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Articles on Moving the Masses

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When cars, trucks, bikes and pedestrians come together at an intersection, design makes the difference between collisions and safety. pxhere

We can design better intersections that are safer for all users

Collisions at intersections between motor vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians cause many deaths and injuries. Design that considers how each group approaches intersections improves everyone’s safety.
The settings on traffic lights make pedestrians wait longer by giving higher priority to vehicle traffic. Abaconda Management Group/Wikimedia

How traffic signals favour cars and discourage walking

Everyone doesn’t simply wait their turn at traffic lights. Signals are set up to enable a ‘green wave’ for cars and adjust to heavy traffic, making walkers wait longer no matter how many there are.
Whether it’s birds in a flock or drivers in traffic, agent-based modelling can describe complex phenomena by applying a simple set of rules to each individual’s behaviour. Barry Sweet/EPA

Traffic is complex, but modelling using deceptively simple rules can help unravel what’s going on

By identifying and applying the key rules governing the behaviour of each individual, agent-based modelling offers insights into complex phenomena like traffic jams and flocking.
Ant colonies direct traffic flows of millions of individuals along the best routes – army ants even manage inbound and outbound lanes – but how? Geoff Gallice/Wikimedia

Nature’s traffic engineers have come up with many simple but effective solutions

Insects aren’t known for having big brains, and slime moulds and fungi don’t have any. So how do they solve challenges that test the ingenuity of human transport engineers?
Businesses are weighing up the costs of queuing and using innovative ways to do away with queues, or at least make the perceptions of waiting less painful. Michal Parzuchowski/Unsplash

Fed up with always being in the slow queue? That’s why queues are being ‘designed out’

Businesses are weighing up the costs of queuing and using innovative ways to minimise these costs by doing away with queues.
Cities are growing vertically as well as horizontally, so infrastructure needs to ensure people can move up and down as well as across the city. Alpha/Flickr

Growing cities face challenges of keeping the masses moving up, down and across

Cities are expanding upwards and downwards, as well as outwards. With urban density also increasing, moving people efficiently around the city, often using ageing infrastructure, is quite a challenge.

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