Combating Traffic through Game Theory and Technology
In large cities with expansive transportation infrastructures, intuition suggests adding roads would eliminate traffic congestion. This idea turns out to be false according to a concept we learned about in class recently – Braess’ Paradox. This idea states that when you add a road to an existing network to eliminate traffic, this new route actually causes more traffic as people acting in there own self interest deviate from the achieved equilibrium as they are enticed by a new route that seems to be faster. These actions, in turn, create bottlenecks in the new part of the system and do nothing to help the flow of the system overall.
In the article linked below, a solution is presented where even if more roads are in fact added, traffic can be regulated. The key is a platform called HERE that controls traffic cooperatively by tracking the movement of everyone on the road and adjusting individual people’s paths based on the movements of others. The effectiveness of the software lies in its implementation of game theory and the idea of Nash equilibrium. The platform is able to distribute traffic and act as an omniscient guide whereby it creates a solution that benefits everyone. The platform may in some cases direct people through a longer route in terms of distance, however, the route is in fact minimizing the travel time for the system as a whole. If anyone were to deviate from the calculated route they would be doing a disservice to themselves, as well as others and breaking the equilibrium.
The next steps lie in the implementation of this software into more cars. According to the article: “Traffic simulations of the city of Berlin suggest that at around 20 per-cent of vehicles with traffic-aware navigation,” says Dr. Daniel Rolf, “everyone’s journey times might be cut by up to 30 per-cent. And the results just get better from there.” It makes sense that the effectiveness would increase with scale, since more data becomes available and more people’s actions become directed by the software. Even for people who don’t use the platform, their travel time would decrease since people who are using the platform would be diverted away which would in turn make room for those other drivers.
It will be interesting to see the development of this technology and how effective it will prove to be in the future.
http://360.here.com/2014/04/30/jams-game-theory-equations-science-of-traffic/