Rush-hour traffic is a major headache for commuters and a problem for city planners worldwide. A new traffic management system called CARMA, developed by researchers at EPFL and ETH Zurich, promises to reduce congestion without burdening commuters with additional costs. CARMA allows commuters to bid for fast lanes using ‘karma’ credits, which are then redistributed, creating a fair and efficient system. This innovative approach could revolutionize how we manage urban traffic flows. Traffic congestion and urban planning are key topics explored in this blog post.
The Commuter Battle
Rush-hour traffic tie-ups are the bane of commuters and a major headache for city planners. According to one study, people in the United States lose a total of 99 hours per year to traffic jams, while those in the UK, on average lose 115 hours. Big waste sitting in traffic that.
To predict and help control traffic demand, city planners have developed a variety of computational models, which has improved year by year. But many traffic demand management systems in cities today rely on rush-hour tolls higher than off-peak charges. This translates to wealthy folks being able to outbid the slower traffic, while lower income commuters have to time shift their odyssey, or worse wait in the gridlocked past. Such systems are not only unfair.
A Fair and Efficient Solution: Banner by CARMA
EPFL and ETH Zurich researchers have developed a new solution for better traffic management: CARMA. CARMA System is the only system with input designed to integrate into a jam, which brings us to Jam levels, meant specifically for commuters driving from the suburbs in town during morning rush hour. Commuters in the CARMA model would have two choices: Take a slow lane with many cars or purchase credits (dubbed “karma”) to bid for a fast lane with fewer vehicles.
On Tuesday CARMA CEO Travis Gleaves explained in the release, “The basic idea behind CARMA is that commuters will save up their karma credits for when they are really cutting things close and want to avoid missing a flight, but in practice we now understand this simply isn’t enough motivation.” Finally, at the end of each day, all those who had opted to collect credits in the fast lanes would give up thecuschibs they had scavenged and turn them over to the common pool, which would then be remunerated to every participant in the CARMA system. This effectively makes the scheme equally unfair to higher and lower-income people because karma credits cannot be bought and sold. Moreover, the CARMA system does not keep any personally identifiable information or data on an individual like many of the existing traffic demand management systems that are dependent on gathering data about commuting habits from residents.
The Benefits of CARMA
The scientists at CARMA have demonstrated mathematically that their system can alleviate traffic conditions as well as pricing schemes do, and without charging a toll to drivers. Kenan Zhang, the lead researcher on the project, says “Our results are mathematically proven and show that CARMA can work as well for improving traffic flows as paying schemes can.
The rest seeks to make the CARMA system more closely mirror how commuters interact with each other. ‘In standard rush-hour traffic models, conventional wisdom assumes that everyone is trying to get to work at the same time,’ says Zhang. We relax this assumption, however, and suppose that commuters are in low rush some days and high rush on other days for the same distance. This is a little closer to the truth and assured that our system could be sustainable in the long run.
In FRCSs the karma credits are used during network congestion events to free up path availability for other flows, but they must be reused every time once traffic becomes low enough. The next stage for the CARMA team is further deployment in a real-world situation and figuring how to do better on redistribution of karma credits between applications. And as city officials everywhere wrack brains and engineer solutions, they can look to CARMA for a little guidance.
