London traffic/auto control

From: Avatar Polymorph (avatarpolymorph@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jan 03 2003 - 22:59:48 MST


Further to my earlier post below, I am assuming computer or computational
control ensures individual crossing in small streets, and spindly over or
under walkways work in congested areas... pedestrians may need some
tweaking?...

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Previous post:
Newspaper reports reveal London is introducing a fee to enter the central 
area of the city due to traffic jams occuring during 50% of driver time (we 
have had a similar system of monitoring for a private highway network in 
Melbourne called CityLink, using computer monitoring, it's been around 
several years).
Assuming some form of car as we have today (four people in a 1.5m by 3m 
vehicle) and a single-level road (let's have it powered by the road surface 
via nanotech solar power)...
If the cars are all computationally controlled, are traffic lights 
necessary? One would think not - they just criss cross each other 
constantly.
Assuming we do not have a vacuum-tube style road, and assuming some distance 
between cars for criss-crossing and entering and leaving central lanes, and 
assuming no clover leaf patterns or underpasses and bypasses (i.e. the roads 
are roughly as they are now) does this make the maximum amount of traffic 
bearable something like 4 persons per 10 metres of track? At 60 k per hour = 
6 k per 6 minutes = 1 k per minute =  10 metres in a bit over half a second. 
So if your residential ratio on the streetfront is about ten metres per 
house and contains 4 persons who reside there, traffic should not be a 
problem provided you're not jumping off and on the road every quarter of a 
second.
This is probably seriously flawed logic... automated public transport may 
take the form of minibuses (as in Johannesberg).
I guess you could have Robert Heinlein-style walkways with people on "sleds" 
that can slide across fast and slow zones.
There must be lots of possiblities (but please don't just say "downloading 
via cable or laser is the fastest, since I am an augmentor not an uploading 
type)!
Towards Ascension
Avatar Polymorph
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