基本思想：无明显原因的交通拥堵（phantom traffic jam），起因应该是人类在非常拥堵的交通中驾驶的一点点扰动，如加速或刹车，会迅速放大，引起交通拥堵。MIT的数学家们建立了一个模型，可以揭示这种拥堵，在何种条件下，是如何产生的。
Large population centers + people going to work + roads not being large enough + stupid drivers who get in accidents or tie up lanes because they try to move from the far left lane to the far right lane for their exit at the last second = traffic jams
交通拥堵 = 人口众多 + 集中上班 + 道路不够 + SB的driver总是在最后时刻才换道
Oh I forgot stupid people who feel the need to slow down to 5 mph to gawk at said accidents.
哦，还有就是把车速降低到5mile的看交通事故的人
Seriously. Those are the people that cause rear ended accidents. Not to mention people who try to merge into traffic at 70+ with a space barely big enough to parallel park their car.
最主要的就是会车的时候，ramp上的车硬往车队里挤。
True. One of the basic laws of physics is the speed of a car is less than or equal to that of the car in front.
As the density of cars on any given road goes up, the cushion between cars gets smaller. Since a car cannot travel faster than the car in front, when the car in front brakes or misses a gear change, the car behind must brake equal to or greater than the car in front.
As the average gap between cars gets smaller, so the need to brake harder than the car in front goes up. These two factors (speed car behind <= car in front, braking car behind >= braking car front) causes speed oscillations, which is really just classical wave theory. As with a normal amplifier, where the amplifying device cannot exceed its power supply's capability, so the traffic problems really start to happen when the physical bounds of the environment (speed limit or grinding to a halt) are approached.
This is why you get congestion around areas with merging traffic, because cars merging into a dense traffic stream with no extra lanes is just like an impedance mismatch. If the merging stream is also dense then really the only way to fix it without causing congestion is to have the merging traffic have their own lane.
However, it is important to note that if a line of cars is long enough, as happened when they were evacuating New Orleans, then you will get vehicle speeds that oscillate, which will cause vehicles to grind to a halt for no apparent reason.
随着车的增加，车头间距在减小，车头间距的减小，使得人们在加速或刹车时要采取更大的动作，也就是使得整个车队的速度震荡更加剧烈。从车队头到车队尾，振荡的剧烈程度逐渐递增。当车辆妄图在拥堵路段merging时，就像电路里的阻抗不匹配（impedance mismatch）。唯一的解决办法也许就是为汇入的车流单独设立一个车道。值得注意的是，像从New Orleans逃离时的庞大车队一样，当车队足够长，车速将剧烈振荡，车辆可能不因为什么就突然刹车。
People driving fast, slow, lots of people all leaving for work and leaving work at the same time. Solved! I'm in Taiwan right now(live in Portland,OR) and must say that USA traffic jams are shocking. Taiwan has smaller roads, and a whole lot more people on them, the difference is that they have a crap ton of motorcycles and scooters. The scooters travel in something similar to bike lanes in the states, and are allowed to split lanes. So what I'm trying to say is that here traffic jams are less severe even though the roads are much smaller, plus the cities are super dense so work is usually somewhat close to home, and commuter rail comes every 10-15 minutes. Its all about options, more modes of transport means its less likely to have horrendous traffic jams.
在台湾我们人口更多，且道路更窄，但交通问题并不像美国那么严重。因为我们有单独划出来给摩托车和电动车的车道，还有每10分钟1趟的轻轨铁路。所以，当交通模式的选择更多时，发生拥堵的概率就越小。
The source of many problems is that people see traffic as "A bunch of independent cars" instead of looking at it as one "organic" form.
Like cells and organs in a human body, every car affects the whole organic body of traffic, and if these cells or organs start shitting all over each other, the whole body will suffer as a result.
If the heart suddenly decided that "Fuck you brain, I'm not going to pump blood up to your lazy ass anymore!", things will soon be going south for the heart as well, same with assholes in traffic, they're just too stupid to realize it.
因为我们在看待交通问题是更多的是将其看作一大堆独立的车辆，而不是一个有机的整体。
Im not sure how it is in the US, but here in australia on the freeways there are LED signs that light up during peak hours in order to take advantage of this fluid dynamics.
eg. speed is reduced to reduce stop start.
Only problem is, humans are greedy/inconsiderate and many ignore the speed sign anyways only to stop 3 cars in front and ruin the fluid dynamics model.
I always love hearing how people complain WHY speed limits are reduced when its peak hour rather than sped up. lol.
在澳洲，在拥堵时段，我们的高速路会有LED灯提示减速，以使得刹车和启动平稳。
最本质的问题是人类的贪婪！
Studies have shown that accidents are more likely to happen at lower speeds than at higher speeds. That is also why we have minimum speed limits on freeways.
No matter which way you look at it, its better to stay with traffic, even if that means speeding. When I lived in Chicago, the speed limit was 60, but if you were not doing 80 then you had people 6" from your rear bumper blasting the horn. In that case, the slow driver is the danger because 90% of the cars are going over the limit. Staying with traffic is safer, causes less congestion, and gets you where you need to go faster.
研究发现，相比高速时，低速时更容易引发交通事故，所以我们的高速公路都有最低限速。
不管怎么看，最好的方法是与车队中的其他车辆速度保持一致，即使这意味着加速。在我住在Chicago时，限速是60，但如果你不开到80，你的后面6inch远就会有人按喇叭。在那种情况下，低速的司机是危险的。
True to that. It is not speed, but variations in speed that cause density waves. The people who go slow force other people to go around them, which forces people in the other lanes to slow and try to go around further, which forces etc. Density wave.
确实如此。并不是速度高低引起了拥堵波，而是速度的不一致性。当一个车道上的某人速度慢时，他后面的人不得不超过他，势必要进行换道，又会引起周围车道的车辆减速。于是，交通拥堵波就产生了。
That doesn't compute. The higher the speed the more cars per second a roadway can hanlde. Lower speed = fewer cars per second = more traffic.
高速代表更多的车在单位时间被处理，低速正好相反。
The more cars on the road, the more cautious and overcorrecting the drivers become, and the slower the traffic. The net affect is that the roadway can handle lower car counts at higher speeds, and higher car counts at lower speeds. Its called Rush Hour.
更多的车在道路上，会使得驾驶员更加专心注意和遵守法规，使得速度更慢。高速时，车辆少；低速时，车辆多。
not really true. At high speeds, the headway increases, and you while your vehicles are travelling faster, there is more space needed between them.
2400 vehicles per hour per lane is about the maximum theoretical capacity of a freeway lane. This volume gets reduced by a host of factors, including:
Truck percentage
driver familiarity
Interchange spacing
lateral clearance
lane width
just to name a few.
教科书式说法：车道容量与以上因素有关。
I've often wondered how traffic can come to a full stop when there are no stop signs or streetlights and no cross roads to turn off onto.
The biggest reason is too many cars getting on and off the exits close to the same time. The exit ramps are notoriously too short, and the entrance ramps usually merge onto traffic way too soon.
I wish they'd create a wall for a half mile before the exit so people cannot merge at the last second, and a wall at the entrance for at least half mile that splits into two lanes before it can merge with traffic. This won't solve all the problems, but i'm sure it would help.
Some might say its a danger putting a wall there because someone might hit it...but if they hit the wall at the merge/split...then its one less driver we have causing traffic jams! :)
最大的问题是太多车希望在同一时刻进入或退出告诉公路。最好的办法是修一堵很长的墙，使得想退出的车辆不可能在最后一刻才换道。在入口处车先开半英里再汇入高速路。有人会说有墙不太安全，有人可能会撞上墙。不过我觉得，如果那样，我们不是又少了一个可以制造交通拥堵的糟糕司机？
Environuts might even support that since they think we're a cancer on the planet.
我们是这个星球上的癌症。
I read a study a while ago regarding the impact of adaptive cruise control on traffic congestion, and the authors determined that if only 20% of cars utilized it, then traffic congestions would be cut in half.
These are cruise control systems that will slowdown automatically if another car is in the way, then accelerate again when if moves.
It’s funny how governments focus on MPG, biofuels, and expensive hybrid technology as a solution for our environmental problems – but if they simply mandated an existing and (somewhat) cheap technology be installed in every car we could reap benefits far in excess of these solutions.
我以前看过一个自适应巡航控制的研究，如果20%的车用了这个控制，那么交通拥堵会减少一半。
我们的政府目前重点搞生物燃料、混合动力，实在是搞笑。
3D is needed.
It won't come before proper electrogravimetrics techniques arrive.
Sure, you can alleviate some problems with bridges and underpasses (2-D routes) and perhaps solve this with variable speed limits that traffic controllers impose, but with traffic forever growing, its pissing into the wind.
飞行的交通工具将解决这个问题！
Rubber-necking at accidents on the opposite side of the road seem to cause most of the senseless traffic jams. If you can change human nature or allow computer-driven vehicles on the road, that'll take care of the problem.
Otherwise, we're just going to spend an enormous amount of tax-payer dollars to find out the hard way, that you just can't fix stupid.
对向车道看热闹的人引起了最多无意义的交通堵塞。如果能改变人性或者使电脑驾车，问题就解决了。
另一方面，我们可以每年花纳税人那么多钱去找到最拥堵的路段，但是不能改变人性的愚蠢。
We've been doing that for decades....but look at this year alone! Bailouts, stimu...i mean "pork-ulus" bills, and a wealth of social programs like the recent "studying how gays react in South American bars" and "how to help hookers in China".
They don't fix anything, they just show how stupid our elected officials really are - and they think the masses are stupid.
我们这么做已经很多年了。看看他们的社科研究项目吧，如何帮助中国妓女，南美酒吧里的同性恋如何沟通。
他们不能解决任何问题，他们只是展示了我们所选的官员们有多么愚蠢！
Yay, overpoliticized comments on every article!
每篇文章都会有政治评论（愤青无处不在啊）
I work in a different state than where I live so I see plenty of bad driving.
Here are some of the most frustrating and most common issues (in fact I'm sure I'll see them today!):
1) Frequent lane changes in heavy traffic. A lane change for a reason , like coming up to your exit or because the lane ahead is blocked by an accident is fine....but when ALL lanes are moving 5 mph why on earth do some folks insist on changing lanes every 5 minutes?
2) The can't make up his mind type. You've been behind this person before I sure --- he's driving 10 mph under the speed limit when you are behind him then when you go to make your move to pass he suddenly speeds up to match your speed, so you think ok I'll stay here then -- you stay there and now the guy's back down to just at the speed limit or below it again. It might be an amusing game to you -- if you do this, but I just was trapped in an office for 10 hours, I'm tired and I'm hungry and I'd like to get home you selfish prick....
3) What lane is my lane again? I see this more and more frequently -- folks that look like they are drunk, tires skirting along the lines in the road that divide up the lanes, some times dipping into one lane a few inches and then going back into another. This is annoying as hell --- first don't drink and drive and second if you are too stupid to figure out what lane you should be in, you really need to burn your license...like now.
4) The cheaters. Folks stacking up on the shoulder because they are too good to wait for their exit like the rest of us, meanwhile I'm thinking "that would really suck if an emergency happened right now with no shoulder available".
Also in this group are the line butters.....often on my final exit before my house the line to the exit is about a mile or two long -- sometimes someone will drive by on and squeeze into the front of the line. These people should be drug from their cars and beat to death. Apparently they think they are better than the rest of us and only their time is important not ours.
5) People who don't know how merge/exit a highway properly. I've seen folks come to dead stops as if a red light was at the ramp and then they try merging, I've seen people ride the full length of the "merge lane" even when they have plenty of time to get over before the merge....and i've seen jack asses speed out like a bat out of hell to merge at the same time I'm driving by and I nearly have to lock up my brakes to make sure I don't hit him because there was no sign of him coming when I passed the point of the exit.
I generally curse up a storm to myself every night I'm caught in traffic. So yeah MIT or whoever -- please improve this traffic situation. :)
我工作和居住不在同一个州，于是我看到了太多不好的驾驶行为。
1.频繁换道
2.前面的车在你超车时突然加速
3.不知道自己属于那条车道
4.开车开到路肩上去
5.不知道如何汇入和退出高速路的人
Up the Driving test requirements by 500%, Im SURE there will be A LOT less traffic problems.
把交通考试难度提高5倍。
You can stop a traffic jam by going much slower than the car in front of you, if the car in front of you stops you may not need to stop which prevents the cars behind you from needing to stop. Stopping increases total travel time.
开车比前车慢也许会阻止一场拥堵的产生，因为你和你后面的车都避免了频繁的停车和启动。
There is no mystery as to why traffic jams occur in places where there are no contruction/accidents. The road designs are bad, the people driving the cars aren't always paying attention, and the speed limits are way too low. I didn't even need a research grant for that, though I guess I would like one.
It's idiots like this at MIT who make me glad I paid half as much for my engineering degree at a state school. I got a job doing real work instead of staying in grad school for 10 years wasting my life.
研究结果是显而易见的。像这个MIT的白痴一样的人让我觉得很高兴，因为我在州立大学只花了一半的钱就拿到学位。我现在找到了一份工作，干实际的事情，而不是在一个研究生院里花上10年浪费我的生命。
Privatize the damn roads!
The product that private road owners would be selling is drive quality -- if you are sitting on a road for an hour whose trip time at road speed is actually 10 minutes then you are basically selling nothing. It is the fact that there is a government monopoly on roads that leads to the chronic shortage of road capacity -- how come things in the private sector never suffer permanent chronic shortages like this?
And smarmy sneering cynical economics professors tell us that the government has to create government owned or controlled monopolies on "natural monopoly" resources like roads in order to... wait for it... protect us from what they claim would be the "natural monopolies" that would arise in the private sector.
Echoes of the EU saying they have to remove the web browser from Windows so consumers are protected and given choice.
GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE ECONOMY!!!!
私有化这些该死的道路！！！
The lack of the ability of critical thought, the source of so many of our national problems.
我们国家这么多问题的来源，就是缺乏一种严谨思考的能力！
