Jammin' on Traffic
From Gordon Price's most recent Price Tags newsletter -- a computer simulation of traffic congestion that will run on any java-enabled web browser.
It's mesmerizing to watch "phantom" traffic jams form -- temporary slowdowns in traffic caused just by congestion, without any obstacle in the road.
And the especially nifty thing (or big time-waster) for me is that you can tweak the settings--traffic volume, driver politeness, road setup--to see what kinds of things lead to more congestion. For example, traffic that flows along smoothly when the speed limit is set at 80 km per hour (about 50 miles per hour) might completely jam up when the speed limit is bumped to 100 kph (or 60 miles per hour). And the same road can jam up when speed limits are decreased to 40 km per hour. This may seem either counterintuitive or completely obvious, depending on your perspective. In both cases, though, it's pretty easy to identify with the little dots stuck in traffic -- the congestion patterns are all too familiar.
As drivers, we tend to think that we exercise conscious control over what happens on the road, which makes it easy to blame other drivers "mistakes" when traffic slows down for no apparent reason, as in a "phantom" traffic jam. So it's instructive to see that little computer rectangles following simple rules show the exact same kinds of complex traffic patterns that humans create. Which is a reminder, perhaps, that the rules of the road can have more of an effect on real-world outcomes (traffic or otherwise) than our conscious choices--which really is something to chew on while you're stuck in traffic.
You Need a Weathermap to Know Which Way the Wind Blows
Klickitat County, in rural Washington, has emerged as a leader in promoting wind power. From yesterday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Earlier this year, county officials took a bold step by creating a so-called Energy Overlay Zone, a planning tool aimed at expediting renewable energy development. Wind developers -- who often face bitter battles with locals who object to massive turbine farms -- say it is the first such zone in the country, and they're calling the few residents who live in Klickitat County a mighty progressive bunch.
I'm not sure whether the county's residents would welcome being labelled "progressive"--but in this case, it seems to fit.
Update: More here.
A Big Country
Newly released data shows that Canadian obesity rates are skyrocketing alongside American rates. In 2004, 23 percent of adult Canadians were considered obese, up nine percentage points from the late 1970s. Adolescent obesity rates tripled during the same period.
Obesity rates in Canada are still lower than those in the US, where 30 percent of the adult population is considered obese. But interestingly, researchers attribute most of the difference to obesity rates in women--adult males have similar rates of obesity in both countries.
Another statistical curiosity: Canadian men in higher income households were more likely to be obese.
Density Star
From the New Urban News comes this nugget:
Researchers presented findings at the Congress for the New Urbanism annual conference that show substantial energy savings from higher-density urbanism - greater savings than can be achieved from the US government Energy Star program.
As the chart on the left shows (if you can read it -- sorry it's so small), even small increases in density can yield substantial energy savings; increasing housing density from 3 housing units per acre to 6 units per acre actually saves more energy than the average efficiency boost provided by Energy Star appliances.
Now, this shouldn't be much of a surprise, since it's been well established for decades that people who live in compact neighborhoods drive much less than people who live in more sparsely populated suburbs. Still, it's an important reminder: neighborhood design is a powerful determinant of how much energy we use.
But for some reason, when people talk about making our transportation system more fuel efficient, they typically talk about improving the efficiency of vehicles, rather than of neighborhoods. Efficient vehicles have a high-tech cachet, I guess. But if anything, efficient neighborhoods are even more important than efficient vehicles. Hybrids and biodiesel vehicles do save fossil fuels and reduce pollution, obviously; but by reducing how much people need to drive, efficent neighborhoods not only save fuel, but also reduce other costly externalities, ranging from highway spending to car crashes.
