I forgot about the cold! you have a great point. In germany they have a system called mitfahr meaning travel with. You register with a company as a driver or passenger, then when your going some place ether to work or taking a trip you let them know where you will be and how much space you have, they then arrange people to ride with you and that covers petrol etc. Its a fantastic system I have travelled all over Germany for pennies and met some really nice people along the way
Even though this guy couldn't figure out where these people went, there has to be other options available or people will just end up choosing to bite the bullet and pay whatever it takes to do what the need to do.
@@TimothyFish they most likely just shifted their travel time to a less congested (and therefore lower toll) time. Or they took the bus a little more often. Basically is everyone makes tiny changes the cumulative result can be huge
he basically said that if governemt sets a fee on a road which has traffic jams, people will have to pay for it or take a longer and not optimal road to the work (and pay more for fuel) or start using public transportation (which takes more time)
Once again: What happened to the people who stopped using the road? People who couldn't (or wouldn't) pay the price, were forced to somehow, someway think of a "solution": Perhaps changing office-location, quitting the job, stop school, who knows? Without knowing more about those people (and perhaps the hardships they went through) I wouldn't call this approach a complete success.
You are right, stopping (like keeping tension of road under control) plays very huge role on this. But also the little trick behind this is to keep "unncessary" cars at their home. Or to poke people to use public transport... if you make bridge cost 2€ and public transport 1€, people will stop using cars.
even having public transport at the same cost as the toll would be making sense because A: you don't have to pay for insurance, registration, maintenance, fuel, licensing of said class of vehicle, stress of driving... those amount to far greater savings than just the toll alone, that would amount to about 10 euro a day inside their pocket, just remember they have to pay those fees even if they aren't using their vehicle... with public transit - unless you have a subscription then you won't need to pay anything beyond what you are using which is a great cost savings strategy. Yes, you may have your vehicle for the weekends and fun times when you just want to have fun but wouldn't it be much more fun if it was actually without stressful traffic on roads that are fun instead of seeing that same road as a commute?
It's a band-aid method. Traffic will continue to increase as more people live within the same area. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, they have a system that guarantees that 20% of cars won't be on the street during certain times (based on the last number on the license plate, look it up). Did it help? Not really - I was there recently and it's as bad as I remember it from 15 years ago. The main problem with traffic is that everyone needs to do the same thing at the same time. There are ways around that.
The bigger issue here is what is the "right thing"? You see in the bread example, no one makes the decision about what the right thing is because it is controlled by many small choices of individuals. With traffic the problem is really that road use and financial cost are not really linked. Therefore the cost is in time spent in traffic jams. When someone outside the equation controls costs, those costs reappear in other ways. Who gets to decide which costs and outcomes are most important?
PissShiversss that's not true. It isn't brake checking that causes the traffic jam. It's ridiculous to say traffic always comes to a fucking halt because someone being tailgated decided to quickly tap their brakes. Usually the trigger is a curve in the road or merging points. Also, When people tailgate, they are forced to tap their brakes every now and then because there are always speed variations, which causes the chain reaction. People always tailgate even when the cars in front of them aren't going that slow. What exactly was false in my last post?
***** travelling at highway speeds, it would have to become a very large gap before it was too much. Just following the 3 second rule would suffice. It's not an issue of response time it's due to the fact that people have to brake at all.
Eliminate the accordion effect by maintaining a speed.. let the car in front of you get way ahead by the time you get to them they are speeding I could begin eliminating the stop This doesn't work because people are too stupid to see what you're trying to do and cut in front of you to eliminate that distance so you have to stop and the accordion effect continues
Yep, people who propose the “leave space” method of driving are being purposely ignorant of human nature. (And yes, I know truck drivers use this method, but that is because they are forced to leave space due to the need for longer breaking distances.)
You want to solve traffic jams, improve conmuter trains, like japan does, look at Tõkiõ, 40 million people live and the majority conmute by more of 40 trains lines. And the highways are 2 or 3 lanes. France has the RER and Transilien, Germany the S-bahn, Spain the Cercanias, My country Argentina has 11 conmuter lines, and the Americans (from USA), well, they are screwed with 12 lanes highways
brunoignaciogi That is not the answer, because the population keeps growing, if I put everybody onto trains you'd still have congestion over packed trains, if everybody walked you'd still have congestion, because the bottom line is,there is too many people, and it will only get worse. There is only one logical way to solve the problem of congestion, poverty, crime and destruction of our environment, is by reducing the number of people in the environment, on the planet. There is no other way, there is no magical solution, Japan is chock-a-block with people, they walk around with masks, because of the pollution created by the mass of people there. It is the trouble with people it everything and anything but facing the truth we need constructive laws to govern the number of people on the planet if we wish to have a future. The human species has to bring in constructive laws governing the birth of people, to control its numbers, you can do this with logical laws, based on responsible behaviour, which everybody claims they are intelligent and responsible people, then start excepting intelligent and responsible laws to reduce the number of people on the planet, instead of behaving like a virus and just endlessly multiplying and destroying everything. The solution to the problem is not endlessly breeding like your species is going on the verge of extinction.
Another one that's not capable of facing reality, like the person who has just wrote to me, telling me that only 3% of the world space is occupied by people, but he failed to take into account, the amount of natural land that has to be destroyed to feed this 3% of people which amounts to nearly 7 a half billion of them. You are like him and 98% of the world population, who do not understand you live on sections of land on a planet, neither one has in Infinity properties, but you all embrace a system of endless growth a system of endlessly multiplying. When the person shows me how they can endlessly multiply into a space that is fixed without destroying it, I will admit I am wrong. In fact why don't you take me up on my challenge which no government or scientists has been able to do. which is strange isn't it when they all embrace a ridiculous unworkable unsustainable system of endless growth. Take a cup, the limited space within the cup will represent the limited space of the land you live on, or planet. Hold it under the tap, the endless flow of water will represent the endless multiplying of people into this limited space. Now you show me how you can endlessly pour water into a cup without it ever overflowing, without trickery, if you can, then you will be defying the laws of physics. A fixed space no matter how big or small it is, is governed by the amount you can put into it by it's space not your desires or wishes, something that the human species is not capable of dealing with. It is not me that needs to stop smoking whatever I'm smoking, it is you. You are the typical member of the human species that has no ability to deal with anything that revolves around them, changing the way they behave or sacrificing to make the environment they live in a better healthier safer place. Every baby that is born, needs a place to live and food, you really do talk a load of rubbish, when you say, babies do not destroy the planet, you have no concept of reality, you have no concept of species to landmass reality either do you, you have no idea why the planet has existed for hundreds of millions of years and the billions of species upon it have coexisted for that length of time without destroying each other and the planet itself, until of course we came along. Why do you think the planet has existed for that long and not one single species as over multiplied and destroyed it. You really live in a dream world, it's no wonder the human species has no future when there's to many of you and not enough of me.
I won't read everyting you write it's just too much. and too stupid you are a stupid britain in a motorcycle (yeah i watch your channel, and that's what you do) "facing the truth"?, more like going to a mental hospital.
brunoignaciogi Spoken like a true selfish person who uses a car but refuses point-blank to recognise the problem it creates, for to do so would mean them giving up there car, that something you and them won't do. So your response is pointless, why are you communicating, simple you're trying to justify the use of something that creates a problem and you can only come up with the word stupid. Calling what I've said stupid, just shows the level of your mentality doesn't it. A person who is unable to deal with the truth though it stares them in the face every single day. The best thing to do if you have nothing constructive to say, and are unable to face the truth. Then don't say anything, because you just show yourself up for what you are. This conversation has come to an abrupt end just like your inability to deal with the truth.
PissShiversss Once again we see the same old behaviour pattern coming from the human species, because it's not capable of dealing with anything outside of its selfish wants. So when somebody faces it with the true, the only thing it as that's passing itself off as anything resembling constructive argument in its corner, is verbal abuse and sarcasm, to cover it inability to deal with or understand what the person is saying. This is what you are saying in reality. I am not intellectually capable of dealing with what this person is saying, so I am going to use abusive language and sarcasm, to cover my inability to grasp this information, absorb this information and operate upon this information, because I am ruled by my emotions and am unable to operate beyond them, because I am so pathetic, and I am going to show how pathetic I am in my comments to this person. You are all so boring. If you have no ability to absorb the information I am giving you, and are not able to come back with constructive debate, then the best thing for you to do, is not to say anything, because when you do, all you do is show yourself up for what you really are, Uncaring, Irresponsible and Unintelligent. But please carry on, I haven't had a good laugh for ages. This person represent 98% of you lot out there, and how you think and behave, and it is this behaviour, which is the reason why no intelligent life will directly contact you, and the reason your species has no future.
Shifting shifts would probably help. I bet some companies have conventional shifts for a mix of purposes (keeping tradition, supporting employees with families, calling or meeting with with other businesses during the day). The question remains: how to incentivize employers to run different shifts. Also, around here morning rush hour already lasts roughly from 7am to 10am. We would only gain so much from scattering (a subset of) shifts, and then we'd be back in the same dilemma.
A good rule of thumb is "congestion rates", which can reduce congestion rates by as much as 20 percent in Stockholm. It is possible that some people choose to avoid rush hour to avoid congestion to avoid congestion rates. Maybe they choose to go more to make their money safe
Stockholm - 5+bridges most congested, congestion charge ~$2, non-linear vehicle# and travel time graph (a little reduc. in # cars → lot reduc. in travel time), initially
Indeed, it works out well for the remaining commuters who pay the price. However, they benefit because other people who couldn't (or wouldn't) pay the price, were forced to somehow, someway think of a "solution": Perhaps changing office-location, quitting the job, stop school, who knows? What happened to the people who stopped using the road? Without knowing more about those people (and perhaps the hardships they went through) I wouldn't call this approach a complete success.
With the internet and other technology a lot people can be working from home instead of helping create gridlock. Its really very simple, you only commute for your first year at a job after which you should have gotten enough training be proficient at your job and company evaluates your performance and tells you to work from home. With the use of Voip, VNC and email, cheap internet, headsets and other technology a company can set up a system that would make working from home very easy and cheap.
I think a lot of people in the comment section are missing a crucial point. For this to work properly you need to have a viable alternative to car traffic. In Stockholm we have very decent public transportation, and the choice of whether or not to take the car to work is mostly a matter of slight extra comfort.
I'm not sure if it is the broken window fallacy, could you explain why you think so in more detail? If it is, then something things have been overlooked. Are these things enough to cancel out what was gained by less traffic and shorter commutes?
Here is a solution 1. In city centers all lorry and van deliveries must be during the night ie between midnight and 6 am 2. Single occupant cars not allowed - should use scooter instead 3. The number of taxis / Uber cars on the road should be regulated. Only a certain number of lisenses should be handed out, and they must be zoned. 4. Encourage more people to use scooters or bicycles instead of cars
@@musmic17 Yeah, and people don't have to find parking spots with taxis and Ubers. People searching for parking drive slower causing jams especially in small streets.
I certainly agree with you, and I must say I was disappointed when the exposer said that the authorities were unable to find out who was affected and how. My (frankly too optimistic) guess is that they may have started using public transportation or using cars collectivity to go to school or work, but I admit that is only a guess and proper surveys must be performed to judge the output of this program.
Realistically, people did various things, including combining various trips. Rather than driving one day for dry cleaning and another day to buy some groceries and another day for a Dr. appointment, for example, you could combine all the trips into the city into a single day. If enough people do this, it cuts down on traffic congestion _quite_ _significantly_ compared to business as usual.
Actually, in this case, the problem isn't that there are too many cars on the roads, otherwise the solution would be to place restrictions on the number of cars that people can buy. The problem is that there are too many cars on the road at the same time. In this case, displacing the cars would be a solution.
That's also what town planners assume, but in fact, traffic lights actually cause accidents. In the vast majority of cases, roundabouts and traditional junctions are not only more efficient than traffic lights, but they are safer.
Superb presentation. I recommend anyone interested in this topic research the efforts that Singapore has made in this area. You think Stockholm gets congested? Take a look at Singapore.
We've already got congestion charging in London, and while it worked originally you can't evade the real problem forever: that more and more people are going to use roads over time. Charging is a short term measure to a long term problem.
I think he should have included figures on public transportation usage in Stockholm and as explained how its managed. The big question is how easily reproducible are the results in car dominated cities.
I have thought about it. There are no costs to individual drivers for creating congestion for everyone else, this is exactly the problem. The government prevents this problem being solved by preventing private ownership of the roads. Congestion is simply a shortage of road space. A profit seeking private road owner will set the toll that maximises his income by attracting the highest number of customers without clogging the road so that the most number of cars pass. Same as selling bread.
thats the point... its discouraging people from driving so much by imposing relatively cheap fines that add up, and you can choose to be apart of either the 80% or the 20% its not unlike consumption taxes on alcohol and tobacco but unlike those taxes, this actually fulfills its purpose, it lowers congestion, not to mention the positive effect it has on the environment
Vancouver could possibly benefit from this as its very similar to Stockholm. right now we only have one current toll bridge (brand new) which is on a major highway... the port mann and the potential for another (replacing the tunnel with a bridge...) which would also be tolled, which was already tolled once before whats happening? most drivers avoid the port mann instead opting to take the older much dated putello bridge. if were gonna do this we should do so similar to stockholm every bridge/tunnel have a small "congestion" charge for peak periods rather then tolling single new bridges 5 bucks a pop. plus our transit system needs better management. we recently had a vote to increase sales tax to 0.5 to improve transit... no side won largely because no one trusts our transit organizers... too heavy management makes way too much does too little and is not stating to see cuts within the organization... IMO needs a complete rehaul for this to work
I agree. I have a thick swedish accent when I speak english, but its prefectly understadable unless I start to talk really fast. Its kind of like a american with a thick american accent start to speak spanish. As he/she doesn't have a latino accent it can be harder for latin americans to understand his/her spanish, dosen't change how well he/her can speak spanish however.
You just nailed it. "Forced to stop". Which is why traffic lights cause jams. Remove them and the traffic is free to flow again. If you still get jams, try adding a roundabout. More tax on gasoline would also help prevent jams, as well as helping reduce the CO2 emissions which are freaking planet Earth out.
That's why he stated nudging people in that direction. We all know driving at rush hour is bad, but we all still do it. So put a penalty/incentive in place to create change. After the change happens, the penalty/incentive can be removed and people's schedules have already adapted. This idea is in affect with our taxes and in private toll roads. Ideally its retraining drivers how to match travel speed, how to merge, and adding carpooling incentives. Driving is a privilege not a right.
Take a look at ERP system in Singapore (Electronic Road Pricing). Don't know which country started out first, not bothered either. Point is that this is a valid method.
The few dollars collected from each car passing on the congested roads would alleviate government aid spent on road maintenance and public transport and the less cars on the road would lessen wear on the roads. What a great idea.
As he explained the participants of the researches didn't feel like they changed anything. They didn't from one day to the other hate to drive. The 20% could come there in many other ways, change the time they start working or just use the public transport, which is pretty good in Stockholm.
Actually, the implementation discussed in this talk is technically (and officially) a tax in Sweden; search for [Congestion tax Swedish Transport Agency] if you don't believe it.
Go ahead and gather the facts. When you're back, we can discuss further whether his proposed solution was a net gain or net loss for the city. Until than, there's really not much that suggest it has any major problems. People don't drive for the sake of driving, so the fact that there's 20% fewer cars in the city centre does not mean that there are 20% more cars driving outside. And again, until we have this efficient way, we need to work with what we've got.
It's basic economics. The roads increase in value on rush-hour therefore people ought to be willing to pay more to be able to make use of it that time. That way only the people who truly need to be there will be driving and the rest, not willing to pay for it, will travel at other times.
Well, commerce (at least retail) and food require labor at a certain time of day because people like to shop and eat out at certain times of day.. of course, online shopping can reduce this necessity. As for manufacturing and doing other work around-the-clock, I guess that depends on finding enough workers who prefer working at night to spending a long time commuting, right?
Could you give an example of a situation where the unhampered free market has been allowed to function and yet a shortage or surplus of goods has remained? What do you mean exactly when you say it doesn't work?
The problem we have in the USA is that maintaining our road system cost more than the tax base that they are generating. In many case we give businesses tax incentives to move into town and we build roads to get people to the business, but then we have no tax money from the business to pay for maintaining those roads.
I live a life without any regular traffic. I work from home so I rarely see the problems that could be solved with a tweak to the traffic lights. I got jammed at a north Dallas intersection (N bound Preston ahd GBT) and wound up having to skip to the next intersection off the turnpike when I got stuck half way across the intersection. The intersection was badly mis-timed, and ten minutes of reprogramming would make it so people backed up onto the turnpike wouldn't have been stopped on a 70mph
If you have 3 or more lanes then its a damn busy road. Such roads are like arteries in your body - they must always have priority and must never be stopped by traffic lights. Where roads meet them, junctions should be built with ramps and slip roads. They are expensive to build, but vehicles will flow freely and journey times will be reduced which makes for a more efficient economy for decades to come. (I'm British by the way - the problem here is with traffic lights used on single lane roads).
If you think about it, it is precisely that the people are unable to work this out themselves that the government needs to do this. If the people were able to work this out, there wouldn't be traffic congestion, everyone would have weighed the costs of creating congestion for everyone else against the cost of them having to take some alternative transport to work and the problem would never have happened.
Those 20% of people didn't disappear from one day to the other, they used other means of transportation instead. The 20% didn't quit commuting to work the exact week after this measure was taken, which he showed.
As a Stockholmer, I can't really say I've experienced the image he is showing. Ok, to be fair, I'm avoiding tolls by going around the city centre whenever possible, but in the cases when I don't have an option, you can bet there's traffic congestions at rush hour, also in the city centre! Furthermore, he is not showing the extra congestions created outside of the tolls, while it may not be "relevant" to behavioural patterns, it is important for socioecononomical and environmental reasons!
But isn't the case in Lisbon that there's no feasible alternative? I guess there are ferries, but those are probably less convenient than transport within city. Also, as far as I can tell from the map in the talk, in Stockholm the “paid zone” is around 25 km² (eg. if I had to, I could probably walk from such toll bridge to whenever I need to get), whereas if I understand correctly, in Lisbon they bridges are the sole feasible connection to the south.
Eliasson sells it nicely, but his own bread example illustrates that the real solution is different. There is no issue with bread distribution because everyone can buy bread within a few miles from their home. Cities, on the other hand, compress more and more business into a small area. That's what causes congestion. The solution is as logical as it is easy: prevent high concentrations of businesses in small areas. This can be done using the same incentive mechanism of taxation.
It's not a matter of day versus night. It's a matter of scattering shifts. If a business runs 24 hours a day, you could be working 9am-5pm but the guy next to you could be 11am-7pm... etc. Which means my lunch break could be at noon whereas that guy's would be at 2pm. If everything is open 24 hours a day and everyone's shift is different, there would never be "rush hour". Traffic would flow evenly throughout the day. I do recognize this to be utopian thinking, but not impossible.
There's a shortage of roadway compared to demand, ergo an economic shortage. Increasing the price of something is the free market solution to shortages, but when capitalists do it, it's sometimes called "price gouging". Despite it's negative connotation, the supplier's urge to increase the price is a good thing; just as this central planner has figured out. This solves the problem in two ways. 1: It decreases quantity demanded. In other words, less people will buy the product, or in this case, less people are willing to drive on the highways. 2: It increases quantity supplied. In other words, it encourages suppliers (including new competitors) to produce more of the product since it is now more profitable to do so.
And you are right. But those aren't the 20% of people who stop using the roads. The people who stop would be the people who figure that they can get up half an hour earlier to get to work and avoid the congestion.
I don't know about Stockholm, but where I live, a lot of traffic problems could be solved by more intelligent signal operation. It's infuriating to approach a light and have it turn red on you, only to see that no one is coming the other way where the light is green. How difficult would it be to set up signals operated by an actual computer using sensors/cameras, instead of using half-century old, clockwork tech? Something that adapts to traffic flow, rather than using arbitrary time values...
let me give example like: if it is traffic jam of 10 cars, it maybe resolved in 1 minute... but if it is 100 cars it wont be 10 minute... it will be an hour. and maybe 300 car is 5 hours but when you put payment system, not only 20% of the car count decrease but also: When there are 10 cars, it takes 2 minutes (you are right at this point it slows the traffic) BUT when there are 100 cars it will take 20 minute... (no jam... just a fixed average waiting) time) and if 300 cars it will take 1 hour.
Is it worth a serious decrease in congestion? What about opportunity cost? Would you agree with it if it was not the government who increased the rates?
I couldn't agree more with people's comments about the terrible camera work - almost every time the chap showed a picture we suddenly reverted to a long shot from the back of the theater - some pictures early on we missed completely. Definitely not up to the standard we have expected of Ted talks - it was so bad that most of the comments are about the camera work. Come on TED, lets get back to some sensible editing.
So a monetary charge deters people more than the rush-hour traffic does (even though they occur at the same time)? Interesting. This either means that: A) Swedish people don't value their time (or value money more than) as much as people do where I live, or B) People in general take note of monetary values, while ignoring timing issues. To me, that is the most interesting part of this experiment.
I would agree on this if they want to decrease property taxes for the next 10 years, and past the cost to the highway, I think it would be a good deal.
As he explained at 2:39 he is talking about bridges to the centre of Stockholm. And because there is always finite number of entry points to the centre, you can tax all of them. I wouldn't be surprised if they had incentives for public transport as well. But that's outside of the scope of the talk. Nonetheless, those are unlikely to be a problem. Overcrowding of public transportation may or may not be a problem. What is your point?
Mr. Eliasson just spent eight minutes using traffic as an example of how the free market works without using the words. "Who is in charge of bread in London? ... It organizes itself." Boom! Adam Smith's invisible hand in 11 words.
All governments do not fail to prevent traffic congestion. This is an example of a government successfully preventing congestion and doing so by regulating user fees. "Where tolls are set by the free market there simply are no traffic jams."... by what evidence? As for the bread, its supply can be adjusted much easier than its demand. Roads seem to be the other way around. Its costs time and money to build them, but adjusting their demand is apparently relatively easy. Two different problems.
"Why are people wanting to keep a charge on something that used to be free?"
Stockholm Syndrome.
Most underrated comment ever lmao
Did anybody else get totally enraged when he showed the picture of what traffic looked like on Jan 3rd to the audience but the camera didn't show it?
Very poor video production, would have been caught if even one person watched the video in full before uploading. Sad.
really annoyed me
It's the picture on 8:06.
Image of Jan 3 shown at 8.28
I need that for a school project :/
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
-Futurama Galactic Entity
I forgot about the cold! you have a great point.
In germany they have a system called mitfahr meaning travel with.
You register with a company as a driver or passenger, then when your going some place ether to work or taking a trip you let them know where you will be and how much space you have, they then arrange people to ride with you and that covers petrol etc.
Its a fantastic system I have travelled all over Germany for pennies and met some really nice people along the way
So Uber/Lyft done correctly.
@@ericdew2021 indeed!
In NYC it's almost $10 just to go over the bridge. Hasn't stopped many people.
Even though this guy couldn't figure out where these people went, there has to be other options available or people will just end up choosing to bite the bullet and pay whatever it takes to do what the need to do.
@@TimothyFish they most likely just shifted their travel time to a less congested (and therefore lower toll) time. Or they took the bus a little more often. Basically is everyone makes tiny changes the cumulative result can be huge
he basically said that if governemt sets a fee on a road which has traffic jams, people will have to pay for it or take a longer and not optimal road to the work (and pay more for fuel) or start using public transportation (which takes more time)
Once again: What happened to the people who stopped using the road? People who couldn't (or wouldn't) pay the price, were forced to somehow, someway think of a "solution": Perhaps changing office-location, quitting the job, stop school, who knows? Without knowing more about those people (and perhaps the hardships they went through) I wouldn't call this approach a complete success.
You are right, stopping (like keeping tension of road under control) plays very huge role on this.
But also the little trick behind this is to keep "unncessary" cars at their home. Or to poke people to use public transport... if you make bridge cost 2€ and public transport 1€, people will stop using cars.
even having public transport at the same cost as the toll would be making sense because A: you don't have to pay for insurance, registration, maintenance, fuel, licensing of said class of vehicle, stress of driving... those amount to far greater savings than just the toll alone, that would amount to about 10 euro a day inside their pocket, just remember they have to pay those fees even if they aren't using their vehicle... with public transit - unless you have a subscription then you won't need to pay anything beyond what you are using which is a great cost savings strategy.
Yes, you may have your vehicle for the weekends and fun times when you just want to have fun but wouldn't it be much more fun if it was actually without stressful traffic on roads that are fun instead of seeing that same road as a commute?
It's a band-aid method. Traffic will continue to increase as more people live within the same area. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, they have a system that guarantees that 20% of cars won't be on the street during certain times (based on the last number on the license plate, look it up). Did it help? Not really - I was there recently and it's as bad as I remember it from 15 years ago. The main problem with traffic is that everyone needs to do the same thing at the same time. There are ways around that.
Great talk. Really showed me how effective this method can be. I can't wait to see the results when it gets implemented in Gothenburg in a few months.
He's on the right line here, because once they introduced a parking charge in town there was plenty of room where before you had to queue to park.
The bigger issue here is what is the "right thing"? You see in the bread example, no one makes the decision about what the right thing is because it is controlled by many small choices of individuals. With traffic the problem is really that road use and financial cost are not really linked. Therefore the cost is in time spent in traffic jams. When someone outside the equation controls costs, those costs reappear in other ways. Who gets to decide which costs and outcomes are most important?
If people would just quit fucking tailgating the problem would largely disappear! This would prevent a sustained wave in the traffic.
PissShiversss that's not true. It isn't brake checking that causes the traffic jam. It's ridiculous to say traffic always comes to a fucking halt because someone being tailgated decided to quickly tap their brakes. Usually the trigger is a curve in the road or merging points. Also, When people tailgate, they are forced to tap their brakes every now and then because there are always speed variations, which causes the chain reaction. People always tailgate even when the cars in front of them aren't going that slow. What exactly was false in my last post?
***** travelling at highway speeds, it would have to become a very large gap before it was too much. Just following the 3 second rule would suffice. It's not an issue of response time it's due to the fact that people have to brake at all.
Eliminate the accordion effect by maintaining a speed.. let the car in front of you get way ahead by the time you get to them they are speeding I could begin eliminating the stop
This doesn't work because people are too stupid to see what you're trying to do and cut in front of you to eliminate that distance so you have to stop and the accordion effect continues
Yes!
Yep, people who propose the “leave space” method of driving are being purposely ignorant of human nature. (And yes, I know truck drivers use this method, but that is because they are forced to leave space due to the need for longer breaking distances.)
You want to solve traffic jams, improve conmuter trains, like japan does, look at Tõkiõ, 40 million people live and the majority conmute by more of 40 trains lines. And the highways are 2 or 3 lanes.
France has the RER and Transilien, Germany the S-bahn, Spain the Cercanias, My country Argentina has 11 conmuter lines, and the Americans (from USA), well, they are screwed with 12 lanes highways
brunoignaciogi That is not the answer, because the population keeps growing, if I put everybody onto trains you'd still have congestion over packed trains, if everybody walked you'd still have congestion, because the bottom line is,there is too many people, and it will only get worse.
There is only one logical way to solve the problem of congestion, poverty, crime and destruction of our environment, is by reducing the number of people in the environment, on the planet.
There is no other way, there is no magical solution, Japan is chock-a-block with people, they walk around with masks, because of the pollution created by the mass of people there.
It is the trouble with people it everything and anything but facing the truth we need constructive laws to govern the number of people on the planet if we wish to have a future.
The human species has to bring in constructive laws governing the birth of people, to control its numbers, you can do this with logical laws, based on responsible behaviour, which everybody claims they are intelligent and responsible people, then start excepting intelligent and responsible laws to reduce the number of people on the planet, instead of behaving like a virus and just endlessly multiplying and destroying everything.
The solution to the problem is not endlessly breeding like your species is going on the verge of extinction.
Another one that's not capable of facing reality, like the person who has just wrote to me, telling me that only 3% of the world space is occupied by people, but he failed to take into account, the amount of natural land that has to be destroyed to feed this 3% of people which amounts to nearly 7 a half billion of them.
You are like him and 98% of the world population, who do not understand you live on sections of land on a planet, neither one has in Infinity properties, but you all embrace a system of endless growth a system of endlessly multiplying.
When the person shows me how they can endlessly multiply into a space that is fixed without destroying it, I will admit I am wrong.
In fact why don't you take me up on my challenge which no government or scientists has been able to do. which is strange isn't it when they all embrace a ridiculous unworkable unsustainable system of endless growth.
Take a cup, the limited space within the cup will represent the limited space of the land you live on, or planet. Hold it under the tap, the endless flow of water will represent the endless multiplying of people into this limited space.
Now you show me how you can endlessly pour water into a cup without it ever overflowing, without trickery, if you can, then you will be defying the laws of physics.
A fixed space no matter how big or small it is, is governed by the amount you can put into it by it's space not your desires or wishes, something that the human species is not capable of dealing with.
It is not me that needs to stop smoking whatever I'm smoking, it is you.
You are the typical member of the human species that has no ability to deal with anything that revolves around them, changing the way they behave or sacrificing to make the environment they live in a better healthier safer place.
Every baby that is born, needs a place to live and food, you really do talk a load of rubbish, when you say, babies do not destroy the planet, you have no concept of reality, you have no concept of species to landmass reality either do you, you have no idea why the planet has existed for hundreds of millions of years and the billions of species upon it have coexisted for that length of time without destroying each other and the planet itself, until of course we came along.
Why do you think the planet has existed for that long and not one single species as over multiplied and destroyed it. You really live in a dream world, it's no wonder the human species has no future when there's to many of you and not enough of me.
I won't read everyting you write it's just too much. and too stupid
you are a stupid britain in a motorcycle (yeah i watch your channel, and that's what you do)
"facing the truth"?, more like going to a mental hospital.
brunoignaciogi Spoken like a true selfish person who uses a car but refuses point-blank to recognise the problem it creates, for to do so would mean them giving up there car, that something you and them won't do.
So your response is pointless, why are you communicating, simple you're trying to justify the use of something that creates a problem and you can only come up with the word stupid.
Calling what I've said stupid, just shows the level of your mentality doesn't it.
A person who is unable to deal with the truth though it stares them in the face every single day.
The best thing to do if you have nothing constructive to say, and are unable to face the truth.
Then don't say anything, because you just show yourself up for what you are.
This conversation has come to an abrupt end just like your inability to deal with the truth.
PissShiversss Once again we see the same old behaviour pattern coming from the human species, because it's not capable of dealing with anything outside of its selfish wants.
So when somebody faces it with the true, the only thing it as that's passing itself off as anything resembling constructive argument in its corner, is verbal abuse and sarcasm, to cover it inability to deal with or understand what the person is saying.
This is what you are saying in reality.
I am not intellectually capable of dealing with what this person is saying, so I am going to use abusive language and sarcasm, to cover my inability to grasp this information, absorb this information and operate upon this information, because I am ruled by my emotions and am unable to operate beyond them, because I am so pathetic, and I am going to show how pathetic I am in my comments to this person.
You are all so boring.
If you have no ability to absorb the information I am giving you, and are not able to come back with constructive debate, then the best thing for you to do, is not to say anything, because when you do, all you do is show yourself up for what you really are, Uncaring, Irresponsible and Unintelligent.
But please carry on, I haven't had a good laugh for ages.
This person represent 98% of you lot out there, and how you think and behave, and it is this behaviour, which is the reason why no intelligent life will directly contact you, and the reason your species has no future.
4:58 oh gosh, mr nerd pls stop being so adorbs, i can't handle
Shifting shifts would probably help. I bet some companies have conventional shifts for a mix of purposes (keeping tradition, supporting employees with families, calling or meeting with with other businesses during the day). The question remains: how to incentivize employers to run different shifts.
Also, around here morning rush hour already lasts roughly from 7am to 10am. We would only gain so much from scattering (a subset of) shifts, and then we'd be back in the same dilemma.
Fascinating, excellent video.
Excellent talk! Concise, well-informed and eye-opening!
A good rule of thumb is "congestion rates", which can reduce congestion rates by as much as 20 percent in Stockholm. It is possible that some people choose to avoid rush hour to avoid congestion to avoid congestion rates. Maybe they choose to go more to make their money safe
Stockholm - 5+bridges most congested, congestion charge ~$2, non-linear vehicle# and travel time graph (a little reduc. in # cars → lot reduc. in travel time), initially
Watching this while stuck on a bus in traffic.
This reminds me of Brave New World. "Nudge the people..."
Indeed, it works out well for the remaining commuters who pay the price. However, they benefit because other people who couldn't (or wouldn't) pay the price, were forced to somehow, someway think of a "solution": Perhaps changing office-location, quitting the job, stop school, who knows? What happened to the people who stopped using the road? Without knowing more about those people (and perhaps the hardships they went through) I wouldn't call this approach a complete success.
With the internet and other technology a lot people can be working from home instead of helping create gridlock.
Its really very simple, you only commute for your first year at a job after which you should have gotten enough training be proficient at your job and company evaluates your performance and tells you to work from home.
With the use of Voip, VNC and email, cheap internet, headsets and other technology a company can set up a system that would make working from home very easy and cheap.
I think a lot of people in the comment section are missing a crucial point. For this to work properly you need to have a viable alternative to car traffic. In Stockholm we have very decent public transportation, and the choice of whether or not to take the car to work is mostly a matter of slight extra comfort.
Yes, maybe limit it to the local area residents or who work there. Something like that works well in estonia.
I'm not sure if it is the broken window fallacy, could you explain why you think so in more detail? If it is, then something things have been overlooked. Are these things enough to cancel out what was gained by less traffic and shorter commutes?
Here is a solution
1. In city centers all lorry and van deliveries must be during the night ie between midnight and 6 am
2. Single occupant cars not allowed - should use scooter instead
3. The number of taxis / Uber cars on the road should be regulated. Only a certain number of lisenses should be handed out, and they must be zoned.
4. Encourage more people to use scooters or bicycles instead of cars
Craig Paardekooper all of those are correct except number 3. Taxis and Ubers encourage people to get rid of their car (no insurance fees, gas, etc).
@@musmic17 Yeah, and people don't have to find parking spots with taxis and Ubers.
People searching for parking drive slower causing jams especially in small streets.
5) Increase public transport like buses, trains and carpooling. (Is carpooling public transport?)
Always a brilliant strategy to alienate part of your viewing audience early on! 👍
How amazing how the swedish accent and speach melody comes through his english !!
Yeah ... ?
I, of course, do as well. My point was how they fit together.
The best traffic solution it let it flow until it bore or unable to flow or seek other route
I certainly agree with you, and I must say I was disappointed when the exposer said that the authorities were unable to find out who was affected and how. My (frankly too optimistic) guess is that they may have started using public transportation or using cars collectivity to go to school or work, but I admit that is only a guess and proper surveys must be performed to judge the output of this program.
Realistically, people did various things, including combining various trips. Rather than driving one day for dry cleaning and another day to buy some groceries and another day for a Dr. appointment, for example, you could combine all the trips into the city into a single day. If enough people do this, it cuts down on traffic congestion _quite_ _significantly_ compared to business as usual.
"Uh de, this is Vladmir, who is in charge of bread supply." I would love to get this phone call heheh
Actually, in this case, the problem isn't that there are too many cars on the roads, otherwise the solution would be to place restrictions on the number of cars that people can buy. The problem is that there are too many cars on the road at the same time. In this case, displacing the cars would be a solution.
That's also what town planners assume, but in fact, traffic lights actually cause accidents. In the vast majority of cases, roundabouts and traditional junctions are not only more efficient than traffic lights, but they are safer.
Superb presentation. I recommend anyone interested in this topic research the efforts that Singapore has made in this area. You think Stockholm gets congested? Take a look at Singapore.
We've already got congestion charging in London, and while it worked originally you can't evade the real problem forever: that more and more people are going to use roads over time. Charging is a short term measure to a long term problem.
I think he should have included figures on public transportation usage in Stockholm and as explained how its managed. The big question is how easily reproducible are the results in car dominated cities.
I have thought about it. There are no costs to individual drivers for creating congestion for everyone else, this is exactly the problem. The government prevents this problem being solved by preventing private ownership of the roads. Congestion is simply a shortage of road space. A profit seeking private road owner will set the toll that maximises his income by attracting the highest number of customers without clogging the road so that the most number of cars pass. Same as selling bread.
thats the point...
its discouraging people from driving so much by imposing relatively cheap fines that add up, and you can choose to be apart of either the 80% or the 20%
its not unlike consumption taxes on alcohol and tobacco
but unlike those taxes, this actually fulfills its purpose, it lowers congestion, not to mention the positive effect it has on the environment
Vancouver could possibly benefit from this as its very similar to Stockholm.
right now we only have one current toll bridge (brand new) which is on a major highway... the port mann and the potential for another (replacing the tunnel with a bridge...) which would also be tolled, which was already tolled once before
whats happening? most drivers avoid the port mann instead opting to take the older much dated putello bridge. if were gonna do this we should do so similar to stockholm every bridge/tunnel have a small "congestion" charge for peak periods rather then tolling single new bridges 5 bucks a pop.
plus our transit system needs better management. we recently had a vote to increase sales tax to 0.5 to improve transit... no side won largely because no one trusts our transit organizers... too heavy management makes way too much does too little and is not stating to see cuts within the organization... IMO needs a complete rehaul for this to work
I agree. I have a thick swedish accent when I speak english, but its prefectly understadable unless I start to talk really fast. Its kind of like a american with a thick american accent start to speak spanish. As he/she doesn't have a latino accent it can be harder for latin americans to understand his/her spanish, dosen't change how well he/her can speak spanish however.
You just nailed it. "Forced to stop". Which is why traffic lights cause jams. Remove them and the traffic is free to flow again. If you still get jams, try adding a roundabout.
More tax on gasoline would also help prevent jams, as well as helping reduce the CO2 emissions which are freaking planet Earth out.
That's why he stated nudging people in that direction. We all know driving at rush hour is bad, but we all still do it. So put a penalty/incentive in place to create change. After the change happens, the penalty/incentive can be removed and people's schedules have already adapted. This idea is in affect with our taxes and in private toll roads. Ideally its retraining drivers how to match travel speed, how to merge, and adding carpooling incentives.
Driving is a privilege not a right.
He looks really funny when you watch this without sound
Good point, but I would argue sheer traffic volume is not the only factor. Traffic Jams can be a matter of bad city planning or infrastructure.
thanks you gave me the brilliant idea
Take a look at ERP system in Singapore (Electronic Road Pricing).
Don't know which country started out first, not bothered either. Point is that this is a valid method.
classic literature principle: show not tell. When people are shown what change looks like, they don't even need to be told to change.
Financial incentives (and disincentives) are the most powerful means to get people to do things (or not do things).
Agreed. But like I've said, so far no one has came up with anything better, so we have to work with what we've got.
The few dollars collected from each car passing on the congested roads would alleviate government aid spent on road maintenance and public transport and the less cars on the road would lessen wear on the roads. What a great idea.
As he explained the participants of the researches didn't feel like they changed anything. They didn't from one day to the other hate to drive. The 20% could come there in many other ways, change the time they start working or just use the public transport, which is pretty good in Stockholm.
Actually, the implementation discussed in this talk is technically (and officially) a tax in Sweden; search for [Congestion tax Swedish Transport Agency] if you don't believe it.
Guy looks like he's gonna serve me tea and biscuits
Go ahead and gather the facts. When you're back, we can discuss further whether his proposed solution was a net gain or net loss for the city. Until than, there's really not much that suggest it has any major problems.
People don't drive for the sake of driving, so the fact that there's 20% fewer cars in the city centre does not mean that there are 20% more cars driving outside.
And again, until we have this efficient way, we need to work with what we've got.
It's basic economics. The roads increase in value on rush-hour therefore people ought to be willing to pay more to be able to make use of it that time.
That way only the people who truly need to be there will be driving and the rest, not willing to pay for it, will travel at other times.
You're right, it's a solution for rich people and rich countries, countries in development will never use charges to control the flow of the traffic.
Well, commerce (at least retail) and food require labor at a certain time of day because people like to shop and eat out at certain times of day.. of course, online shopping can reduce this necessity.
As for manufacturing and doing other work around-the-clock, I guess that depends on finding enough workers who prefer working at night to spending a long time commuting, right?
Could you give an example of a situation where the unhampered free market has been allowed to function and yet a shortage or surplus of goods has remained? What do you mean exactly when you say it doesn't work?
Tolls in USA were introduced to pay for road repairs. They never went away.
The problem we have in the USA is that maintaining our road system cost more than the tax base that they are generating. In many case we give businesses tax incentives to move into town and we build roads to get people to the business, but then we have no tax money from the business to pay for maintaining those roads.
And the roads were never fixed (la county)
"The first day with the charges looked like this"
*camer pans to Eliasson and stays on him almost til the end of the slide*
Brilliant editing there :/
2012 this video was made. Still hasn't been solved
I live a life without any regular traffic. I work from home so I rarely see the problems that could be solved with a tweak to the traffic lights.
I got jammed at a north Dallas intersection (N bound Preston ahd GBT) and wound up having to skip to the next intersection off the turnpike when I got stuck half way across the intersection. The intersection was badly mis-timed, and ten minutes of reprogramming would make it so people backed up onto the turnpike wouldn't have been stopped on a 70mph
If you have 3 or more lanes then its a damn busy road. Such roads are like arteries in your body - they must always have priority and must never be stopped by traffic lights. Where roads meet them, junctions should be built with ramps and slip roads. They are expensive to build, but vehicles will flow freely and journey times will be reduced which makes for a more efficient economy for decades to come. (I'm British by the way - the problem here is with traffic lights used on single lane roads).
If you think about it, it is precisely that the people are unable to work this out themselves that the government needs to do this. If the people were able to work this out, there wouldn't be traffic congestion, everyone would have weighed the costs of creating congestion for everyone else against the cost of them having to take some alternative transport to work and the problem would never have happened.
Great! This problem, and many others are solved.
Those 20% of people didn't disappear from one day to the other, they used other means of transportation instead. The 20% didn't quit commuting to work the exact week after this measure was taken, which he showed.
OMG...the ramifications of this are amazing.
I also invite any bicycle proponents to try them out in areas where there's ice and snow half the year.
As a Stockholmer, I can't really say I've experienced the image he is showing. Ok, to be fair, I'm avoiding tolls by going around the city centre whenever possible, but in the cases when I don't have an option, you can bet there's traffic congestions at rush hour, also in the city centre!
Furthermore, he is not showing the extra congestions created outside of the tolls, while it may not be "relevant" to behavioural patterns, it is important for socioecononomical and environmental reasons!
Oh God, someone make 4:55 into a GIF or something! Just look at those crazy eyes!
But isn't the case in Lisbon that there's no feasible alternative? I guess there are ferries, but those are probably less convenient than transport within city.
Also, as far as I can tell from the map in the talk, in Stockholm the “paid zone” is around 25 km² (eg. if I had to, I could probably walk from such toll bridge to whenever I need to get), whereas if I understand correctly, in Lisbon they bridges are the sole feasible connection to the south.
He gets really excited at 5:00
From traffic jams to complex systems analysis and how to clear roads while charging people money and they like it.
Eliasson sells it nicely, but his own bread example illustrates that the real solution is different. There is no issue with bread distribution because everyone can buy bread within a few miles from their home. Cities, on the other hand, compress more and more business into a small area. That's what causes congestion. The solution is as logical as it is easy: prevent high concentrations of businesses in small areas. This can be done using the same incentive mechanism of taxation.
It's not a matter of day versus night. It's a matter of scattering shifts. If a business runs 24 hours a day, you could be working 9am-5pm but the guy next to you could be 11am-7pm... etc. Which means my lunch break could be at noon whereas that guy's would be at 2pm. If everything is open 24 hours a day and everyone's shift is different, there would never be "rush hour". Traffic would flow evenly throughout the day.
I do recognize this to be utopian thinking, but not impossible.
Every nerd out there understands his reaction at 4:54!!
has been done in london and the same results were achieved. But this only works where there is good public transport.
Amazing talk.
Rationalizing sounds like a pretty good thing.
You'll be pleased to know, my arm pits are genuine sir.
There's a shortage of roadway compared to demand, ergo an economic shortage. Increasing the price of something is the free market solution to shortages, but when capitalists do it, it's sometimes called "price gouging". Despite it's negative connotation, the supplier's urge to increase the price is a good thing; just as this central planner has figured out.
This solves the problem in two ways.
1: It decreases quantity demanded. In other words, less people will buy the product, or in this case, less people are willing to drive on the highways.
2: It increases quantity supplied. In other words, it encourages suppliers (including new competitors) to produce more of the product since it is now more profitable to do so.
And you are right. But those aren't the 20% of people who stop using the roads. The people who stop would be the people who figure that they can get up half an hour earlier to get to work and avoid the congestion.
I don't know about Stockholm, but where I live, a lot of traffic problems could be solved by more intelligent signal operation. It's infuriating to approach a light and have it turn red on you, only to see that no one is coming the other way where the light is green. How difficult would it be to set up signals operated by an actual computer using sensors/cameras, instead of using half-century old, clockwork tech? Something that adapts to traffic flow, rather than using arbitrary time values...
let me give example like: if it is traffic jam of 10 cars, it maybe resolved in 1 minute... but if it is 100 cars it wont be 10 minute... it will be an hour. and maybe 300 car is 5 hours but when you put payment system, not only 20% of the car count decrease but also: When there are 10 cars, it takes 2 minutes (you are right at this point it slows the traffic) BUT when there are 100 cars it will take 20 minute... (no jam... just a fixed average waiting) time) and if 300 cars it will take 1 hour.
Is it worth a serious decrease in congestion? What about opportunity cost? Would you agree with it if it was not the government who increased the rates?
I couldn't agree more with people's comments about the terrible camera work - almost every time the chap showed a picture we suddenly reverted to a long shot from the back of the theater - some pictures early on we missed completely. Definitely not up to the standard we have expected of Ted talks - it was so bad that most of the comments are about the camera work. Come on TED, lets get back to some sensible editing.
how to solve traffic jams? flying cars. boom. done. over.
Then why do we have traffic jams? In which cities does the government regulate tolls unsuccessfully?
So a monetary charge deters people more than the rush-hour traffic does (even though they occur at the same time)? Interesting. This either means that: A) Swedish people don't value their time (or value money more than) as much as people do where I live, or B) People in general take note of monetary values, while ignoring timing issues. To me, that is the most interesting part of this experiment.
Just pause at 4:28 and you can see it.
I would agree on this if they want to decrease property taxes for the next 10 years, and past the cost to the highway, I think it would be a good deal.
Where the money from congestion charges goes? Is it invested in public transportation or in better and larger roads?
As he explained at 2:39 he is talking about bridges to the centre of Stockholm. And because there is always finite number of entry points to the centre, you can tax all of them.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had incentives for public transport as well. But that's outside of the scope of the talk. Nonetheless, those are unlikely to be a problem. Overcrowding of public transportation may or may not be a problem. What is your point?
Mr. Eliasson just spent eight minutes using traffic as an example of how the free market works without using the words. "Who is in charge of bread in London? ... It organizes itself." Boom! Adam Smith's invisible hand in 11 words.
You're driving me crazy!
"When you do things right, people won't think you've done anything at all." God-like entity, Futurama.
All governments do not fail to prevent traffic congestion. This is an example of a government successfully preventing congestion and doing so by regulating user fees.
"Where tolls are set by the free market there simply are no traffic jams."... by what evidence?
As for the bread, its supply can be adjusted much easier than its demand. Roads seem to be the other way around. Its costs time and money to build them, but adjusting their demand is apparently relatively easy. Two different problems.