Jason Sun
Every morning, students drive to school through a heap of traffic. Hundreds of cars piled up, all spewing CO2 , slowly creeping in and out of campus.
I have a solution that can significantly improve the daily commute.
With three friends, we meticulously gathered traffic data from crucial intersections around the campus. I then constructed a comprehensive computer model of the morning IRHS traffic, incorporating real-world data, observations, and satellite imaging.
Key takeaways? We need better public transit, designated pedestrian paths in the parking lot, and more efficient car routes to enter and exit the school campus. More on that later.
Here's how the simulation works.
During the data collection, we stood at each IRHS intersection and tallied the number of cars making each type of turn each minute. That information tells us where the cars at the intersections typically want to go and at what time.
Using that information, we can simulate tiny little cars (the black circles on the simulation) programmed to follow traffic laws that decide where to go based on the real-world data collected. These little simulated cars know how to keep their distance from other vehicles, obey the right of way, and yield to the red lights that toggle between red and green every 30 seconds.
On the right, a chart shows the number of cars on campus over time.
Note that there are two lines. The bottom line shows the number of stationary vehicles. In this case, you can see that about 90% of the cars aren’t moving in the simulation (for every car crossing an intersection, 9 more are lined up behind it). And that’s exactly what’s happening in the real world.
Notice how in the graph, the number of moving cars (the thin strip on top) is always constant. That’s because only so many cars can cross intersections at any given time.
Also, the graph shows that most cars are piled up on campus at 8:30 am. That’s because people wait until the last minute to get to school!
We also have a plot of the rate of CO2 emissions.
Cars emit 30g/min of CO2 when stationary but only 10g/min when moving (Gonzalez, 2024)! That’s another reason why we need to solve the traffic problem.
If cars are constantly moving, we can reduce carbon emissions by a factor of 3.
Finally, we have a plot of the number of students delivered to school thus far.
Notice how the graph is perfectly linear. Okay, so?
This means that no matter how many cars are on campus, the rate at which students are delivered is always the same. It doesn’t matter if there are 5 cars or 20 cars lined up trying to get in, the students can only get delivered so fast.
What can we take away from the simulation?
The great thing about having a near-perfect computer replica of the traffic is that you can play around and experiment with the traffic. You can control the traffic, you can change up the routes, and you can add additional rules. That’s not something you can do directly in the real world.
Let’s see what happens when we take some cars off the road.
Recall that the traffic currently looks like this.
Horrible. 9 in 10 cars aren’t moving. At 8:30 am, there are 165 cars on the campus, all trying to get out.
What happens if 30% of the students who currently drive now take public transit, walk, or bike to school?
Now, the traffic is gone! About half the cars are moving at any given time, so there’s essentially zero traffic. There’s at most 63 cars on the campus, which is a lot better than the 165 we currently have in the real world.
By reducing the number of students who drive to school by 1/3, we reduced the amount of cars on the road by 3 times.
How does that work? Why is there such a big return on investment? Well, when there are fewer cars on the road, cars can enter and leave the campus more efficiently. When more cars are on the road, the cars have a harder time moving around. Because of this, traffic breeds more traffic.
Solutions?
What is my solution to the IRHS traffic problem? Well, there’s a few things.
First, we need more students to walk, bike, or take the bus. As we’ve seen earlier, reducing the number of students who drive to school is an effective way to reduce traffic.
But you might say “If everybody puts in the effort to walk or bike to school, there’s no point in having reduced traffic since everybody’s walking.” And you’d be right! People drive to school for a reason.
That’s why public transit is so important.
Currently, Oakville Transit is not an effective or reliable way to get to school. That’s why many people choose to drive over taking the bus.
I tried taking Oakville Transit once. The bus didn’t show up. So I had to run from the bus stop back to my house and bike to school. It wasn’t until I got to school that I learned that the bus arrived at the stop at 8:32 am (15 minutes late) and would’ve arrived at school 10 minutes into my history class.
So I’m assuming that’s how Oakville Transit buses are every day.
Buses only come every 30 minutes, so unless you’re extremely lucky with the location of your house and bus stop, there isn’t even a viable bus in the first place.
That’s why the city needs to invest in public transit.
Another solution is school buses.
School buses are an alternative to public transit. The great thing about school buses is that the school can control the buses. Unlike Oakville Transit, if we need more school buses or alternative routes, we can do that.
Second, another solution is introducing pedestrian pathways into the parking lot. Why?
When students walk or bike to school, they walk through the parking lot to the front door (because there’s no path). The students walk straight into the traffic, and you can see it happening every morning through the windows. That’s right, students play a game of Crossy Road every morning on the way to school. Not only is this dangerous for the students, it also slows down traffic.
The cars start and stop every 10 meters or so to avoid hitting a student. An easy way to fix this is by adding a pedestrian pathway from the grass to the school.
The third solution is creating fixed routes to enter and exit the campus. Currently, cars come in from many different entrances and travel in random directions.
At the moment, there are three spots to enter and the same three spots to exit.
(The yellow line indicates the drop-off zone)
The entrances and exits aren’t being used efficiently, as most people are trying to cram into the tiny road in the middle (which is closest to the school). An alternative road plan is as follows.
This design is more efficient because the drop-off zone is larger. There are more places for students to get off the car, which speeds up the traffic on campus. This can be achieved by painting the roads to indicate routes and drop-off zones.
And that’s it! Hopefully these changes are implemented and we see less people late to school and stuck in traffic all the time.
References
Gonzales, S. (2024, March 18). How much CO2 does a car emit per mile: List by type, size, energy source. 8 Billion Trees. https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/how-much-co2-does-a-car-emit-per-mile/
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