I hate all things commute- and traffic-related, and it’s probably why I like to learn about what makes commutes painful. Maybe if I know more about what’s happening, I won’t get so frustrated when I have to drive.
Transportation engineering PhD candidate Lewis Lehe has a look at bottlenecks and gridlock, creating simulations of both. The former is when too many cars want to do the same thing at once, like enter at a freeway entrance. Gridlock is when a bottleneck in one direction causes a bottleneck in the other direction, and then the same happens the other way around, starting a horrible, horrible cycle.
