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http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/02/25/lawrence-solomon-transit-competition/

Read more: http://www.westislandgazette.com/news/32005 Got to love election time Aren't these the same people that said we would get trains in the West Island?

Anyone who's sat at a red light for minutes on end in the middle of the night when there's no cross traffic can cheer on science for proving what we already knew: lights that adapt to the flow of traffic, instead of dictating the flow of traffic, can improve the flow of traffic. A team of researchers discovered that if you let lights locally decide how to time their signals based on how much traffic they're dealing with, and then communicate that with nearby lights, you get closer to the "green wave" of lights that keeps thing moving smoothly. The issue with the centralized, top-down system of control is that it is geared to address an average traffic situation that rarely occurs as planned. The variations in rush hour traffic mean that lights are trying to apply one solution to a vast number of situations. In their trial in Dresden, Germany the team found that traffic congestion was eased by nine percent, pedestrian congestion by 36 percent, and bus and tram traffic by 56 percent. With rush hours spreading in time and distance, the proof and implementation of this can't come soon enough. Blog: http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/23/study-traffic-lights-should-respond-to-cars-not-other-way-arou/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+weblogsinc/autoblog+(Autoblog) To tame traffic, go with the flow Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around By Rachel Ehrenberg Web edition : Friday, September 17th, 2010 Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers. The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. By measuring vehicle inflow and outflow through each intersection as it occurs and coordinating lights with only their nearest neighbors, a systemwide smoothness emerges, scientists report in a September Santa Fe Institute working paper. “It’s very interesting — the approach is adaptive and the system can react,” says mechanical engineer Gábor Orosz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “That’s how it should be — that’s how we can get the most out of our current system.” An ultimate goal in traffic regulation is “the green wave,” the bam, bam, bam of greens that allows platoons of vehicles to move smoothly through intersection after intersection. When that happens, no drivers have to wait very long and sections of road don’t become so filled with cars that there’s no room for entering vehicles when the light does go green. To achieve this rare bliss, traffic lights usually are controlled from the top down, operating on an “optimal” cycle that maximizes the flow of traffic expected for particular times of day, such as rush hour. But even for a typical time on a typical day, there’s so much variability in the number of cars at each light and the direction each car takes leaving an intersection that roads can fill up. Combine this condition with overzealous drivers, and intersections easily become gridlocked. Equally frustrating is the opposite extreme, where a driver sits at a red light for minutes even though there’s no car in sight to take advantage of the intersecting green. “It is actually not optimal control, because that average situation never occurs,” says complex-systems scientist Dirk Helbing of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, a coauthor of the new study. “Because of the large variability in the number of cars behind each red light, it means that although we have an optimal scheme, it’s optimal for a situation that does not occur.” Helbing and his colleague Stefan Lämmer from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany decided to scrap the top-down approach and start at the bottom. They noted that when crowds of people are trying to move through a narrow space, such as through a door connecting two hallways, there’s a natural oscillation: A mass of people from one side will move through the door while the other people wait, then suddenly the flow switches direction. “It looks like maybe there’s a traffic light, but there’s not. It’s actually the buildup of pressure on the side where people have to wait that eventually turns the flow direction,” says Helbing. “We thought we could maybe apply the same principle to intersections, that is, the traffic flow controls the traffic light rather than the other way around.” Their arrangement puts two sensors at each intersection: One measures incoming flow and one measures outgoing flow. Lights are coordinated with every neighboring light, such that one light alerts the next, “Hey, heavy load coming through.” That short-term anticipation gives lights at the next intersection enough time to prepare for the incoming platoon of vehicles, says Helbing. The whole point is to avoid stopping an incoming platoon. “It works surprisingly well,” he says. Gaps between platoons are opportunities to serve flows in other directions, and this local coordination naturally spreads throughout the system. “It’s a paradoxical effect that occurs in complex systems,” says Helbing. “Surprisingly, delay processes can improve the system altogether. It is a slower-is-faster effect. You can increase the throughput — speed up the whole system — if you delay single processes within the system at the right time, for the right amount of time.” The researchers ran a simulation of their approach in the city center of Dresden. The area has 13 traffic light–controlled intersections, 68 pedestrian crossings, a train station that serves more than 13,000 passengers on an average day and seven bus and tram lines that cross the network every 10 minutes in opposite directions. The flexible self-control approach reduced time stuck waiting in traffic by 56 percent for trams and buses, 9 percent for cars and trucks, and 36 percent for pedestrians crossing intersections. Dresden is now close to implementing the new system, says Helbing, and Zurich is also considering the approach. Traffic jams aren’t just infuriating, they cost time and money, says Orosz. Estimates suggest that in one year, the U.S. driving population spends a cumulative 500,000 years in traffic at a cost of about $100 billion. And the roads are just going to get more congested. The optimal way of dealing with such congestion is to take an approach like Helbing’s and combine it with technologies that deal with driver behavior, Orosz says. Car sensors that detect the distance between your bumper and the car in front of you can prevent a sweep of brake-slamming that can tie up traffic, for example. “In general these algorithms improve traffic, but maybe not as much as they do on paper because we are still human,” he says. “It is still humans driving the cars.” http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63481/title/To_tame_traffic,_go_with_the_flow

China's nine-day traffic jam stretches 100km (AFP) – 16 hours ago BEIJING — Thousands of vehicles were bogged down Monday in a more than 100-kilometre (62-mile) traffic jam leading to Beijing that has lasted nine days and highlights China's growing road congestion woes. The Beijing-Tibet expressway slowed to a crawl on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks heading to the capital, and compounded by road maintenance work that began five days later, the Global Times said. The state-run newspaper said the jam between Beijing and Jining city had given birth to a mini-economy with local merchants capitalising on the stranded drivers' predicament by selling them water and food at inflated prices. That stretch of highway linking Beijing with the northern province of Hebei and the Inner Mongolia region has become increasingly prone to massive jams as the capital of more than 20 million people sucks in huge shipments of goods. Traffic slowed to a snail's pace in June and July for nearly a month, according to earlier press reports. The latest clog has been worsened by the road improvement project, made necessary by highway damage caused by a steady increase in cargo traffic, the Global Times said. China has embarked in recent years on a huge expansion of its national road system but soaring traffic periodically overwhelms the grid. The congestion was expected to last into mid-September as the road project will not be finished until then, the newspaper said. The roadway is a major artery for the supply of produce, coal and other goods to Beijing. Video: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/A-100km-Long-Traffic-Jam-In-Beijing-Enters-Its-Ninth-Day-And-Could-Continue-For-A-Month/Article/201008415702670?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_4&lid=ARTICLE_15702670_A_100km-Long_Traffic_Jam_In_Beijing_Enters_Its_Ninth_Day_And_Could_Continue_For_A_Month

Highway/Freeway - 6-8 lanes (both ways) Roads/Blvd/Ave - 4 lanes (both ways) Would probably takes 25-50 years to fix everything on the island of Montreal. Also overhaul the metro system, like one person invisioned for 2100. If not that atleast a monorail system between the airport and the financial district. Thats all I can think of for the transportation bit It's true we need to expand our highways wider because even back in 50's/60's we had problems with congestion. Hopefully with doubling the lanes we might be able to cut down on congestion. Also have the city of Montreal, Quebec and Canadian government help pay for doubling the bus and metro cars to run 24/7 and split waiting times in 1/2.

Une vaste aire de stationnement située entre les rues Saint-Antoine, Saint-Jacques, Mansfiled et les voies ferrées du CN, au centre-ville, sera transformée en terminus d’autobus temporaire. Les travaux d’aménagement du site de 5500 mètres carrés par l’Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT), qui doivent coûter 2,7 M$ au ministère des Transports du Québec, ont débuté lundi et doivent être terminés en novembre. La création du terminus Mansfield a pour objectif de favoriser le transport collectif et d’alléger la congestion routière dans le contexte des grands chantiers routiers en cours dans la région de Montréal, comme ceux du pont Champlain et de l’échangeur Turcot. Ainsi, les chauffeurs de plusieurs lignes d’autobus à destination de la Rive-Sud et de la Montérégie prendront des passagers à six quais d’embarquement et attendront leur heure de départ à quatre postes de régulation. http://journalmetro.com/actualites/montreal/985820/nouveau-terminus-dautobus-au-centre-ville/

Texte que je trouve intéressant et malheureusement n'apportera pas le débat de société nécessaire. C'est quand même gigantesque le montant qui sort de la province par année! Des milliards investis dans la congestion | Pierre-Olivier Pineau | Votre opinion Des milliards investis dans la congestion

http://www.mercer.com/qualityoflivingpr#city-rankings Montréal figure assez bien pour les infrastructures en 13e position, et devant Toronto. Les infrastructures sont definis comme tel: 'electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transportation, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports'.

Condos et autos feront-ils bon ménage au Centre Bell? Simple solution: Remove parking on both sides of Drummond.

Ceci va beaucoup amélioré la congestion horrible tous les cr*** de soirs...J'ai hâte! novembre 2009: juin 2010: