Living with the Federal Highway
March 6th, 2007 by boon
Since I now live in Subang Jaya, I am forced to take the Federal Highway to get to and fro the city, apart from those tolled roads.
And because I actually do have patience for traffic jams, I spend my time calculating which is the fastest way through rows of gridlock without using an emergency lane and pissing off people.
So, it’s like a game.
My wife is always asking rhetoric questions (as a lot of girls do), and one of those questions is why are there traffic jams. And of course, you’d have to leave it to extremely geeky people to come up with complex equations and theories about traffic jams.
For example, Wikipedia has interesting articles related to traffic congestion. One of it is titled “Three phase traffic theory“, introduced by Boris Kerner. It’s written in a way I can’t understand it. But there’s also a more generic article that’s simply titled, “Traffic Congestion“.
There are other, more orthodox theories about congestion, one of which promotes driving at a slower constant speed (which work for dense but moving traffic, but not gridlocks), and preventive driving habits like not talking on your phone while driving and so on.
I have some theories of my own. Impressed by fluid mechanics, I made the following stipulations…
1. congestion due to lane merges onto a major highway.
The fast lane becomes a slow lane because traffic is merging deeper into the lanes, right towards the fast lane.
Solution: Just a few hundred metres before the lane merge, switch lanes to the slow lane (which will be faster), and keep with the traffic and follow the merging traffic back into the fast lane, and the fast lane should speed up once past the congestion merging zone.
2. congestion due to accidents.
Solution: Keep on the furthest lane away from the accident. That lane tends to move faster because they cannot observe the accident as well as the closer lanes. Always keep your pace.
Forget about your 4D. Ignore the accident and never ever slow down unless necessary. Slowing down in order to observe the accident promotes the congestion. Always speed up to create a gap behind you, so the driver behind will be encouraged to speed up as well.
3. Unknown gridlocks.
On a long stretch of road where you don’t know why or what is causing the jam. Always keep a look out for the “faster” lane. This lane always seems to be moving faster, occasionally slowing down or stopping intermittently, but continues to its regular pace after that.
After this lane slows down, be prepared to watch for gaps in order to switch to that lane. Just ride with the traffic and see cars pass by beside you.
I have a few other theories, but I think they’re too random to prove. But if I keep entertaining myself like this, I think I shouldn’t take too long to draw more conclusions from my observations.
My theory is simple. When in a traffic jam, the slowest lane is the one I’m on…:-(
so poor thing. that must’ve been the reason why you bought the DS.
Sooyin, sometimes I get that too! When I see the lane on my side going zoom, I try to catch the zoom by switching lanes and instead, the cars slow down to a stop. The previous lane I was on was zooming instead…argh!
My take on traffic in KL: there are just too many cars. The roads were not designed for such a volume of traffic. Don’t forget the queue jumpers and road hoggers (i.e. doing 60 on the right most lane on the NKVE…) Many bottle neck sections along major roads. Crappy traffic policemen that can’t seem to direct traffic properly.
Oh let’s not forget crappy LRT/Kommuter service and public road transportation. Don’t forget about the 4.4b MYR the government saved from our fuel subsidies and the pledge they made to improve the traffic infrastructure.