CONTACTTRAFFICABOUT TOM VANDERBILTOTHER WRITING CONTACT ABOUT THE BOOK

Archive for March 23rd, 2010

The Key to Countering Turbulence: More Turbulence

Via today’s New York Times:

At relatively slow rates of flow, turbulence is intermittent — it’s pushed along, Dr. Hof said, by smooth-flowing fluid behind it. By studying flows in a special glass pipe and modeling them on a computer, Dr. Hof and his colleagues realized that introducing an eddy into this smooth-flowing zone would eliminate the turbulence in front of it. “One turbulent eddy kills the other,” he said. As long as the pipe is straight, the flow should then remain smooth.

One wonders about any potential analogies to traffic here — the not quite perfect comparison that springs to my mind is the work, via people like Dirk Helbing and Serge Hoogendoorn, that shows in pedestrian escape modeling that introducing an obstacle into an exit opening actually improves the rate of discharge.

Any hardcore flow/sim types have any thoughts?

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Posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 10:58 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
3 Comments. Click here to leave a comment.

Winter Cycling in the Netherlands

Kids these days.

Via David Hembrow.

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Posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 10:27 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Twitter Traffic

For those who have requested or otherwise been interested, I’m now further larding the datasphere via Twitter.

I won’t promise any epiphanies, but you can follow here should you desire (and this will likely serve as a transition space to the next book — no, it’s not underway yet!)

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Posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 10:18 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

Amazon | B&N | Borders
Random House | Powell’s

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U.S. Paperback UK Paperback
Traffic UK
Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

Upcoming Talks

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