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A/B Street: A simulation game to fix Seattle's traffic

abstreet.org

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Re: A/B Street: A simulation game to fix Seattle's traffic

#2
Hi, author here. Previously posted to HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763636). I just released alpha -- check out this cheesy trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxPD4n_1-LU).

Happy to answer questions! And if you're serious about running this in your city, the importing process has improved greatly since December, so get in touch.

Re: A/B Street: A simulation game to fix Seattle's traffic

#4

Hi, author here. Previously posted to HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763636 ). I just released alpha -- check out this cheesy trailer ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxPD4n_1-LU ). Happy to answer questions! And if you're serious about running this in your city, the importing process has improved greatly since December, so get in touch.

Kudos for this.

Does this only simulate what would be considered a typical traffic load, or can it simulate outlier events (sport games, concerts, COVID quarantine, etc)?

Re: A/B Street: A simulation game to fix Seattle's traffic

#5
I've been really hoping for the Maps team at Google/Waze to release a similar "traffic congestion" view to highlight consistent hot spots. A simulation is also pretty good, but the real data from Maps/Waze users will be even better!

Ideally, a government dashboard to see traffic congestion changes per year, month, day of week, but also hour. If we can create metrics for cities like p99 door-door trip time (i.e. latency) policy makers can better measure changes, bottlenecks, etc and plan better.

Re: A/B Street: A simulation game to fix Seattle's traffic

#6
The trailer looks amazing. I was actually just imagining a video game like this a few days ago, so it is something of a wish fulfillment plus baader meinhoff syndrome to see this.

I can't wait till tonight when I'll have enough time to get it installed and try it out!

Re: A/B Street: A simulation game to fix Seattle's traffic

#7
post #4

Hi, author here. Previously posted to HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763636 ). I just released alpha -- check out this cheesy trailer ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxPD4n_1-LU ). Happy to answer questions! And if you're serious about running this in your city, the importing process has improved greatly since December, so get in touch.

Kudos for this. Does this only simulate what would be considered a typical traffic load, or can it simulate outlier events (sport games, concerts, COVID quarantine, etc)?

Only fixed trips coming from https://www.psrc.org/activity-based-travel-model-soundcast. Demand modelling is next -- changes you make to the map will influence existing trips to change mode. The biggest difficulty in simulating outlier events is making a clear UI for specifying that new load.

Re: A/B Street: A simulation game to fix Seattle's traffic

#9
This project is wicked cool, and I almost missed that they built it using Rust. I like the language a lot, and I think something like this is a sign of it moving towards real maturity, where the utility of the programs starts outshining the method of its construction. I'll be really curious to see if any project proposals end up citing this over the next couple years as an impetus for starting to experiment with different approaches to their traffic infrastructure, or at least inspiring people to become more engaged with it.
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