How Much Would You Pay for Software?

By | November 22, 2011
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I was reading an exchange on a mailing list for a piece of software the other day, where after years of honing the program the developer suddenly faced a mutiny from some of his greatest supporters when it came down to pricing. So I wondered: Just how much are we prepared to pay for software? Has it changed, over the years?

Not wanting the skew the results, I’ll say no more, but I’d be very grateful to those of you who could take a few minutes to fill out this short survey. If you just want to drop me an email please feel free to do that instead (jeremy at loose-wire.com).

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Traffic Part II: Rules That Don’t Work

By | November 22, 2011
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Traffic is all about rules. But which rules work, and which don’t?

Mrtarrows1A smart planner will always be observing rules and seeing how they might work better. Lifts, for example, have never been optimized for how people organise themselves inside the lift. Buildings will often arrange lines for getting into a lift, but not for what goes on inside the lift.

Watch how people get in and out of lifts. Do those who get in first move to the back of the lift, or do they sidle up to the controls and wedge themselves there like some amateur lift operator? If they do, do they look around to see whether other people in the lift have pressed for their floor, or do they make it hard for them to reach the buttons? Do people try to position themselves in the lift according to the floor they’re going to? Lifts are rarely self-organised systems, for some reason. A smart planner would organise lifts lines so that these kinds of issues were optimized. But I’ve never seen it done properly.

Indeed, even in a highly sophisticated city like Hong Kong there are rules that don’t, in my view, work.  On subways there are two lines drawn on the platform on either side of the carriage door so passengers can wait for others to alight between them before boarding. This system seems like it should work, but it doesn’t, because there’s no benefit for each side to hold back and wait for all passengers to alight.

What happens is that individuals on one side of the doorway will start to edge forwards, pushing the alighting passengers towards the other line, and preventing them from alighting. By the time the passengers have all alighted, the pushy line is already aboard and have taken the best positions, leaving the other line to scramble for seats. There’s no advantage for following the rules, and no point in the two lines collaborating. I’ve never seen the system work properly. Planners should allocate a single line on one side of the door, with passengers alighting on the left and boarding passengers queuing on the right.

Planners won’t figure this out, of course, if they’re not using the system they’ve designed. If they do, they would have spotted this problem on day one.

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Crash Maps

By | November 22, 2011
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Another intriguing use of Google Earth: to map statistical likelihood of car crashes, from Ohio State University. Interesting stuff, though it doesn’t explore what I think is the key factor in crashes: unpredictability. In a place like the UK everyone follows strict rules (supposedly), so any deviation is unpredictable and therefore likely to cause an accident. In a place like Indonesia the only predictable element is that drivers won’t be predictable, so other drivers allow for odd behavior. Statistically, there should be many more crashes in a place like Jakarta than there are. Why? Because everyone knows other drivers will do weird things, and so they’re ready for them.

What makes this model novel is that scientists have now combined the statistical software with Google Earth–a program that offers an interactive map of the entire globe–to map the results as color-coded lines. Google Earth is able to perform this function because it reads the output from the statistical model in KML files; much as a Web browser reads HTML files, the KML files tell the program where on the planet to draw lines or place images, explains Holloman.

Traffic Rules Part I

By | November 22, 2011
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Traffic1The difference between a developed metropolis and a developing one isn’t transportation — it’s the rules and discipline about how that transportation is used. A city like Hong Kong flows because everyone follows the rules. A city like Jakarta doesn’t because people don’t. It’s not about building more roads, or more subways, or more bus lanes, but about developing rules that ensure existing transportation is used as it should be. Cars, people, trains and buses flow because they each agree to a set of rules that ensure that flow. In effect it’s like one big sliding puzzle. The bits move around because there’s space for them to move around.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s just people stopping at red lights, or people allowing passengers to alight before they try to embark. The rules can be sophisticated or basic, but they only work if they’re followed: In Hong Kong a taxi driver won’t cross a thick white line even if there’s no traffic around; in Jakarta there are several red lights around the city that cars don’t bother to even stop at. In one city nothing is negotiable; in another everything is. A new buslane in Jakarta that’s officially off limits to all vehicles except buses and emergency vehicles is already awash with ordinary traffic.

Somehow in Hong Kong the rules have become the norm, and no one needs to be around to enforce them. Everyone keeps everyone else in line. In Jakarta, the rules are seen as an obstacle, something to be overcome. It’s not as if drivers in Hong Kong are somehow collaborating in a fit of consideration, but there is a tacit recognition that by following the rules, everyone will benefit. Even in pedestrian overpasses, somehow a rule establishes itself — everyone walks on the left, say, and the two-way flow is optimized. It doesn’t seem hard and fast; the next day everyone seems to be walking on the right. But it works. A self-organizing system.

Jakarta is not. It’s a free-for-all. Or actually, it’s has its own rules. It’s just they’re not optimized for the situation. The bigger the vehicle, for example, the more it will take precedence over other vehicles. And a car in Hong Kong won’t pull into traffic if by doing so it will slow down that traffic. This is what the Stop/Give way/Yield sign is for. A car in Jakarta will do the opposite: It will pull out slowly, inching into the road until the traffic is forced to slow down to accommodate it. In fact the dominance of unwritten traffic rules in a city like Jakarta ensure that traffic will never work efficiently.

Until those rules are replaced with rules that work and the discipline to ensure they’re followed, developing cities will never become developed ones. It’s not about the infrastructure. It’s about the way it’s used.

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