🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3ouucp$s4c@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
David H. Close <dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>kEN Colburn wrote:
>
>> Who's the mental giant that put in a new,fastmoving freeway (the 105 in 
>> LA) and then put STOPLIGHTS where it merges w/ other fways so cars back up 
>> for a MILE,wasting gas and spewing more crap in our smog?

An engineer who understands that allowing the traffic from that
fast-moving freeway to try to merge onto the other freeways in
big groups would make BOTH freways back up.

>>  i bet they don't remove the lights cuz they don't want to prove what 
>> fools they were for putting them in.

There's a simple way to tell whether the freeways work better with
or without the lights: turn 'em off and see what happens.  It's
been tried, and the observation is that properly-timed metering
lights increase the carrying capacity of the freeways.

>Freeway flow control (the "meters" on on-ramps) is basically a way to
>allow traffic originating in the suburbs priority over local traffic.

Baloney.  When long lines of cars try to jam into a freeway
all at once, traffic bogs down for everybody.  You can see this
effect where one lane of a freeway is coned off for repairs.
Traffic may be flowing well in three lanes, then go to stop-and-go
while the cars merge into two lanes.  After the merge the same
number of cars can often go almost as fast in two lanes as they did in
three; it's the merge itself that is the problem.  Feeding cars
in one or two at a time keeps this from happening at onramps.
-- 

     Chuck Karish   karish@mindcraft.com   415 323 9000 x117