing system.
The size
of the queue is determined by the arrival rate, the number of
servers, and
the service time. By reducing the number of servers - that is, by
reducing
the highway to one lane, queues are more likely to build up.
Similarly, by
increasing the service time the queues are likely to increase.
In this example the service time is the time it takes for a car to
pass
through the road works which might be, for example, 100 yards long.
If
everybody merges 100 yards early they take a lane out of commission
before
they need to, making the 'pipe' 200 yards long and thereby
increasing the
time it takes to get through - the service time (probably by 2X).
Bob
Bob W,
Gotta do the math.
The service rate is fixed. The length of the queue, be it one or
two
lanes wide depends completely on the arrival rate. Stack 'em in one
lane, two lanes, or three lanes it doesn't matter. Average wait
time
will be the same.
The issue is fairness as some asses try to cut into the queue and
get
thru faster.
For every minute they gain on the average, the rest of the group
suffers an additional minute wait.
Regards, Bob S.
Joseph McAllister
Lots of gear, not much time
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