Getting2Work

Traffic congestion is not really a big problem in a mid size town like Rochester NY where I live. However, I do listen to the traffic report on the radio to see what is in front of me as I get onto the highway. Unless the highway is totally blocked off, I usually do not make any adjustments to my route. Most of the time I do not have any idea of how bad the congestions are and do not know how the situations of the other roads.

Last week, I saw a recording of a talk from the PARC Forum “Mobile millennium: using smartphones to monitor traffic in privacy aware environments” by Alexandre Bayen. You might have seen reports of the Mobile Millennium project on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNET, NPR, KGO or BBC. This presentation gave a more in depth discussion about the details and the description of experiments that were performed. For the techies, this gives us a better understanding of the thoughts and the algorithms being used. It also addresses some of the security concerns and how the mobiles devices enables “crowd-sourcing” to provide a “give and take” fair sharing of information. Since the concept relies on mobile devices, this technology can potentially be applied to third world countries where there are not a lot of build-in traffic monitoring infrastructure while mobile devices are the prevalent communication device. It turned out that to get enough information, only a small percentage of mobile users have to sign up to the Mobile Millennium project.

I can’t wait for the day when one can get constant bird’s eye view of the traffic conditions on all the possible routes that one can take. Currently, the pilot is being conducted in northern California only. Details can be found on the Mobile Millennium website. It appears that there are still some limitations. For example, one cannot differentiate the traffic on the HOV lanes and regular traffic. Also, the traffic lights can provide misleading information. But, even with these limitations, I would be willing to try it out. Too bad I do not live in the northern CA area and the SW does not work on the iPhone yet.

A description of the presentation and the recording of the presentation can be found at: http://www.parc.com/event/896/mobile-millennium.html.

It’s been quite a while since the last entry.  I was able to work 4/10 for a while but then I got on loan to another team and had been working 6/10 instead.  I am back to my own team now for a couple of weeks and was able to go back to my 4/10 for one week.  Then I was at work last Friday and Saturday (yesterday).  The drive to work at 6:00am yesterday was great but paid for it when I left at 4:00pm.  Once at Lakewood where there was suppose to be a brush fire.  But then that was on the blvd what does that had to do with the freeway clogging up I have no idea.  Then the East bound 710 was closed and another clog!  Of course there was the usual airport area clog!!!!!  Drive home SUCKED!!!!!!  But I remind myself that I am lucky to still have a job.  I know time are tough and we are going through a layoff period.  If I don’t get notice this month, I am safe till the next round.  Not sure when that will be …

I save the link to this article, Left-lane slowpokes drive you cracy? that I read a couple of days ago because I was wondering how slow a slowpoke are we talking about!  Is driving at the speed limit slow enough to get a ticket or at yelled at?  Obviously so, at least right here is So CA. Well, I have yet to see tickets but definitely getting yelled at!!!!

I was going down on the 405 South during one of my morning commutes.   It was early and traffic was moving and we were a couple of exits before the 10 freeway interchange.  We’ve all done this … we all slowed down to or close to speed limit when there is a police car within sight.  So this one car was no different even though he was on the fast (or the 1st) lane.  This cop car was riding right up behind it and of course it just seemed to make thing worse because this guy started to slow down just below the speed limit.  But it wasn’t like he was driving 10, 20 mph below.  He was hovering about the speed limit.  The cop behind him finally couldn’t stand it anymore and got to his bull horn and yelled at the guy to MOVE!!!!!  It was obvious that the cop wasn’t in a hurry or anything because if not he would have had his sirens on and everyone would have moved out of his way.  I felt bad for the poor guy.

So how slow is too slow … in the cop’s eyes vs the fellow drivers’ eyes?

I know from experience that even if you are on the 2nd lane and is driving 5 mph above the speed limit, it can be considered too slow for the fellow drivers.  But it seemed to be acceptable to the cops.  But if you are driving in the 1st lane, you can be going 80mph and is not be fast enough for some of your fellow drivers.  Now I am not sure if it’s acceptable to the cops (at least in practice and not on the books) because no one was stupid enough that I have seen to stay at that speed if there are cops around.  Of course this is what I have seen mostly during the early commute when traffic is light enough for drivers to be going at that speed.

One other thing about my fellow drivers is that even after you had passed the car on your right, you really have to be very careful about moving over.  I have seen it too often that the guy riding up your behind has no patience to wait till you have safely moved over before speeding up.  And I am not talking about passing someone at speed limit either.

I know some people love the Adrenalin rush with the speed and the zipping around but I just want to get to my destination in one piece … thank you very much!