August 11, 2018 • 34 mins
Whether you've been stuck in a traffic jam or forced to merge and avoid road construction, everyone's had a few bad experiences with traffic. But how does traffic actually work? In this episode, Chuck and Josh take a look at traffic waves (and bubbles).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. Chuck Bryant here of Stuff you Should Know
and welcome to the weekend. It's Saturday, and you know
what that means. It's time for another Stuff you Should
Know select episode where Josh and I picked our favorites
from the past one thousand plus episodes and repost them
and hopes that you might discover something old. Here we
(00:20):
go something old? Is that a good way to sell something?
That's why we call them classics and selects. July twenty nine,
two thousand ten, was a very special day because that
is the day we released the episode How Traffic Works. Yes, traffic,
not drug trafficking, but traffic, car traffic. We all hate it,
but you know what, maybe you should understand it a
(00:42):
little better. Really interesting, and I believe Josh even coined
his own term. If I'm not mistaken for this one,
a break a bubble? Dare I say? Does my memory
serve me? We'll find out by listening right now to
How Traffic Works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:11):
I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles Precious Bryant? How
you doing, Precious? This is the podcast based on the
novel Push by Sapphire. Yeah, that is absolutely right, word
for word. Right, Jerry just got back because you did
a spoiler. Yeah, for Precious I've known for spoilers, aren't I?
At least two? It was Boiling Home. No, there was
(01:34):
a there was um six ft under. There was another
one I spoiled too, wasn't there? Yeah, there was one
you spoiled That was a really old movie, and I
was like, come on, that movie is like fifteen years old.
There's a statute of limitation, was it, Buck Rubon's I Yeah,
I think that was it? Yeah, me too, Chuck. Yes,
have you ever been in traffic? That's the best I got.
(01:54):
How do you set this up? Chuck? Do you like
Steve Winwood? Yeah? You know I was going to make
a Traffic the band comment. Have you ever seen the
low spark of high heeled boys? Yeah? Yeah, that's it.
I'm seriously, I'm like trying to do you know he
was like when he first joined Traffic, thinks a he's
a lothario. Yeah, and by that I mean in Prodigy. Yeah, yeah, Traffic.
(02:18):
I've been in traffic, buddy, you Yes, I have actually
been in traffic. Um, happens a lot because I don't
ride Marta. You ride are fine, fine, crippled public transit
system here in Atlanta. I'm never in traffic anymore. It's
it's really been a huge difference in my life. Yeah. Well,
I don't ride Marta because, um, I usually I tend
(02:42):
to avoid the smell of urine, and UM, reading while
moving makes me sick. So I'm you know, plus, I
I value I used to value being able to smoke. Yeah, dude,
I was just about to say that's why I used
to drive. Yeah, and now I'm just like, I just
do it out to have it. But I get caught
in traffic a lot, and it stinks. I don't see
you on a public transport. You're not You're not that
(03:03):
kind of social No. That's the other thing too, It's like, oh, hey,
we worked together, let's talk the whole time. No, I don't.
I wear my sunglasses. It can be dark and raining,
and I've told everyone here that if I have my
shades on, that means the office is closed. Nice, the
store is shut down. That's very nice, stor it looks
super cool. Alright. So I'm a jerk that doesn't talk
(03:23):
to coworkers. Now moving on, buddy, It's okay, Chuck. Do
you remember when we recorded quicksand yes, do you remember
how we said that there's like a finite amount of
stuff out there about quick thing, because there's a finite
amount to know. There's a finite amount to know about traffic.
(03:43):
But there's tons of information out there. Yeah, lots of
little side things to know for sure. Yeah, Because ultimately,
traffic happens in two ways. One is, there is simply congestion.
There's just too many cars on the road to carry
to carry the flow of traffic quickly. Right. The other
(04:06):
way is there is some unpredictable event that somebody's pulled over,
somebody's broken down, there's a wreck, whether maybe an event
that falls under congestion, police have pulled over a traffic
a speeder. People always slow down for that, and that's it.
That's it. Those are pretty much the two broad categories
(04:27):
that traffic can be created, right, um. And what happens
in each of those events is somebody upfront puts on
their brakes and that that one press of the brakes
travels backward all the way through right when you have
a bunch of different cars and different lengthes doing that
(04:47):
at the same time, you have traffic you know what
that's called traffic wave. Yes, that's true. It's a domino effect.
It's very easy, it is. And I came up with
my own idea of just scribing this. You're ready by okay,
So what I came up with is called the traffic bubble,
okay by Josh Clark. So the traffic bubble happens when
(05:09):
somebody is driving along and presses their brakes for whatever reason.
And just imagine that when they press that break, the
big bubble grows over the car, okay, And it starts
very slowly traveling backward. And each car behind that car
that's that created the traffic bubble isn't allowed to accelerate
again until the traffic bubble is passed through them, right,
(05:31):
But then the further back the traffic bubble goes, the
more it dissipates, until eventually the people far enough back
don't have to go through the traffic bubble and they're
not affected by it. And does the bubble pass through
the front cars to where they can then again accelerate.
Is that how you see it as a moving bubble? Yeah?
Over the bubble travels backwards over the traffic, and then
(05:52):
once it passes over you, you're allowed to accelerate again.
I believe you're just going to turn my friends the
traffic bubble like that jerk science or no break bubble,
that's what I called it. Okay, breaking bubble. Yeah, like
a piping effect. I hate that guy and he hates you.
I don't care so traffic Josh, you want, We might
as well thrown a few stats here. Yeah, this one's
(06:12):
that heavy. It is. This this article by our colleague
Jonathan Strickland at tech Stuff. Yeah, the bald this podcast
on staff here, Uh, what's a good stat here? The
estimated traffic costs If you wanna talk about cost of
traffic in about five years ago, they estimated about seventy
eight billion dollars. And that's only fuel and waste of time.
(06:35):
They don't take into account like pollution, environmental damage, health
costs due to pollution. I mean it would really add
up if you got to, you know, include those things. Yeah,
and um with extra gas that was bought in two
thousand seven, right, isn't that the year that studies connected
or covered UM we in the US bought two point
(06:56):
nine billion billion extra gallon of oil because of traffic,
and the annual cost for each individual motorists in America
was like seven ten bucks just sitting there, just from traffic,
not from you know, the gas that you need to
actually get from point A to point B, but the
extra gas used from idoling. Yeah, crazy, yeah, And I
(07:18):
believe l A tops it out obviously at about two
weeks a year you potentially spend sitting in your car
and traffic. Yeah. L A has um. There's this group
called the Texas Transportation Institute, and I think they're out
of A and M. Maybe they're awesome. They they they
are like the leaders and studying and understanding and trying
(07:39):
to mitigate traffic, right um. And they came up with
this thing called the travel time index, right yeah. So basically,
you take the amount of time it takes and it's
specific to each city, and it's for each city. It's
not compared from city to city. It's compared to a
certain time in one city to another time in the
(08:01):
same city. So in an off peak time, say you
can travel the speed limit, it takes you one hour
to get from point A to point B in Los Angeles,
it would take one point nine two hours doubles your
time basically during yeah, during rush hour, So it takes
twice as long to get from point A to point
(08:22):
B during rush hours compared to off peak. That's the
travel time index. Yeah, and you know you have to
do this anywhere you live where there's heavy traffic. But
when I lived in l A, I used to have
to always think, all right, well, this would take me
forty five minutes normally. So and when you work in
the movie business, you you can't be late. That's just
not one of the things you do. You've got to
be there on time or early. So you're like, well,
(08:43):
it's supposed to take me forty five minutes, I'm gonna
give myself like two hours. I gave myself more than
double to get anywhere I needed to go. That's that's
very smart. It's awful, is what it is. Yeah. L
A's kind of bad, but chuck, we have it pretty
bad too. Yeah, Land is really bad. We're among like
probably I think the top three or four. I heard
a year or so ago that Atlanta had toppled l A,
(09:06):
but I never saw any citation. Well, all those it
depends on how they are rating. It. Some they rade
the differently, like the amount of time you spend in
your car commuting or the amount of time you sit idling,
So it kind of depends. But Atlanta's way up there, Boston, Seattle,
San Francisco actually think is absent from that. Oh really,
I think that they have made some moves that have
(09:27):
kind of mitigated traffic and gotten them off some of
the I know, the Big Dig was messing everything up.
The Big Dig was just killing people. Yeah, and d
C is awful. Have you ever driven around there? Uh? No,
I haven't. You was talking about how especially during the summer,
during the travel or the tourist season, it's just mind
numbing it is. Yeah, I mean way out into the
(09:47):
suburbs in Virginia and Maryland sitting there. Yeah. You know
what they did in l A that I saw one
time that I had never seen was I was going
down the highway one day and I noticed everyone was
slowing down. And I looked up ahead on the expressway
and they were to California Highway patrol cars doing huge
slow ses back and forth on the six lanes of expressway,
(10:11):
not letting, like keeping everyone back like a nask, like
a like a paste. Yeah, like a pace car. But
you know they weren't driving straight. They were driving these
big s. Is like, don't go buy me. I've never
seen that before in my life. What would have made
it even funnier is if they've been driving those ses
with their hands out their window and their guns just
shooting into the area while they were doing it. That
would really say, don't drive past me. Yeah, that would
(10:33):
have been great. And apparently that was they do that.
It's a I don't know what they call it, but
that's too slow everyone down. It's called being a yes.
And on that note, my friend Derek has a joke
about Atlanta traffic, and he's right, because Atlanta before their traffic,
everyone's driving really really what fast. Yeah, that's one of
(10:57):
the great characteristics about it LANDA as far as i'm can,
you go as fast as you can. I mean, the
average um flow of traffic, I would say it's about
seventy miles an hour around here, and that's with like
a lot of people all around you. Yeah, everybody's bumper
to bumper going at least seventy and the cops don't
pull you over unless you're going over seventy and even
(11:17):
then like, it's usually like you're going eighty or ninety
when you get pulled over because everybody else is going seventy. Right,
And that's my buddy Derek's joke is in Atlanta, and
it's really true. It's not a joke. Everyone drives as
fast as they can every day until someone and then
someone recks, right, and then traffic backs up every single day.
That's Atlanta traffic. Are we done? So let's just sit
(11:57):
here and do traffic stories about what what angers us?
So check. There's a lot of smart people who study
traffic because like you said, there's um, what was it,
how much money in two eight billion just from fuel
and wasted time? Because think about it, a person's time
is money, right, And if you're sitting in traffic, unless
(12:18):
you're one of those jerks like me who has an
iPhone that emails while he's driving, then you're wasting money, right. Um.
And actually there's this there's a group called Commute Solutions
are out of Santa Cruz and they calculated the actual
cost per mile of driving, not just traffic, but driving
to each person is one point nineteen one dollar nineteen
(12:40):
cents per mile. Yeah, and that includes everything I don't
know how they came up with that number, but check
it out. Well, if we're talking about highways and stats,
we might as well talk about the same. Texas group
did a study and um they found that traffic over
the past years increased and by they predict it will
(13:04):
go up another And here's what's remarkable. One only one
of all our roads are highways, yet they shoulder half
the traffic, half the car travel. Yeah. Crazy, it is crazy,
And you don't usually think about when you think about traffic.
I usually think about the highway myself, although I rarely
(13:24):
get on the highway anymore. It's all surface streets that
I take to and from work. Yeah, what do you go?
Duid hills? Okay? I go basically up Piedmont um. But
it's it's traffic every day. But I don't think of
it as traffic. And I think of traffic, I think
of seventy five at rush hour. And just like UH
(13:44):
exit ramps backed up, the the thing is is our
surface streets are also intended to handle overflow of highway traffic. Right,
not just people who are backed up from the exit
ramp back onto the street, but I mean people who
are making a con just decision like me to find
a different way that doesn't have anything to do with
the highway. Right, And they found that if you want
(14:07):
to widen a highway, I think we talked about this
in like the urban planning one um that when you
when you widen the highway, Um, there's something called latent demand.
It's a theory that if you want in the highway,
people like me are going to be like, oh well,
now there's a leven lanes instead of five, so I'll
just hop on the highway. And so the demand increases
(14:30):
in step with the widening of the lanes. So it
actually doesn't mitigate anything by adding more lanes to a highway, right.
I think they said the only way that will work
is if they outpaced demand with lanes, and that just
doesn't happen. There's too many cars expensive, But that kind
of makes sense to throw that money then instead into
upfront costs for a light rail system, you know, hippie.
(14:56):
Actually I'm still holding up for personal rapid transit. That
was a palette in me podcast, but it was interesting.
It's a good one. Uh RAMT metering. If if you're
talking about solutions, that's another one. And they had these
in l A. And they have them here in Atlanta. Now.
It's where when you go to get on the highway.
Now they have stoplights that just allow like one car
through every few seconds. So you know, when you get
(15:18):
on at Freedom Parkway, I used to fly around that
curve it was fun and jump into traffic and squeeze
in however I could. And that's you know, I was
one of those jerks causing traffic. Well, I think anybody
entering is that, because again with traffic, especially with just
straight up congestion, there's just too many cars in one place,
(15:40):
especially when you have a line of traffic and then
more people directly adding to that lane. Yeah. Right, But
RAMT metering really really works. They did a study in Minnesota.
They have four d and thirty RAMT meters and in
two thousand they shut them all down for seven weeks
and during that time traffic accidents increased. And then afterward
(16:00):
they re reinstituted it and they saw the capacity increased
by fourteen percent, and they walked away from that project
going like with their hands in their pockets. Yeah, like,
we should probably not tell anybody about that. Yeah, I
was trying to do a Minnesota accent. But that was
pretty good. I couldn't do it. All I said was,
oh no, it wasn't bad though. That's how they say it.
(16:21):
H O V lanes is another thing that they've done
pretty much countrywide. Carpool lanes as help. Yeah, I always
forget when I have another person in the car, though.
Uh yeah, I'll get like halfway where I'm going and say,
oh man, let's get in the carpool lane. Yeah, I
have to say though. The h O V lane, to me,
it's it's an extension of the fast lane. So you
(16:42):
got the fast lane and then you have the h
O V lane, And I hate it when it's the
fast lane is just the fast ling. The HOV lane
is like, I drive as slow as I want, but
I have, you know, four people in my car. It
makes it difficult. It's it's kind of like the h
O V lane to me, is you have two or
more people, you're willing to drive ten miles faster than
(17:02):
anybody else on the highway. Agreed, And since we talked
about pet peeves in our last podcast, My one of
my largest pet peeves is when I'm sitting in traffic
and I'll see people speeding by me in the h
OV lane by themselves. Nothing bothers me more than people
that think the rules don't apply to them. I hate that.
I hate those people, or people who um use the
shoulder and just drive along in traffic as far as
(17:25):
they can to get like fifty cars ahead. Yeah. I
almost got plowed over in l A one time. I
was getting out to get in the regular exit lane
and almost got creamed by a truck that was on
the shoulder, and I screamed at him that he almost
killed me, and he says, what are you a cop?
That's l a for you. It was like, he literally
almost killed me. What are you a cop? If you're
a cop, you'd be making lazy ss is in front
(17:47):
of try ands firing my gun into the air. Exactly.
What else, Josh, Uh, there's matting lanes. We already talked
about that, But there's that one. Then there's um probably
the most uh contentious idea cones shim pricing, which is
basically taxing people to drive. And there's a guy named
Alistair Darling. I don't know if he's still the Transportation secretary,
(18:08):
but he's something of a rock star in the transportation
world because he was a huge proponent of this, and
he said in England, yeah, he was the British Transportation secretary.
He basically said, you know, cars exact a toll on
the environment and on the road, um, just by driving
on him, So we should charge people to drive on
(18:29):
the roads. What he failed to mention is that we
already do. There are things called taxes, and those are
meant to pay for the roads. Right, he's forgetting about
you know, all the other misused money. Um. But they
did actually have one in Great Britain. Do they still chuck? No,
I don't think they ever instituted. They had a pilot
program from two thousand three to seven and it worked
(18:54):
like a champ for him in London at least. Yeah,
there was a thirty percent dropping congest shin decrease in
in fossil fuel consumption, decrease in CEO two emissions. So
like in London, Singapore, Stockholm, San Francisco, San Francisco, the
Institute one No, San Francisco is studying a New York
(19:16):
Bloomberg has proposed it and they've studied it. And I
just pulled this from this week. Actually, Lord Adonis is
actually he's the Transport Secretary unless it's a new guy.
What was your guy? His name is Lord Adonis. Lord Adonis,
the Transport Secretary came up with a new hotel student. Yeah,
(19:37):
that's where Joshua be staying in New York under Lord
uh he. It says it's ruled out the introduction of
a national road pricing for the next parliament. But they
uncovered that civil servants are still involved with the project
and spending money on research even though they supposedly took
it off the table. It was kind of a secret
that they were still like tinkering with Oh. I thought
(19:58):
you were like saying this these board paying for this
research o their own paychecks. No, but they've sunk seven
point two million pounds that I guess the public didn't know.
They thought it was off the table. So they're kind
of under some hot water, in some hot water. They're
they're in some deep quicksand yeah, they said, Golden Brown
and Alista Darling have been caught red handed planning a
spy in the sky system A spy in the sky. Nice. Yeah, yeah,
(20:22):
because I guess we should probably explain congestion pricing basically
every car on the road. I guess when you would
go get your vehicle tag or something. You also get
a radio frequency identifier, right, and as you're driving, some
satellite is tracking you, or you pass through some sector
or something like that, and all of a sudden you're
being you're in a toll area. And much like say, uh,
(20:46):
one of those toll passes, UM, you are sent a
bill or there's like you have to set up like
a credit card or a bank account, attach that to
your to your tag, and it just draws money from
it based on however much you drive in there. In Singapore,
when they first instituted, there's an actually UM they had
(21:09):
a flat rate for downtown, which is the most congested
during peak hours. You had to pay three bucks to
just drive around downtown and you could drive around all
you wanted. Uh. And as they as as they've gotten
better at it, they're they're getting a little fancy schmancy
with it, you know, like, UM, well, if you want
to drive here, it's a dollar seventy five for twenty minutes,
but you can back, you know, two blocks over and
(21:32):
it's just fifty cents and so on. Well, that's one
of the rubs that UM. One of the big things
is in England at least in other places too. I
think they've suggested paying more for peak hour so be
flexible in your work schedule. But then, of course people
that are a friend of the poor say that's progressive
taxation because white color dudes can be all flexible and
(21:52):
work from home, but the poor have to get up
and go to work during peak hours. So you're they're
basically paying for the road that the rich man drives on. Exactly,
That's exactly right, And that's the big problem. I mean,
aside from having to pay to drive with with a
with a congestion tax. Yeah, um, what else can you do? Chuck?
And also remember we were talking it's this isn't just
(22:13):
highways surface streets to everybody. Don't get all anxious. We're
talking about surface streets as well. Yes, uh, surface streets.
You get a lot of suburban sprawl, you know, like
here in Atlanta, you've got like out in Roswell twenty
years ago it was it was desolate cow patties and
now it's all uh, you know, young families moving out
(22:35):
there who don't want to be around urban types. Yeah,
and you have a lot of a lot more cars. Um,
you have again that that one of two ways that
you can cause traffic. Just put more cars on a
road than it than it's designed to hand and and
out in the booneties like that. They weren't built for
you know, they were built for farmland. All of a
sudden they got these suburban people moving out there. And so, yeah,
(22:58):
traffic lights is something they can do. Yeah, this one
disturbed me. Um that even the So you have a
traffic light that is on a timer, right, which is
especially when they're poorly timed. Yes, Yeah, decator is awful.
There's another one for the Piedmont Park parking deck and
it just does whatever it wants, no matter what time
(23:21):
and day, and if there's a car, they're not and
people are just stopped in either direction, right, And um,
that's a timed light, and time lights are awful, They're awful. Right.
Then you have um sensored lights, which are awesome, right
because you just come up in the way to your
car triggers it good. Yeah, Or you have a mixed
system that uses time timing and sensors and it changes
(23:46):
depending on the kind of day where it is. It's
like you can set up a citywide comprehensive traffic light plan.
Some cities have this. Even the best mixed citywide comprehensive
traffic light plan reduced is congestion by one. Really Yeah, yeah,
Atlanta is bad about that. At least in my area
(24:07):
there's and Jerry can confirm this, she kind of lives
over near me. But there's all these scenarios where you'll
you'll stop at a light that's timed to not the
part of the smart light system is that they're all
time to work together. So like if you sit here
at this corner and you take a ride on red,
there's not another red light waiting on you, and then
that turns green, and then thirty more feet there's another
(24:27):
red light. They should be timed out to where they
were green. In l A, It's like, I mean, that's
the one thing I will say. There's a lot of traffic.
It's just because the people they do the best they can.
You look down. They have these long, long, long straight
streets in Hollywood, and late at night you'll be sitting,
like on Hollywood Boulevard at a red light and you'll
see wink winkink blank, You'll see like eight lights turn green.
(24:50):
All in that New Balance commercial, Yeah, with that woman
running and she pushes herself to make all the lights. Yeah,
doomed a failure, but still it was a nice effort.
I would I would go longer in l A just
to get off the highway, even if it took me longer,
just to feel like I was moving. And Chuck, I'm
about to spoil it for all of our British, UK, English, Welsh, Irish,
(25:13):
Scottish friends who are typing an angry corrective email about
Alistair Darling. He is not the Transportation Secretary. He was
the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Lord
Adonis is the Transport Secretary, that is, and me and
your hotel names. We were talking about people um studying
(25:48):
this kind of thing. There's all sorts of really cool
quantifications for traffic. My favorite is the passenger car equivalent.
Let's hear it. Okay, So you have a passenger car
is say a city at an averag city Anda Toyota
camera all right, or to be fair, Honda court right. Um.
(26:09):
That is like just an average car that you can
fit four people into and it drives down the road
and it's pretty responsive. And um, an suv or a
bus or a van is not as responsive because they're
larger and because they take up more space, they're slower
to accelerate, and so they they exact a heavier burden
(26:32):
on a highway during congestion. Right, So what they've come
up with our passenger car equivalent. So an suv is
one point four pc, right, and then a city bus
is like four point four pc. It's like four cars, right. Yeah,
it has the same as far as like accelerating after
(26:53):
breaking and just the space that's taking up. That's the
equivalent of a passenger car. So one good solution to
traffic is everybody driving smaller car, no kidding, and virtual slots, right, yeah,
what's the deal there. Each car has a certain amount
of space it takes up, and don't try and fit
(27:13):
into a slot that's a bit smaller than your car.
What is that? How you know? That's pretty much virtual
slots like tetris. Yeah, if you just amagement that there
is a basically a rectangle around your car bubble, a bubble,
but not a break bubble. You want to avoid the
brake bubble um, but this is more of a rectangle
(27:33):
and it kind of hugs the sides of your cars,
but it is longer on the front and back. And
if every everybody's car stays in these slots that are
on the highway, you just kind of pull into them
as you're driving, and the slots are going like all
the same rate. Then as long as there's not too
many cars on the road or more more cars than
there are slots, there should be no traffic. Yeah, but
(27:55):
that never happens because all this is pie in the
sky stuff. Well yeah, because when in areably you're sitting
in the lane and you're like that lanes moving now,
and then you get over in that lane you're like, well,
now that lanes moving and you keep going back and
forth where if you stayed where you are, if everyone
stay where they were, you would all get there quicker.
Or if everybody just stayed at home. Yeah, yes, good point.
Put your jobs stay at home. Right. So that's uh,
(28:16):
that's our two cents, And uh, if you want to
learn more about traffic, we we've been killing the articles
with cool flash animations, haven't we did? The one it
has a flash animation about a traffic wave. Cool no
break bubble. I'm going to see about having somebody add
one of those. Coined the term my friend, you can
type in traffic. I think it'll bring up a bunch
(28:37):
of stuff in the handy search bar how stuff works
dot com, which means it's time for listener questions. It's
time for Facebook questions. Yes, as we said in that
other podcast on quicksand we took, we post on Facebook. Hey,
give us some questions. We'll answer like ten of them
really quickly. We got them in an hour. This comes
(29:00):
from Chelsea. What's the most unusual thing you've ever eaten? Uh?
Tripe for me, which is intestines? Go ahead, what's yours? Um?
I've had fried chicken hearts, I've had beef tongue. My
favorite is um bone marrow really highly highly recommend. Anywhere
(29:22):
you can find bone marrow, just eat it. The only
place down here is rathbuts and it's okay, yeah, yeah,
you gotta wrath buns. You gotta get one of the steaks. No,
not not rathbunds, steaks, regular wrath buns. Yeah. Strangely he
doesn't have bone marrow there, but yes, those weird stuff.
All right, what I got you questions right there? You
want to read one? Yeah, I guess this one's from Jacob.
(29:45):
If a tree falls in the forest and no one
is around here, and Jacob hyphenates no one, which frankly
I find like flourish nice. Yes, except for a tape
recorder which absorbs the radiant vibrations and can later play
them back because audible waves. Did the tree really make
a sound? The answer is yes, yes. Uh. Kristen says,
(30:06):
where are christ and Candice now? And who does the
intro for the podcast? Chris Palette is um co host
of Tech Stuff Now and has been for quite a while.
He's made it hometown boy made Good. Candice Gibson Keener
has gotten married and she stepped out of the limelight
to concentrate on just being an editor, but she's still here.
Sits right next to Josh and uh. Roxanne does the
(30:29):
intros for the podcast. She's our head of video. There
you go. That is not Jerry. A lot of people
think it's Jerry. There's some comprehensive answers right there. Rachel
says she currently lives in Athens, g A. I'd love
to hear more about your experience living here, where you
hung out your favorite bands, to see what other fond
or not so fond memories you might have of Athens
(30:49):
she says, we have quite a following there. Did you
know that? I didn't either. My bar was Roadhouse. I
hung out of Roadhouse all the time. I was a
Georgia bar guy, did you Yes? And we should point
out though the Georgia Bar, the Globe, and the Roadhouse
made up the bar Muda triangle, and you could access
them all through the alley to get to the next
so most decidedly could. Quite often you would hop around,
(31:09):
depending on just stayed at Roadhouse. I hope Roadhouse still there.
It's gotten to be, Yeah, it is. And then of course, um,
I always liked wilson Soul Food and Guthrie's, which in
my opinion is superior to Zaxepiece, even though it's the
same thing. Yeah, I was Automatic for the people. Well, yeah,
I lived right around the corner from there. So remember
what was the name of that restaurant. I went to
(31:29):
Weaverde's Automatic for the people. Yes, that was good too.
I liked Wilson's because the owner walked around and he's
like four ft tall and he shook hands with everybody, right,
nice guy. Um, And of course Harry Bassett's. I never
went there. Oh my god, that was a frat bar.
You went there, I could go. It wasn't just the bar,
like the food was amazing, wasn't I put the food
up against any in Atlanta? Euro wrap? Nanna a lot
(31:51):
of e rose in college. That's good alright? Uh? Kristen, No, Randy,
who's the cat who won't cop out when there's danger
all about out? I think we both know shaft nice
who's the cat that won't cup out? That's one of
the lesser quoted lines from that song. Yeah, I've got
one from chavon. How do your significant others feel about
(32:13):
your legion of man crushes and equally strong lady crushes? Chuck,
I wasn't aware that anyone had to crush on us
where you I didn't know that I've seen that before.
But Emily thinks it's funny. Sure, yeah it is funny.
She's now I'm not going it is. I mean, if
you if only people can see our stomachs so much hair?
And Laura, how many emails do you get per podcast?
(32:36):
We get about three d a week. Laura, Alan who
put the bomb in the bomb? Sha bomp shabomp um.
The only reason I read that it's because he stressed
his mill house and his picture nice And who is
your most surprising celebrity fan. We've only got a few
that we know of, and they're all surprised. This one
is more surprising than I've got one. Um oh, I
(32:57):
can't remember her name. There's a girl who stars in
Secret Life of the American Teenager Is. She's a fan
of the show. She tweeted that she was on set
like in between um, shooting and listening to stuff you
should know. Yeah, John Hodgman, I was pretty knocked out
by that. That's pretty cool. Bradley Cooper, Yeah, Will Wheaton, Yeah,
(33:17):
Rene's l Wager, Aisha Tyler Yes. And the couple of
The Daily Show guys why Senec Yeah. Joe Randazzo, the
editor in chief of The Onion. If you are a
celebrity that we did not mention, we would love to
know that you listened to us, because we're just kind
of thrilling. We're like, we're nobody, So when we hear that,
I think it's cool. Yeah, uh yeah, I got one more.
(33:39):
Pirates Shelley says pirates are Ninja's Ninja's clearly definitely that's it. Okay,
Chuck's given the He's out isn't that called Vegas. Yeah,
it's like when the dealer finishes there around or whatever.
There's gotta be a name for it. If you know
the name for that, we want to know. Send it
in an email to stuff podcast at house stuff works
(34:00):
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
com home page.
Hi, everybody. Chuck Bryant here of Stuff you Should Know
and welcome to the weekend. It's Saturday, and you know
what that means. It's time for another Stuff you Should
Know select episode where Josh and I picked our favorites
from the past one thousand plus episodes and repost them
and hopes that you might discover something old. Here we
(00:20):
go something old? Is that a good way to sell something?
That's why we call them classics and selects. July twenty nine,
two thousand ten, was a very special day because that
is the day we released the episode How Traffic Works. Yes, traffic,
not drug trafficking, but traffic, car traffic. We all hate it,
but you know what, maybe you should understand it a
(00:42):
little better. Really interesting, and I believe Josh even coined
his own term. If I'm not mistaken for this one,
a break a bubble? Dare I say? Does my memory
serve me? We'll find out by listening right now to
How Traffic Works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:11):
I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles Precious Bryant? How
you doing, Precious? This is the podcast based on the
novel Push by Sapphire. Yeah, that is absolutely right, word
for word. Right, Jerry just got back because you did
a spoiler. Yeah, for Precious I've known for spoilers, aren't I?
At least two? It was Boiling Home. No, there was
(01:34):
a there was um six ft under. There was another
one I spoiled too, wasn't there? Yeah, there was one
you spoiled That was a really old movie, and I
was like, come on, that movie is like fifteen years old.
There's a statute of limitation, was it, Buck Rubon's I Yeah,
I think that was it? Yeah, me too, Chuck. Yes,
have you ever been in traffic? That's the best I got.
(01:54):
How do you set this up? Chuck? Do you like
Steve Winwood? Yeah? You know I was going to make
a Traffic the band comment. Have you ever seen the
low spark of high heeled boys? Yeah? Yeah, that's it.
I'm seriously, I'm like trying to do you know he
was like when he first joined Traffic, thinks a he's
a lothario. Yeah, and by that I mean in Prodigy. Yeah, yeah, Traffic.
(02:18):
I've been in traffic, buddy, you Yes, I have actually
been in traffic. Um, happens a lot because I don't
ride Marta. You ride are fine, fine, crippled public transit
system here in Atlanta. I'm never in traffic anymore. It's
it's really been a huge difference in my life. Yeah. Well,
I don't ride Marta because, um, I usually I tend
(02:42):
to avoid the smell of urine, and UM, reading while
moving makes me sick. So I'm you know, plus, I
I value I used to value being able to smoke. Yeah, dude,
I was just about to say that's why I used
to drive. Yeah, and now I'm just like, I just
do it out to have it. But I get caught
in traffic a lot, and it stinks. I don't see
you on a public transport. You're not You're not that
(03:03):
kind of social No. That's the other thing too, It's like, oh, hey,
we worked together, let's talk the whole time. No, I don't.
I wear my sunglasses. It can be dark and raining,
and I've told everyone here that if I have my
shades on, that means the office is closed. Nice, the
store is shut down. That's very nice, stor it looks
super cool. Alright. So I'm a jerk that doesn't talk
(03:23):
to coworkers. Now moving on, buddy, It's okay, Chuck. Do
you remember when we recorded quicksand yes, do you remember
how we said that there's like a finite amount of
stuff out there about quick thing, because there's a finite
amount to know. There's a finite amount to know about traffic.
(03:43):
But there's tons of information out there. Yeah, lots of
little side things to know for sure. Yeah, Because ultimately,
traffic happens in two ways. One is, there is simply congestion.
There's just too many cars on the road to carry
to carry the flow of traffic quickly. Right. The other
(04:06):
way is there is some unpredictable event that somebody's pulled over,
somebody's broken down, there's a wreck, whether maybe an event
that falls under congestion, police have pulled over a traffic
a speeder. People always slow down for that, and that's it.
That's it. Those are pretty much the two broad categories
(04:27):
that traffic can be created, right, um. And what happens
in each of those events is somebody upfront puts on
their brakes and that that one press of the brakes
travels backward all the way through right when you have
a bunch of different cars and different lengthes doing that
(04:47):
at the same time, you have traffic you know what
that's called traffic wave. Yes, that's true. It's a domino effect.
It's very easy, it is. And I came up with
my own idea of just scribing this. You're ready by okay,
So what I came up with is called the traffic bubble,
okay by Josh Clark. So the traffic bubble happens when
(05:09):
somebody is driving along and presses their brakes for whatever reason.
And just imagine that when they press that break, the
big bubble grows over the car, okay, And it starts
very slowly traveling backward. And each car behind that car
that's that created the traffic bubble isn't allowed to accelerate
again until the traffic bubble is passed through them, right,
(05:31):
But then the further back the traffic bubble goes, the
more it dissipates, until eventually the people far enough back
don't have to go through the traffic bubble and they're
not affected by it. And does the bubble pass through
the front cars to where they can then again accelerate.
Is that how you see it as a moving bubble? Yeah?
Over the bubble travels backwards over the traffic, and then
(05:52):
once it passes over you, you're allowed to accelerate again.
I believe you're just going to turn my friends the
traffic bubble like that jerk science or no break bubble,
that's what I called it. Okay, breaking bubble. Yeah, like
a piping effect. I hate that guy and he hates you.
I don't care so traffic Josh, you want, We might
as well thrown a few stats here. Yeah, this one's
(06:12):
that heavy. It is. This this article by our colleague
Jonathan Strickland at tech Stuff. Yeah, the bald this podcast
on staff here, Uh, what's a good stat here? The
estimated traffic costs If you wanna talk about cost of
traffic in about five years ago, they estimated about seventy
eight billion dollars. And that's only fuel and waste of time.
(06:35):
They don't take into account like pollution, environmental damage, health
costs due to pollution. I mean it would really add
up if you got to, you know, include those things. Yeah,
and um with extra gas that was bought in two
thousand seven, right, isn't that the year that studies connected
or covered UM we in the US bought two point
(06:56):
nine billion billion extra gallon of oil because of traffic,
and the annual cost for each individual motorists in America
was like seven ten bucks just sitting there, just from traffic,
not from you know, the gas that you need to
actually get from point A to point B, but the
extra gas used from idoling. Yeah, crazy, yeah, And I
(07:18):
believe l A tops it out obviously at about two
weeks a year you potentially spend sitting in your car
and traffic. Yeah. L A has um. There's this group
called the Texas Transportation Institute, and I think they're out
of A and M. Maybe they're awesome. They they they
are like the leaders and studying and understanding and trying
(07:39):
to mitigate traffic, right um. And they came up with
this thing called the travel time index, right yeah. So basically,
you take the amount of time it takes and it's
specific to each city, and it's for each city. It's
not compared from city to city. It's compared to a
certain time in one city to another time in the
(08:01):
same city. So in an off peak time, say you
can travel the speed limit, it takes you one hour
to get from point A to point B in Los Angeles,
it would take one point nine two hours doubles your
time basically during yeah, during rush hour, So it takes
twice as long to get from point A to point
(08:22):
B during rush hours compared to off peak. That's the
travel time index. Yeah, and you know you have to
do this anywhere you live where there's heavy traffic. But
when I lived in l A, I used to have
to always think, all right, well, this would take me
forty five minutes normally. So and when you work in
the movie business, you you can't be late. That's just
not one of the things you do. You've got to
be there on time or early. So you're like, well,
(08:43):
it's supposed to take me forty five minutes, I'm gonna
give myself like two hours. I gave myself more than
double to get anywhere I needed to go. That's that's
very smart. It's awful, is what it is. Yeah. L
A's kind of bad, but chuck, we have it pretty
bad too. Yeah, Land is really bad. We're among like
probably I think the top three or four. I heard
a year or so ago that Atlanta had toppled l A,
(09:06):
but I never saw any citation. Well, all those it
depends on how they are rating. It. Some they rade
the differently, like the amount of time you spend in
your car commuting or the amount of time you sit idling,
So it kind of depends. But Atlanta's way up there, Boston, Seattle,
San Francisco actually think is absent from that. Oh really,
I think that they have made some moves that have
(09:27):
kind of mitigated traffic and gotten them off some of
the I know, the Big Dig was messing everything up.
The Big Dig was just killing people. Yeah, and d
C is awful. Have you ever driven around there? Uh? No,
I haven't. You was talking about how especially during the summer,
during the travel or the tourist season, it's just mind
numbing it is. Yeah, I mean way out into the
(09:47):
suburbs in Virginia and Maryland sitting there. Yeah. You know
what they did in l A that I saw one
time that I had never seen was I was going
down the highway one day and I noticed everyone was
slowing down. And I looked up ahead on the expressway
and they were to California Highway patrol cars doing huge
slow ses back and forth on the six lanes of expressway,
(10:11):
not letting, like keeping everyone back like a nask, like
a like a paste. Yeah, like a pace car. But
you know they weren't driving straight. They were driving these
big s. Is like, don't go buy me. I've never
seen that before in my life. What would have made
it even funnier is if they've been driving those ses
with their hands out their window and their guns just
shooting into the area while they were doing it. That
would really say, don't drive past me. Yeah, that would
(10:33):
have been great. And apparently that was they do that.
It's a I don't know what they call it, but
that's too slow everyone down. It's called being a yes.
And on that note, my friend Derek has a joke
about Atlanta traffic, and he's right, because Atlanta before their traffic,
everyone's driving really really what fast. Yeah, that's one of
(10:57):
the great characteristics about it LANDA as far as i'm can,
you go as fast as you can. I mean, the
average um flow of traffic, I would say it's about
seventy miles an hour around here, and that's with like
a lot of people all around you. Yeah, everybody's bumper
to bumper going at least seventy and the cops don't
pull you over unless you're going over seventy and even
(11:17):
then like, it's usually like you're going eighty or ninety
when you get pulled over because everybody else is going seventy. Right,
And that's my buddy Derek's joke is in Atlanta, and
it's really true. It's not a joke. Everyone drives as
fast as they can every day until someone and then
someone recks, right, and then traffic backs up every single day.
That's Atlanta traffic. Are we done? So let's just sit
(11:57):
here and do traffic stories about what what angers us?
So check. There's a lot of smart people who study
traffic because like you said, there's um, what was it,
how much money in two eight billion just from fuel
and wasted time? Because think about it, a person's time
is money, right, And if you're sitting in traffic, unless
(12:18):
you're one of those jerks like me who has an
iPhone that emails while he's driving, then you're wasting money, right. Um.
And actually there's this there's a group called Commute Solutions
are out of Santa Cruz and they calculated the actual
cost per mile of driving, not just traffic, but driving
to each person is one point nineteen one dollar nineteen
(12:40):
cents per mile. Yeah, and that includes everything I don't
know how they came up with that number, but check
it out. Well, if we're talking about highways and stats,
we might as well talk about the same. Texas group
did a study and um they found that traffic over
the past years increased and by they predict it will
(13:04):
go up another And here's what's remarkable. One only one
of all our roads are highways, yet they shoulder half
the traffic, half the car travel. Yeah. Crazy, it is crazy,
And you don't usually think about when you think about traffic.
I usually think about the highway myself, although I rarely
(13:24):
get on the highway anymore. It's all surface streets that
I take to and from work. Yeah, what do you go?
Duid hills? Okay? I go basically up Piedmont um. But
it's it's traffic every day. But I don't think of
it as traffic. And I think of traffic, I think
of seventy five at rush hour. And just like UH
(13:44):
exit ramps backed up, the the thing is is our
surface streets are also intended to handle overflow of highway traffic. Right,
not just people who are backed up from the exit
ramp back onto the street, but I mean people who
are making a con just decision like me to find
a different way that doesn't have anything to do with
the highway. Right, And they found that if you want
(14:07):
to widen a highway, I think we talked about this
in like the urban planning one um that when you
when you widen the highway, Um, there's something called latent demand.
It's a theory that if you want in the highway,
people like me are going to be like, oh well,
now there's a leven lanes instead of five, so I'll
just hop on the highway. And so the demand increases
(14:30):
in step with the widening of the lanes. So it
actually doesn't mitigate anything by adding more lanes to a highway, right.
I think they said the only way that will work
is if they outpaced demand with lanes, and that just
doesn't happen. There's too many cars expensive, But that kind
of makes sense to throw that money then instead into
upfront costs for a light rail system, you know, hippie.
(14:56):
Actually I'm still holding up for personal rapid transit. That
was a palette in me podcast, but it was interesting.
It's a good one. Uh RAMT metering. If if you're
talking about solutions, that's another one. And they had these
in l A. And they have them here in Atlanta. Now.
It's where when you go to get on the highway.
Now they have stoplights that just allow like one car
through every few seconds. So you know, when you get
(15:18):
on at Freedom Parkway, I used to fly around that
curve it was fun and jump into traffic and squeeze
in however I could. And that's you know, I was
one of those jerks causing traffic. Well, I think anybody
entering is that, because again with traffic, especially with just
straight up congestion, there's just too many cars in one place,
(15:40):
especially when you have a line of traffic and then
more people directly adding to that lane. Yeah. Right, But
RAMT metering really really works. They did a study in Minnesota.
They have four d and thirty RAMT meters and in
two thousand they shut them all down for seven weeks
and during that time traffic accidents increased. And then afterward
(16:00):
they re reinstituted it and they saw the capacity increased
by fourteen percent, and they walked away from that project
going like with their hands in their pockets. Yeah, like,
we should probably not tell anybody about that. Yeah, I
was trying to do a Minnesota accent. But that was
pretty good. I couldn't do it. All I said was,
oh no, it wasn't bad though. That's how they say it.
(16:21):
H O V lanes is another thing that they've done
pretty much countrywide. Carpool lanes as help. Yeah, I always
forget when I have another person in the car, though.
Uh yeah, I'll get like halfway where I'm going and say,
oh man, let's get in the carpool lane. Yeah, I
have to say though. The h O V lane, to me,
it's it's an extension of the fast lane. So you
(16:42):
got the fast lane and then you have the h
O V lane, And I hate it when it's the
fast lane is just the fast ling. The HOV lane
is like, I drive as slow as I want, but
I have, you know, four people in my car. It
makes it difficult. It's it's kind of like the h
O V lane to me, is you have two or
more people, you're willing to drive ten miles faster than
(17:02):
anybody else on the highway. Agreed, And since we talked
about pet peeves in our last podcast, My one of
my largest pet peeves is when I'm sitting in traffic
and I'll see people speeding by me in the h
OV lane by themselves. Nothing bothers me more than people
that think the rules don't apply to them. I hate that.
I hate those people, or people who um use the
shoulder and just drive along in traffic as far as
(17:25):
they can to get like fifty cars ahead. Yeah. I
almost got plowed over in l A one time. I
was getting out to get in the regular exit lane
and almost got creamed by a truck that was on
the shoulder, and I screamed at him that he almost
killed me, and he says, what are you a cop?
That's l a for you. It was like, he literally
almost killed me. What are you a cop? If you're
a cop, you'd be making lazy ss is in front
(17:47):
of try ands firing my gun into the air. Exactly.
What else, Josh, Uh, there's matting lanes. We already talked
about that, But there's that one. Then there's um probably
the most uh contentious idea cones shim pricing, which is
basically taxing people to drive. And there's a guy named
Alistair Darling. I don't know if he's still the Transportation secretary,
(18:08):
but he's something of a rock star in the transportation
world because he was a huge proponent of this, and
he said in England, yeah, he was the British Transportation secretary.
He basically said, you know, cars exact a toll on
the environment and on the road, um, just by driving
on him, So we should charge people to drive on
(18:29):
the roads. What he failed to mention is that we
already do. There are things called taxes, and those are
meant to pay for the roads. Right, he's forgetting about
you know, all the other misused money. Um. But they
did actually have one in Great Britain. Do they still chuck? No,
I don't think they ever instituted. They had a pilot
program from two thousand three to seven and it worked
(18:54):
like a champ for him in London at least. Yeah,
there was a thirty percent dropping congest shin decrease in
in fossil fuel consumption, decrease in CEO two emissions. So
like in London, Singapore, Stockholm, San Francisco, San Francisco, the
Institute one No, San Francisco is studying a New York
(19:16):
Bloomberg has proposed it and they've studied it. And I
just pulled this from this week. Actually, Lord Adonis is
actually he's the Transport Secretary unless it's a new guy.
What was your guy? His name is Lord Adonis. Lord Adonis,
the Transport Secretary came up with a new hotel student. Yeah,
(19:37):
that's where Joshua be staying in New York under Lord
uh he. It says it's ruled out the introduction of
a national road pricing for the next parliament. But they
uncovered that civil servants are still involved with the project
and spending money on research even though they supposedly took
it off the table. It was kind of a secret
that they were still like tinkering with Oh. I thought
(19:58):
you were like saying this these board paying for this
research o their own paychecks. No, but they've sunk seven
point two million pounds that I guess the public didn't know.
They thought it was off the table. So they're kind
of under some hot water, in some hot water. They're
they're in some deep quicksand yeah, they said, Golden Brown
and Alista Darling have been caught red handed planning a
spy in the sky system A spy in the sky. Nice. Yeah, yeah,
(20:22):
because I guess we should probably explain congestion pricing basically
every car on the road. I guess when you would
go get your vehicle tag or something. You also get
a radio frequency identifier, right, and as you're driving, some
satellite is tracking you, or you pass through some sector
or something like that, and all of a sudden you're
being you're in a toll area. And much like say, uh,
(20:46):
one of those toll passes, UM, you are sent a
bill or there's like you have to set up like
a credit card or a bank account, attach that to
your to your tag, and it just draws money from
it based on however much you drive in there. In Singapore,
when they first instituted, there's an actually UM they had
(21:09):
a flat rate for downtown, which is the most congested
during peak hours. You had to pay three bucks to
just drive around downtown and you could drive around all
you wanted. Uh. And as they as as they've gotten
better at it, they're they're getting a little fancy schmancy
with it, you know, like, UM, well, if you want
to drive here, it's a dollar seventy five for twenty minutes,
but you can back, you know, two blocks over and
(21:32):
it's just fifty cents and so on. Well, that's one
of the rubs that UM. One of the big things
is in England at least in other places too. I
think they've suggested paying more for peak hour so be
flexible in your work schedule. But then, of course people
that are a friend of the poor say that's progressive
taxation because white color dudes can be all flexible and
(21:52):
work from home, but the poor have to get up
and go to work during peak hours. So you're they're
basically paying for the road that the rich man drives on. Exactly,
That's exactly right, And that's the big problem. I mean,
aside from having to pay to drive with with a
with a congestion tax. Yeah, um, what else can you do? Chuck?
And also remember we were talking it's this isn't just
(22:13):
highways surface streets to everybody. Don't get all anxious. We're
talking about surface streets as well. Yes, uh, surface streets.
You get a lot of suburban sprawl, you know, like
here in Atlanta, you've got like out in Roswell twenty
years ago it was it was desolate cow patties and
now it's all uh, you know, young families moving out
(22:35):
there who don't want to be around urban types. Yeah,
and you have a lot of a lot more cars. Um,
you have again that that one of two ways that
you can cause traffic. Just put more cars on a
road than it than it's designed to hand and and
out in the booneties like that. They weren't built for
you know, they were built for farmland. All of a
sudden they got these suburban people moving out there. And so, yeah,
(22:58):
traffic lights is something they can do. Yeah, this one
disturbed me. Um that even the So you have a
traffic light that is on a timer, right, which is
especially when they're poorly timed. Yes, Yeah, decator is awful.
There's another one for the Piedmont Park parking deck and
it just does whatever it wants, no matter what time
(23:21):
and day, and if there's a car, they're not and
people are just stopped in either direction, right, And um,
that's a timed light, and time lights are awful, They're awful. Right.
Then you have um sensored lights, which are awesome, right
because you just come up in the way to your
car triggers it good. Yeah, Or you have a mixed
system that uses time timing and sensors and it changes
(23:46):
depending on the kind of day where it is. It's
like you can set up a citywide comprehensive traffic light plan.
Some cities have this. Even the best mixed citywide comprehensive
traffic light plan reduced is congestion by one. Really Yeah, yeah,
Atlanta is bad about that. At least in my area
(24:07):
there's and Jerry can confirm this, she kind of lives
over near me. But there's all these scenarios where you'll
you'll stop at a light that's timed to not the
part of the smart light system is that they're all
time to work together. So like if you sit here
at this corner and you take a ride on red,
there's not another red light waiting on you, and then
that turns green, and then thirty more feet there's another
(24:27):
red light. They should be timed out to where they
were green. In l A, It's like, I mean, that's
the one thing I will say. There's a lot of traffic.
It's just because the people they do the best they can.
You look down. They have these long, long, long straight
streets in Hollywood, and late at night you'll be sitting,
like on Hollywood Boulevard at a red light and you'll
see wink winkink blank, You'll see like eight lights turn green.
(24:50):
All in that New Balance commercial, Yeah, with that woman
running and she pushes herself to make all the lights. Yeah,
doomed a failure, but still it was a nice effort.
I would I would go longer in l A just
to get off the highway, even if it took me longer,
just to feel like I was moving. And Chuck, I'm
about to spoil it for all of our British, UK, English, Welsh, Irish,
(25:13):
Scottish friends who are typing an angry corrective email about
Alistair Darling. He is not the Transportation Secretary. He was
the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Lord
Adonis is the Transport Secretary, that is, and me and
your hotel names. We were talking about people um studying
(25:48):
this kind of thing. There's all sorts of really cool
quantifications for traffic. My favorite is the passenger car equivalent.
Let's hear it. Okay, So you have a passenger car
is say a city at an averag city Anda Toyota
camera all right, or to be fair, Honda court right. Um.
(26:09):
That is like just an average car that you can
fit four people into and it drives down the road
and it's pretty responsive. And um, an suv or a
bus or a van is not as responsive because they're
larger and because they take up more space, they're slower
to accelerate, and so they they exact a heavier burden
(26:32):
on a highway during congestion. Right, So what they've come
up with our passenger car equivalent. So an suv is
one point four pc, right, and then a city bus
is like four point four pc. It's like four cars, right. Yeah,
it has the same as far as like accelerating after
(26:53):
breaking and just the space that's taking up. That's the
equivalent of a passenger car. So one good solution to
traffic is everybody driving smaller car, no kidding, and virtual slots, right, yeah,
what's the deal there. Each car has a certain amount
of space it takes up, and don't try and fit
(27:13):
into a slot that's a bit smaller than your car.
What is that? How you know? That's pretty much virtual
slots like tetris. Yeah, if you just amagement that there
is a basically a rectangle around your car bubble, a bubble,
but not a break bubble. You want to avoid the
brake bubble um, but this is more of a rectangle
(27:33):
and it kind of hugs the sides of your cars,
but it is longer on the front and back. And
if every everybody's car stays in these slots that are
on the highway, you just kind of pull into them
as you're driving, and the slots are going like all
the same rate. Then as long as there's not too
many cars on the road or more more cars than
there are slots, there should be no traffic. Yeah, but
(27:55):
that never happens because all this is pie in the
sky stuff. Well yeah, because when in areably you're sitting
in the lane and you're like that lanes moving now,
and then you get over in that lane you're like, well,
now that lanes moving and you keep going back and
forth where if you stayed where you are, if everyone
stay where they were, you would all get there quicker.
Or if everybody just stayed at home. Yeah, yes, good point.
Put your jobs stay at home. Right. So that's uh,
(28:16):
that's our two cents, And uh, if you want to
learn more about traffic, we we've been killing the articles
with cool flash animations, haven't we did? The one it
has a flash animation about a traffic wave. Cool no
break bubble. I'm going to see about having somebody add
one of those. Coined the term my friend, you can
type in traffic. I think it'll bring up a bunch
(28:37):
of stuff in the handy search bar how stuff works
dot com, which means it's time for listener questions. It's
time for Facebook questions. Yes, as we said in that
other podcast on quicksand we took, we post on Facebook. Hey,
give us some questions. We'll answer like ten of them
really quickly. We got them in an hour. This comes
(29:00):
from Chelsea. What's the most unusual thing you've ever eaten? Uh?
Tripe for me, which is intestines? Go ahead, what's yours? Um?
I've had fried chicken hearts, I've had beef tongue. My
favorite is um bone marrow really highly highly recommend. Anywhere
(29:22):
you can find bone marrow, just eat it. The only
place down here is rathbuts and it's okay, yeah, yeah,
you gotta wrath buns. You gotta get one of the steaks. No,
not not rathbunds, steaks, regular wrath buns. Yeah. Strangely he
doesn't have bone marrow there, but yes, those weird stuff.
All right, what I got you questions right there? You
want to read one? Yeah, I guess this one's from Jacob.
(29:45):
If a tree falls in the forest and no one
is around here, and Jacob hyphenates no one, which frankly
I find like flourish nice. Yes, except for a tape
recorder which absorbs the radiant vibrations and can later play
them back because audible waves. Did the tree really make
a sound? The answer is yes, yes. Uh. Kristen says,
(30:06):
where are christ and Candice now? And who does the
intro for the podcast? Chris Palette is um co host
of Tech Stuff Now and has been for quite a while.
He's made it hometown boy made Good. Candice Gibson Keener
has gotten married and she stepped out of the limelight
to concentrate on just being an editor, but she's still here.
Sits right next to Josh and uh. Roxanne does the
(30:29):
intros for the podcast. She's our head of video. There
you go. That is not Jerry. A lot of people
think it's Jerry. There's some comprehensive answers right there. Rachel
says she currently lives in Athens, g A. I'd love
to hear more about your experience living here, where you
hung out your favorite bands, to see what other fond
or not so fond memories you might have of Athens
(30:49):
she says, we have quite a following there. Did you
know that? I didn't either. My bar was Roadhouse. I
hung out of Roadhouse all the time. I was a
Georgia bar guy, did you Yes? And we should point
out though the Georgia Bar, the Globe, and the Roadhouse
made up the bar Muda triangle, and you could access
them all through the alley to get to the next
so most decidedly could. Quite often you would hop around,
(31:09):
depending on just stayed at Roadhouse. I hope Roadhouse still there.
It's gotten to be, Yeah, it is. And then of course, um,
I always liked wilson Soul Food and Guthrie's, which in
my opinion is superior to Zaxepiece, even though it's the
same thing. Yeah, I was Automatic for the people. Well, yeah,
I lived right around the corner from there. So remember
what was the name of that restaurant. I went to
(31:29):
Weaverde's Automatic for the people. Yes, that was good too.
I liked Wilson's because the owner walked around and he's
like four ft tall and he shook hands with everybody, right,
nice guy. Um, And of course Harry Bassett's. I never
went there. Oh my god, that was a frat bar.
You went there, I could go. It wasn't just the bar,
like the food was amazing, wasn't I put the food
up against any in Atlanta? Euro wrap? Nanna a lot
(31:51):
of e rose in college. That's good alright? Uh? Kristen, No, Randy,
who's the cat who won't cop out when there's danger
all about out? I think we both know shaft nice
who's the cat that won't cup out? That's one of
the lesser quoted lines from that song. Yeah, I've got
one from chavon. How do your significant others feel about
(32:13):
your legion of man crushes and equally strong lady crushes? Chuck,
I wasn't aware that anyone had to crush on us
where you I didn't know that I've seen that before.
But Emily thinks it's funny. Sure, yeah it is funny.
She's now I'm not going it is. I mean, if
you if only people can see our stomachs so much hair?
And Laura, how many emails do you get per podcast?
(32:36):
We get about three d a week. Laura, Alan who
put the bomb in the bomb? Sha bomp shabomp um.
The only reason I read that it's because he stressed
his mill house and his picture nice And who is
your most surprising celebrity fan. We've only got a few
that we know of, and they're all surprised. This one
is more surprising than I've got one. Um oh, I
(32:57):
can't remember her name. There's a girl who stars in
Secret Life of the American Teenager Is. She's a fan
of the show. She tweeted that she was on set
like in between um, shooting and listening to stuff you
should know. Yeah, John Hodgman, I was pretty knocked out
by that. That's pretty cool. Bradley Cooper, Yeah, Will Wheaton, Yeah,
(33:17):
Rene's l Wager, Aisha Tyler Yes. And the couple of
The Daily Show guys why Senec Yeah. Joe Randazzo, the
editor in chief of The Onion. If you are a
celebrity that we did not mention, we would love to
know that you listened to us, because we're just kind
of thrilling. We're like, we're nobody, So when we hear that,
I think it's cool. Yeah, uh yeah, I got one more.
(33:39):
Pirates Shelley says pirates are Ninja's Ninja's clearly definitely that's it. Okay,
Chuck's given the He's out isn't that called Vegas. Yeah,
it's like when the dealer finishes there around or whatever.
There's gotta be a name for it. If you know
the name for that, we want to know. Send it
in an email to stuff podcast at house stuff works
(34:00):
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
com home page.
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Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.