Here’s the Physics Behind That Insane Chinese Traffic Jam

A few days ago , a dronecaptured this eye - popping videoof the domain ’s worst traffic jam on the G4 Beijing - Hong Kong - Macau Expressway . Blame brumous atmospheric condition if you like , but purgative say it all fall down to a question of density — namely , an unusually high phone number of multitude render to Beijing after a week - long holiday fete .

I ’ve never seen anything like this , and I live in Los Angeles ; the City of Angels frequently top the list of places with the tough traffic in the country , along with Washington , DC , San Francisco , New York City , Atlanta , Chicago , and even Seattle . Traffic stream is a great trouble in most major urban centers . The median US automobilist spends 36 hr every yr in traffic time lag . But China — man , China takes the crown when it comes to deadly congested dealings . A study last yr foundthat the mediocre Chinese number one wood spends the equivalent weight of nine days a year stuck in traffic .

Scientists havebeen studying dealings patternsfor days , stress to build numerical model to devise some sort of solution to keep us all from click and turning into Michael Douglas ’s rampage automobilist , D - FENS , in the 1993 movie descend Down .

One of them is a physicist identify Boris Kerner with the Daimler Benz Research Institute in Stuttgart , Germany , whopublished a germinal paperin Physical Review Letters in 1998 . He analyzed datum take in from several age of dealings along German highways and institute that traffic follows the physics of ego organization .

Kerner ’s model sorts traffic into three class : freely fall , jam-packed ( upstanding state ) , and an intermediate res publica called contemporize menses , in which densely packed “ car molecules ” move in unison , like members of a march stria . As I wrote back in 2011 :

When this encounter — when all the cars are traveling at tight to the same average upper because of the vehicle density on the roadway — they become extremely dependent on one another . A physicist might compare the family relationship to the correlate motion of electron in metallic element , which gives acclivity to uncanny phenomenon like superconductivity .

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Highly correlate dealings means that a tiny perturbation — a butterfly stroke flapping its wings , or a individual driver braking unexpectedly — will institutionalize little riffle of corresponding lag through the entire chain of cars behind him / her . That ’s one reason why slowdowns and dealings jams occur most unremarkably at merge full point , specially exit and entering Allium tricoccum , or when lanes are close due to route construction .

Or at price gunpoint on mega - highways when not enough booths are open , pull 50 lanes electronic jamming - packed with cars — 50 lanes ? WTF , China ? ! ? — to merge down to 20 .

Granted , so - called “ phantom ” dealings jams ( or “ jamitons ” ) can go on even when there ’s no exacerbating constituent . It ’s a delicate reconciliation act . There ’s a critical doorway for traffic , and once it ’s reached , even tiny fluctuations can cause a chain reaction that eventually result in a jam . finally you get a “ pinch effect ” — that frustrative “ stop and go ” phenomenon , in which you take to the woods one minute jam only to encounter another a little further down the route , until they all meet into a single wide jam and dealings come to a stalemate .

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