The Culture that is the UAE

BlackBerry cuts made roads safer, police say

A dramatic fall in traffic accidents this week has been directly linked to the three-day disruption in BlackBerry services.

In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents.

Perhaps Blackberry should be expecting that UAE users reward them for the outage.

Closing roads can lower price of anarchy

ars technica:

To gain a better theoretical understanding of the nature of POA in networks, the team applied their methodology to various types of idealized networks. They came to the conclusion that, to improve the Price of Anarchy, you must close off various roads—something known as Braess's paradox. In the network representing Boston, the researchers find six possible road closures that would reduce the delay in the suboptimal Nash (selfish) equilibrium. A similar analysis of the London and New York networks found that there were seven and twelve roads, respectively, that could be closed to improve the overall travel time.

While still theoretical, the work has the potential to aid future urban planning. Since the obvious solution of adding more roads may actually make the problem worse, an analysis of this sort could prove invaluable in determining real-world driving conditions.

Not that there are traffic problems in the UAE.

The zipper problem

No, this is not a post about John Edwards or Bill Clinton.

It's about traffic congestion -- specifically about the most efficient way to get cars through a bottleneck created when 3 lanes, say, drop down to two. Cynthia Gorney writes:

Nearly every time I asked one of the traffic people to assume the role of the great vehicle arranger in the sky, remote-controlling each of us bottleneck drivers as if we were so many video-game characters, the reply went as follows:

FIRST, EVERYBODY REMAINS UNRUFFLED, without abrupt changes of lane or speed, as the lane-drop comes into view. Everybody takes three deep, cleansing breaths — all right, the experts didn’t say that, but they meant to — and considers both the imminent needs of everybody else and the system as a smoothly functioning whole.

Then everybody begins to slow, not too much, all in concert. All cars remain in their lanes, using all the real estate. ... People in the narrowing left lanes refrain from shooting ahead, while people in the right through lanes — this is hard to swallow, for those of us inclined toward vigilantism, but crucial — leave big spaces in front of their cars for the merging that is about to commence. We resist the freeze-out-the-sidezoomer urge. We prepare to invite them in.

Finally, at clearly marked or somehow mutually agreed upon places, everybody starts conducting beautiful “zipper merges.” That’s the technical term — one-two, one-two or one-two-three, one-two-three — as indicated by the roadway configuration. The process has now worked at its ideal efficiency/equitability ratio: if all have behaved correctly, the tunnel passage has been both benign and, relatively speaking, quick.

The last thing you want to get into is stop and go -- ah, the home drive from Dubai to Sharjah on the Emirates Highway. Slow down together and leave as little real estate unused as safely possible given your mutual speed. Easier said than done.

Scottish roads too safe :: EclectEcon

White lines will be removed, or, rather, not repainted.

Read about the natural experiment that supports this policy in this story in the Scotsman:

Although white centre lines can greatly assist drivers on major unlit rural roads, research in Wiltshire has shown that when white centre lines on lit roads within a 30mph speed limit were not replaced, traffic speeds and accidents were both reduced. It is, therefore, proposed that a similar experimental policy should be adopted in Aberdeenshire when roads with street lighting within 30mph speed limits are resurfaced or surface dressed.

Thanks to EclectEcon for the link. Read his analysis here.

Want more and safer roads?

Here's how you can contribute.

Okay, okay, here's what the link says,

Some transportation experts believe that [in the U.S.] mileage fees will replace the gas tax within the next 15-20 years. "At some point, in some metro areas, market-based pricing using the latest technology will supplant the fuel tax revenues," says Joseph Giglio, a professor at Northeastern University who has written extensively on transportation financing.

Privacy advocates worry about the use of satellite navigation technology to track drivers' movements. "Where you go is something that, for the most part, people consider private," says Lee Tien, an attorney who specializes in privacy issues for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The second point is, it's the sort of thing we do to the bad guys. Where do you hear a lot about GPS tracking? It's for prisoners or people who are out on probation."

With GPS it would also be feasible to introduce congestion pricing.

Billing could be done to your mobile phone account.

Wow. With GPS your speed could also be monitored. No more need for traffic cameras.

Would you like your insurance company to have access to the information and charge you according your driving behavior, including the time of day you chose to drive and the routes you chose?

No more off roading in my rental car.

Is that clear?

Dubai authorities are taking notice of the value of carpooling for reducing traffic congestion. But they remain hesitant. They fear, I think, it would be too successful if it was unregulated. Allowing money to might change hands to share expenses or even to compensate the driver for his or her time would encourage carpooling. And compete with the taxis which are government owned. Thus, there must be a carpooling system. The invisible hand is not to be trusted.

Gulf News reports

Regulations for car pooling are being finalised and will be announced soon, said a senior official.
...
He said that "pooling a car" for monetary gain is illegal but sharing a car with colleagues going to the same location is allowed.
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He said the RTA is considering to introduce system allowing motorists to register their cars to be used for "car pooling service". However, he said that motorists using their cars as illegal taxis are fined at least Dh2,000.

A Secret Dubai Bouquet

The Emirates Economist has been away from the blogging dashboard of late. Here are some recent items by Secret Dubai that cover interests of mine:

- Spinsterhood or second-wifedom? An easy decision for educated Emirati women in Sharjah.

- No longer will motorists be forced to sit behind white Nissan Sunnies doing 40kmph in the fast lane of Sheikh Zayed road, beads swinging from their rear view mirrors.

Traffic congestion in Dubai: What to do?

I've posted a couple of items over at UAE community blog about congestion pricing which have elicited thoughtful comments. Take a look here and here. And, less seriously, here.

Secret Dubai summarizes the drawbacks here.

In Amman you can reserve a parking space by SMS :: Black Iris

Helps cut down cruising the streets clogging traffic looking for a space.

Why not in Dubai - especially Bur Dubai? Or is it here already?

The Stern Review on Traffic Jams :: Undercover Economist

Quote:

I’ll admit, the Stern Review on Traffic Jams doesn’t sound like the sort of thing to keep you awake at night. Traffic jams are less dramatic than catastrophic climate change, just as being mugged is less dramatic than being shot.

I realise it seems ridiculous to compare traffic jams to climate change, but I am not sure why. If climate change ever begins to have the same impact on our lives that congestion does today, it will be a dark day indeed. Think about the delays; the uncertainties; think about the lengths big-city dwellers have to go to in an effort to avoid traffic. Then think about how severely the climate would need to change before it had the same effect on your daily routine.

The new “happiness economists”, who are almost as fashionable as those who study climate change, have concluded that the way most people feel during their commute is the worst they feel all day. It would be worth a lot to escape that feeling. Of course, it would be worth a lot if we could do something about climate change too.
...
I am just puzzled as to why an environmental problem that we fear will eventually become serious gets so much more attention than an environmental problem that we know for sure is serious right now.

THERE’S reason to think that we could be entering a golden age for congestion pricing :: NYT

Quote:

FOR the small group of economists and policy wonks interested in applying supply-and-demand theories to the thorny problems of gridlock and ever-longer commutes, the $2.9 trillion fiscal 2008 budget released by President Bush on Monday contained some excellent news: $130 million in grants to finance construction of so-called congestion pricing systems.
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congestion pricing was born and bred in New York City. William Vickrey, the longtime Columbia University economist and 1996 Nobel laureate, is viewed as the father of the concept.
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Since February 2003, when London introduced a system that charged a fee to motorists entering the central city on weekdays, “congestion has been reduced noticeably,” said Edward L. Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard. “People are using the roads less, and there have been remarkable upticks in speeds.”

Beyond that, congestion pricing holds out the possibility of harnessing people’s innate economic rationality and self-interest in order to promote a series of public goods. Every time a driver turns onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, she slows down the travel speed of all the other drivers, imposing a cost — or, as economists say, a negative externality — on countless fellow citizens.
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“People are willing to pay for that time savings, and the price can be adjusted in such a way that you keep the lanes pretty full but don’t become overloaded,” said Kenneth Small, research professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine. “You can almost always drive in the express lanes without slowing down, free flow.” In San Diego, the price of using the H.O.T. lanes can change every six minutes.
The greater willingness of drivers and policy makers to consider congestion pricing is a recognition that building more roads will never be a solution to traffic problems.
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In New York, many elected officials argued that charging fees to drivers would be a burden for poor and middle-income people. Professor Glaeser disagrees. “The greatest beneficiaries of reduced congestion on roads in New York would be people who ride buses to get to and from work, who would find their commutes shortened [because fewer cars will be on the street].”