June 29, 2010 • 32 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 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 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,
(00:21):
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 it? At least two? It
was home? No, there was 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
(00:43):
like fifteen years old. There's a statue of momentation? Was
it Buck Ruband's eye? Yeah? I think that was it? Yeah,
me too, Chuck. Yes, have you ever been in traffic?
That's the best. I God, how do you set this up? Chuck?
Do you like Steve Winwood? Yeah? You know I was
gonna make a traffic a band comment. Have you ever
seen the low spark of high heeled boys? Yeah? Yeah,
(01:06):
that's it. I'm seriously I'm like trying to you know,
he was like fifteen when he first joined traffic because
he's a Lithario. Yeah, and by that I mean in Prodigy. Yeah. Yeah, traffic.
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
(01:31):
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 I usually I
tend to avoid the smell of urine and um, reading
while moving makes me sick. So I'm you know, plus,
I value I used to value being able to smoke. Yeah, dude,
(01:54):
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 not You're not
that kind of social No. That's the other thing too,
it's like, oh, hey, we work 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
(02:15):
that if I have my shades on. That means the
office is closed. Nice, the story is shut down. That's
very nice stories. It looks super cool. Alright, So I'm
a jerk that doesn't talk 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
(02:36):
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. 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
(02:59):
road to carry to carry the flow of traffic quickly right.
The other way is there is some unpredictable event that
somebody's pulled over, somebody's broken down, there's a wreck, maybe
an event that falls under congestion. Police have pulled over
(03:20):
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 that traffic can be created, right, um,
And what happens in each of those events is somebody
up front puts on their brakes and that that one
(03:41):
press of the brakes travels backward all the way through. Right,
when you have a bunch of different cars and different
lengthes doing that 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 describing this.
You ready, Okay, So what I came up with is
(04:04):
called the traffic bubble, okay, by Josh Clark. So the
traffic bubble happens when 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 and it starts very slowly traveling backwards. And each
car behind that car that's that created the traffic bubble
(04:26):
isn't allowed to accelerate again until the traffic bubble is
passed through them, right. 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
(04:49):
as a moving bubble? Yeah? Over the bubble travels backwards
over the traffic, and then once it passes over you,
you're allowed to accelerate again. I believe you're just going
to turn my friends traffic bubble like that or science
or no breaking 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,
(05:10):
you want wink, might as well thrown a few stats here. Yeah,
this one's that heavy. It is this this article by
our colleague Jonathan Strickland at tech Stuff. Yeah, the Baldest
podcast on staff. Here, Uh, what's a good stat here?
The estimated traffic costs if you want to talk about
cost of traffic, and about five years ago they estimated
(05:31):
about seventy eight billion dollars and that's only fuel and
waste of time. 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
(05:51):
year that studies connected recovered. Um, we in the US
bought two point nine billion bill in extra gallons of
oil because of traffic, and the annual cost for each
individual motorists in America was like seven bucks just sitting there,
just from traffic, not from you know, the gas that
(06:13):
you need to actually get from point A to point B,
but the extra gas used from idoling. Yeah crazy, yeah,
And uh, I 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.
(06:36):
They they they are like the leaders and studying and
understanding and trying 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.
(06:58):
It's compared to a certain time in one city to
another time in the 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
(07:19):
rush hour, So it takes twice as long to get
from point A to point 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
(07:39):
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, 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. Among like
(08:01):
probably I think the top three or four. I heard
a year or so ago that Atlanta had toppled l A.
But I never saw any citation. Well all those It
depends on how they are rating it. Some they rate
the differently, like the amount of time you spend in
your car commuting or the amount of time you sit idoling,
So it kind of depends. But Atlanta's way up there. Boston, Seattle,
San Francisco. Actually I think Boston's absent from that. Oh really,
(08:24):
I think that they have made some moves that have
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,
(08:46):
is yeah. I mean way out into the suburbs in
Virginia and Maryland sitting there. You know what they did
in l A that I saw one time that 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 express Ay and there were
to California Highway patrol cars doing huge slow ses back
(09:10):
and forth on the six lanes of expressway, 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 by me. I've never seen that
before in my life. What would have made it even
funnier is if they've been driving those s with their
hands out their window and their guns just shooting into
the area while they were doing it. That would really say,
(09:32):
don't drive past me. Yeah, that would 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
(09:55):
really what fast. Yeah, that's one of the great characteristics
about Atlanta. As far as I'm concerned, you go as
fast as you can. I mean, the the average um
flow of traffic I would say, is about seventy miles
an hour around here. And that's with like a lot
of people all around you. Yeah, everybody's bumper, a bumper
going at least seventy, and the cops don't pull you
(10:15):
over unless you're going over seventy and even 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 wrecks, right, and then traffic backs up every single day.
That's Atlanta traffic. Are we done? So let's just sit
(10:39):
here and do traffic stories, just talk 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 seventy eight billion
just from fuel and wasted time? Yeah, because think about it,
a person's time is money, right, and if you're sitting
in traffic and sure one of those jerks like me
(11:01):
who has an iPhone that emails while he's driving, then
you're wasting money, right. Um. And actually there was this
there's a group called the Commute Solutions that 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 cents per mile. Yea,
(11:25):
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 has
increased a and by they predict it will go up
(11:45):
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
(12:06):
get on the highway anymore. It's all surface streets that
I take to and from work. Yeah, what do you go?
Druid Hills Piedmont and I go basically up Piedmont r um.
But it's it's traffic every day. But I don't think
of it as traffic. When I think of traffic, I
think of seventy five at rush hour and just like
UH exit ramps backed up the the thing is is
(12:30):
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 conscious 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 to widen a highway, I think we talked
(12:53):
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 in step with the widening of the lanes.
(13:14):
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. But
that kind of makes sense to throw that money then
instead into upfront costs for a light rail system. Yeah,
(13:34):
you know, you hippie, I 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, ramp 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 stop lights that
(13:56):
just allow like one car through every few seconds. So
you know, when you get on at Freedom Parkway, I
used to fly around that and jump into traffic and
squeeze in however I could, and um, 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
(14:20):
in one place, especially when you have a line of
traffic and then more people directly adding to that lane. Yeah. Right,
But ramp metering really really works. They did a study
in Minnesota. They have four d and thirty rant meters
and in two thousand they shut them all down for
seven weeks and during that time traffic accidents increased. And
(14:41):
then afterward they re reinstituted it and they saw the
capacity increased by fourteen, 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. I said it
was Oh, I know, it wasn't bad though, that's how
(15:02):
they say it. H O V lanes is another thing
that they've done pretty much countrywide, carpool lanes as help.
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 carpoal 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
(15:23):
get the fast ling 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 lan
is like, I drive as slow as I want, but
I have, you know, four people in my car, agreed,
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 and you're willing to drive ten miles
faster than anybody else on the highway agreed. And since
(15:46):
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 O V lane by themselves. Nothing bothers me
more than people that think the rules don't apply to them.
I hate that time. I hate those people or people
who um use the shoulder and just drive along in
traffic as far as they can to get like fifty
(16:07):
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 were a cop, you'd be making
lazy s's in front of trying firing my gun into
(16:29):
the air. Exactly what else, Josh, Uh, there's lanes. We
already talked about that. Whether there's that one, then there's
um probably the most uh contentious idea congestion 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 baby something. You have a rock star in
(16:52):
the transportation world, because he was a huge proponent of this,
and he said in England. In England, yeah, he was
the British Transportation in 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 the roads. What he failed to mention
(17:13):
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 like a champ for him in
(17:37):
London at least. Yeah, there was a thirty percent dropping congestion,
decrease in in fossil fuel consumption, decrease in CEO two emissions,
So like in London, Singapore, Stockholm, San Francisco, San Francisco,
did they institute one No, San Francisco is studying a
New York Bloomberg has proposed it and they've studied it.
(18:00):
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, that's where Joshuly staying in New York
under Lord uh he It says it's ruled out the
(18:24):
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 ou.
I thought you were like saying this, these people were
paying for this research on their own paychecks. No, but
(18:44):
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 Dawling had been caught red
handed planning a spy in the sky sis him nice. Yeah, yeah,
because I guess we should probably explain congestion pricing. Basically
(19:08):
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,
one of those toll passes UM, you are sent a
(19:31):
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 in UM they
had a flat rate for downtown, which is the most
(19:53):
congested during peak hours. You had to pay three bucks
to just drive around downtown. You could drive around all 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
d for twenty minutes, but you can back, you know,
two blocks over and it's just fifty cents and so on. Well,
(20:15):
that's one of the rubs that um, one of the
big things is 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 collar dudes can be
all flexible and work from home, but the poor have
to get up and go to work during peak hours.
(20:37):
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 highways surface streets to everybody,
don't get all anxious, we're talking about surface streets as well. Yes, uh,
(21:01):
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 kind of desolate
cow patties and now it's all uh, you know, young
families moving out 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
(21:26):
of two ways that you can cause traffic. Just put
more cars on a road than it than it's designed
to hand. And then out in the boonies 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 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, yeah,
(21:48):
which is so much, especially when they're poorly timed. Decator
is awful. 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 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 time
(22:10):
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, yeah, those are good. Yeah. Or you have
a mixed system that uses time timing and sensors and
it changes depending on the kind of day where it is.
It's like you can set up a citywide comprehensive traffic
(22:33):
light plan. Some cities have this. Even the best mixed
citywide comprehensive traffic light plan reduces congestion by one percent.
Really yeah, yeah, Atlanta is bad about that, at least
in my area. 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
(22:56):
to not 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 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
(23:17):
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 wink, You'll see like eight lights turn green,
all that new Balance commercial. Yeah, with that woman running
and she pushes herself to make all the lights doomed.
(23:39):
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,
Scottish friends who are typing an angry corrective email about
(23:59):
al Stir Darling. He is not a Transportation secretary. He
was the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
Lord Adonis is the Transport secretary. That and me name
We were talking about people um studying this kind of thing.
There's all sorts of really cool quantifications for traffic. My
favorite is the passenger car equivalent. Okay, so you have
(24:24):
a passenger car is say a sitting at an averagity
and Toyota camera, all right? Or to be fair, Honda accord. Right, Um,
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
(24:48):
larger and because they take up more space, they're slower
to accelerate, and so they they exact a heavier burden
on a highway during congest right, So what they've come
up with our passenger car equivalent. So an suv is
one point four pc, right, and then a a city
(25:10):
bus is like four point four pc. It's like four cars, right, Yeah,
it has the same as far as like accelerating after
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,
(25:34):
what's the deal there. Each car has a certain amount
of space it takes up, and don't try and fit
into a slot that's a bit smaller than your car.
Is that how you know? That's pretty much firstual slots
like tetris. Yeah, if you just amagement that there is
a basically a rectangle around your car like bubble a bubble,
but not a break bubble. Okay, you want to avoid
(25:54):
the brake bubble um, but this is more of a
rectangle and it kind of hugs the sides your cars,
but it's 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
(26:14):
cars on the road, were more more cars than there
are slots, there should be no traffic. Yeah, but that
never happens because all this is pie in the sky still.
Well yeah, because when invariably 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 stayed where
they were, you would all get there quicker. Or if
(26:35):
everybody just stayed at home. Yeah, yes, good point, but
your jobs stay at home. Right, So that's uh, 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 one? It has a flash
animation about a traffic wave. Cool, no break bubble. I'm
(26:55):
going to see about having somebody add one of those
the term my friend. You can type in traffic I
think it'll bring up a bunch of stuff in the
handy search part 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,
(27:16):
we post on Facebook. Hey, give us some questions. We'll
answer like ten of them really quickly. We got in
an hour. This comes 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,
(27:38):
I've had beef tongue, tongue. My favorite is um bone
marrow really highly highly recommend anywhere you can find bone
marrow it, just eat it. The only place down here
is rathbutons and it's okay, yeah you good wrath buns.
You gotta get one of those steaks. No, not not rathbunds, steaks,
(27:58):
regular wrath buns. Yeah. Strangely, he doesn't have bone marrow there,
but yes, uh, those weird stuff all right, I got
you questions right there. You want to read one? Yeah,
I guess this one's from Jacob. If a tree falls
in the forest and no one is around to here,
and Jacob hyphenates no one, which frankly I find like flourish. Nice. Yes,
(28:20):
except for a tape recorder which absorbs the radiant vibrations
and can later play them back as audible waves. Did
the tree really make a sound? The answer is yes, yes. Uh.
Kristen says, where 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
(28:42):
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 Roxanne
does the 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 was some comprehensive answers right there.
Rachel says she currently lives in Athens g a dog.
(29:06):
I'd love to hear more about your experience living here,
where you hung out your favorite bands to see whatever
fond or not so fond memories you might have of Athens.
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 that the Georgia Bar, the Globe, and the Roadhouse
made up the bar Muda Triangle and you could access
(29:29):
them all through the alley to get to the next
so most decided they could. Quite often you would hop
around into State 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 Zaxpiece, even though it's the
same thing. Yeah, I was automatic for the people, were you? Yeah?
(29:50):
I lived right around the corner from there, so remember
what was the name of that restaurant? I went to
Weaverdece 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. It was I put the
(30:12):
food up against any in Atlanta. Ero wrap nna eat
a lot of e rose in college. Alright? Uh, Kristen, No, Randy,
who's the cat who won't cop out when there's danger
all about? I think we both know shaft nice who's
the cat that won't cop out? That's one of the
lesser quoted lines from that song. Yeah, I've got one
(30:35):
from chavon. How do your significant others feel about your
legion of man crushes and equally strong lady crushes? Chuck,
I wasn't aware that anyone had to crush on us,
were you? I didn't know that. I've seen them 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
(30:57):
hair and Laura, how many emails do you it? Per podcast?
We get about three hundred a week. Laura Alan, who
put the bomb in the bomb shabamp shabamp um. The
only reason I read that it's because he stressed his
mill house in 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. One is more
(31:18):
surprising than last. I've got one. Um Oh, I can't
remember her name. There's a girl who stars in Secret
Life of the American Teenager. 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
(31:39):
pretty cool. Bradley Cooper Yeah, Will Wheaton, Yeah, Renee's l Wager,
Aisha Tyler Yes. And the couple of The Daily Show guys,
why at 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 you hear that, I think it's cool. Yeah,
(32:02):
uh yeah, I got one more pirates, Shelley says, pirates
are ninjas. Ninjas clearly definitely that's it. Okay, Chuck's given
the He's out. Isn't it called Vegas? Yeah, it's like
when the dealer finishes, they're 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 how stuff works dot com.
(32:30):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
that how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 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,
(00:21):
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 it? At least two? It
was home? No, there was 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
(00:43):
like fifteen years old. There's a statue of momentation? Was
it Buck Ruband's eye? Yeah? I think that was it? Yeah,
me too, Chuck. Yes, have you ever been in traffic?
That's the best. I God, how do you set this up? Chuck?
Do you like Steve Winwood? Yeah? You know I was
gonna make a traffic a band comment. Have you ever
seen the low spark of high heeled boys? Yeah? Yeah,
(01:06):
that's it. I'm seriously I'm like trying to you know,
he was like fifteen when he first joined traffic because
he's a Lithario. Yeah, and by that I mean in Prodigy. Yeah. Yeah, traffic.
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
(01:31):
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 I usually I
tend to avoid the smell of urine and um, reading
while moving makes me sick. So I'm you know, plus,
I value I used to value being able to smoke. Yeah, dude,
(01:54):
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 not You're not
that kind of social No. That's the other thing too,
it's like, oh, hey, we work 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
(02:15):
that if I have my shades on. That means the
office is closed. Nice, the story is shut down. That's
very nice stories. It looks super cool. Alright, So I'm
a jerk that doesn't talk 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
(02:36):
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. 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
(02:59):
road to carry to carry the flow of traffic quickly right.
The other way is there is some unpredictable event that
somebody's pulled over, somebody's broken down, there's a wreck, maybe
an event that falls under congestion. Police have pulled over
(03:20):
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 that traffic can be created, right, um,
And what happens in each of those events is somebody
up front puts on their brakes and that that one
(03:41):
press of the brakes travels backward all the way through. Right,
when you have a bunch of different cars and different
lengthes doing that 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 describing this.
You ready, Okay, So what I came up with is
(04:04):
called the traffic bubble, okay, by Josh Clark. So the
traffic bubble happens when 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 and it starts very slowly traveling backwards. And each
car behind that car that's that created the traffic bubble
(04:26):
isn't allowed to accelerate again until the traffic bubble is
passed through them, right. 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
(04:49):
as a moving bubble? Yeah? Over the bubble travels backwards
over the traffic, and then once it passes over you,
you're allowed to accelerate again. I believe you're just going
to turn my friends traffic bubble like that or science
or no breaking 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,
(05:10):
you want wink, might as well thrown a few stats here. Yeah,
this one's that heavy. It is this this article by
our colleague Jonathan Strickland at tech Stuff. Yeah, the Baldest
podcast on staff. Here, Uh, what's a good stat here?
The estimated traffic costs if you want to talk about
cost of traffic, and about five years ago they estimated
(05:31):
about seventy eight billion dollars and that's only fuel and
waste of time. 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
(05:51):
year that studies connected recovered. Um, we in the US
bought two point nine billion bill in extra gallons of
oil because of traffic, and the annual cost for each
individual motorists in America was like seven bucks just sitting there,
just from traffic, not from you know, the gas that
(06:13):
you need to actually get from point A to point B,
but the extra gas used from idoling. Yeah crazy, yeah,
And uh, I 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.
(06:36):
They they they are like the leaders and studying and
understanding and trying 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.
(06:58):
It's compared to a certain time in one city to
another time in the 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
(07:19):
rush hour, So it takes twice as long to get
from point A to point 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
(07:39):
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, 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. Among like
(08:01):
probably I think the top three or four. I heard
a year or so ago that Atlanta had toppled l A.
But I never saw any citation. Well all those It
depends on how they are rating it. Some they rate
the differently, like the amount of time you spend in
your car commuting or the amount of time you sit idoling,
So it kind of depends. But Atlanta's way up there. Boston, Seattle,
San Francisco. Actually I think Boston's absent from that. Oh really,
(08:24):
I think that they have made some moves that have
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,
(08:46):
is yeah. I mean way out into the suburbs in
Virginia and Maryland sitting there. You know what they did
in l A that I saw one time that 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 express Ay and there were
to California Highway patrol cars doing huge slow ses back
(09:10):
and forth on the six lanes of expressway, 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 by me. I've never seen that
before in my life. What would have made it even
funnier is if they've been driving those s with their
hands out their window and their guns just shooting into
the area while they were doing it. That would really say,
(09:32):
don't drive past me. Yeah, that would 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
(09:55):
really what fast. Yeah, that's one of the great characteristics
about Atlanta. As far as I'm concerned, you go as
fast as you can. I mean, the the average um
flow of traffic I would say, is about seventy miles
an hour around here. And that's with like a lot
of people all around you. Yeah, everybody's bumper, a bumper
going at least seventy, and the cops don't pull you
(10:15):
over unless you're going over seventy and even 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 wrecks, right, and then traffic backs up every single day.
That's Atlanta traffic. Are we done? So let's just sit
(10:39):
here and do traffic stories, just talk 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 seventy eight billion
just from fuel and wasted time? Yeah, because think about it,
a person's time is money, right, and if you're sitting
in traffic and sure one of those jerks like me
(11:01):
who has an iPhone that emails while he's driving, then
you're wasting money, right. Um. And actually there was this
there's a group called the Commute Solutions that 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 cents per mile. Yea,
(11:25):
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 has
increased a and by they predict it will go up
(11:45):
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
(12:06):
get on the highway anymore. It's all surface streets that
I take to and from work. Yeah, what do you go?
Druid Hills Piedmont and I go basically up Piedmont r um.
But it's it's traffic every day. But I don't think
of it as traffic. When I think of traffic, I
think of seventy five at rush hour and just like
UH exit ramps backed up the the thing is is
(12:30):
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 conscious 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 to widen a highway, I think we talked
(12:53):
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 in step with the widening of the lanes.
(13:14):
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. But
that kind of makes sense to throw that money then
instead into upfront costs for a light rail system. Yeah,
(13:34):
you know, you hippie, I 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, ramp 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 stop lights that
(13:56):
just allow like one car through every few seconds. So
you know, when you get on at Freedom Parkway, I
used to fly around that and jump into traffic and
squeeze in however I could, and um, 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
(14:20):
in one place, especially when you have a line of
traffic and then more people directly adding to that lane. Yeah. Right,
But ramp metering really really works. They did a study
in Minnesota. They have four d and thirty rant meters
and in two thousand they shut them all down for
seven weeks and during that time traffic accidents increased. And
(14:41):
then afterward they re reinstituted it and they saw the
capacity increased by fourteen, 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. I said it
was Oh, I know, it wasn't bad though, that's how
(15:02):
they say it. H O V lanes is another thing
that they've done pretty much countrywide, carpool lanes as help.
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 carpoal 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
(15:23):
get the fast ling 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 lan
is like, I drive as slow as I want, but
I have, you know, four people in my car, agreed,
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 and you're willing to drive ten miles
faster than anybody else on the highway agreed. And since
(15:46):
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 O V lane by themselves. Nothing bothers me
more than people that think the rules don't apply to them.
I hate that time. I hate those people or people
who um use the shoulder and just drive along in
traffic as far as they can to get like fifty
(16:07):
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 were a cop, you'd be making
lazy s's in front of trying firing my gun into
(16:29):
the air. Exactly what else, Josh, Uh, there's lanes. We
already talked about that. Whether there's that one, then there's
um probably the most uh contentious idea congestion 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 baby something. You have a rock star in
(16:52):
the transportation world, because he was a huge proponent of this,
and he said in England. In England, yeah, he was
the British Transportation in 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 the roads. What he failed to mention
(17:13):
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 like a champ for him in
(17:37):
London at least. Yeah, there was a thirty percent dropping congestion,
decrease in in fossil fuel consumption, decrease in CEO two emissions,
So like in London, Singapore, Stockholm, San Francisco, San Francisco,
did they institute one No, San Francisco is studying a
New York Bloomberg has proposed it and they've studied it.
(18:00):
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, that's where Joshuly staying in New York
under Lord uh he It says it's ruled out the
(18:24):
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 ou.
I thought you were like saying this, these people were
paying for this research on their own paychecks. No, but
(18:44):
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 Dawling had been caught red
handed planning a spy in the sky sis him nice. Yeah, yeah,
because I guess we should probably explain congestion pricing. Basically
(19:08):
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,
one of those toll passes UM, you are sent a
(19:31):
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 in UM they
had a flat rate for downtown, which is the most
(19:53):
congested during peak hours. You had to pay three bucks
to just drive around downtown. You could drive around all 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
d for twenty minutes, but you can back, you know,
two blocks over and it's just fifty cents and so on. Well,
(20:15):
that's one of the rubs that um, one of the
big things is 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 collar dudes can be
all flexible and work from home, but the poor have
to get up and go to work during peak hours.
(20:37):
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 highways surface streets to everybody,
don't get all anxious, we're talking about surface streets as well. Yes, uh,
(21:01):
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 kind of desolate
cow patties and now it's all uh, you know, young
families moving out 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
(21:26):
of two ways that you can cause traffic. Just put
more cars on a road than it than it's designed
to hand. And then out in the boonies 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 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, yeah,
(21:48):
which is so much, especially when they're poorly timed. Decator
is awful. 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 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 time
(22:10):
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, yeah, those are good. Yeah. Or you have
a mixed system that uses time timing and sensors and
it changes depending on the kind of day where it is.
It's like you can set up a citywide comprehensive traffic
(22:33):
light plan. Some cities have this. Even the best mixed
citywide comprehensive traffic light plan reduces congestion by one percent.
Really yeah, yeah, Atlanta is bad about that, at least
in my area. 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
(22:56):
to not 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 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
(23:17):
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 wink, You'll see like eight lights turn green,
all that new Balance commercial. Yeah, with that woman running
and she pushes herself to make all the lights doomed.
(23:39):
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,
Scottish friends who are typing an angry corrective email about
(23:59):
al Stir Darling. He is not a Transportation secretary. He
was the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
Lord Adonis is the Transport secretary. That and me name
We were talking about people um studying this kind of thing.
There's all sorts of really cool quantifications for traffic. My
favorite is the passenger car equivalent. Okay, so you have
(24:24):
a passenger car is say a sitting at an averagity
and Toyota camera, all right? Or to be fair, Honda accord. Right, Um,
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
(24:48):
larger and because they take up more space, they're slower
to accelerate, and so they they exact a heavier burden
on a highway during congest right, So what they've come
up with our passenger car equivalent. So an suv is
one point four pc, right, and then a a city
(25:10):
bus is like four point four pc. It's like four cars, right, Yeah,
it has the same as far as like accelerating after
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,
(25:34):
what's the deal there. Each car has a certain amount
of space it takes up, and don't try and fit
into a slot that's a bit smaller than your car.
Is that how you know? That's pretty much firstual slots
like tetris. Yeah, if you just amagement that there is
a basically a rectangle around your car like bubble a bubble,
but not a break bubble. Okay, you want to avoid
(25:54):
the brake bubble um, but this is more of a
rectangle and it kind of hugs the sides your cars,
but it's 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
(26:14):
cars on the road, were more more cars than there
are slots, there should be no traffic. Yeah, but that
never happens because all this is pie in the sky still.
Well yeah, because when invariably 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 stayed where
they were, you would all get there quicker. Or if
(26:35):
everybody just stayed at home. Yeah, yes, good point, but
your jobs stay at home. Right, So that's uh, 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 one? It has a flash
animation about a traffic wave. Cool, no break bubble. I'm
(26:55):
going to see about having somebody add one of those
the term my friend. You can type in traffic I
think it'll bring up a bunch of stuff in the
handy search part 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,
(27:16):
we post on Facebook. Hey, give us some questions. We'll
answer like ten of them really quickly. We got in
an hour. This comes 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,
(27:38):
I've had beef tongue, tongue. My favorite is um bone
marrow really highly highly recommend anywhere you can find bone
marrow it, just eat it. The only place down here
is rathbutons and it's okay, yeah you good wrath buns.
You gotta get one of those steaks. No, not not rathbunds, steaks,
(27:58):
regular wrath buns. Yeah. Strangely, he doesn't have bone marrow there,
but yes, uh, those weird stuff all right, I got
you questions right there. You want to read one? Yeah,
I guess this one's from Jacob. If a tree falls
in the forest and no one is around to here,
and Jacob hyphenates no one, which frankly I find like flourish. Nice. Yes,
(28:20):
except for a tape recorder which absorbs the radiant vibrations
and can later play them back as audible waves. Did
the tree really make a sound? The answer is yes, yes. Uh.
Kristen says, where 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
(28:42):
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 Roxanne
does the 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 was some comprehensive answers right there.
Rachel says she currently lives in Athens g a dog.
(29:06):
I'd love to hear more about your experience living here,
where you hung out your favorite bands to see whatever
fond or not so fond memories you might have of Athens.
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 that the Georgia Bar, the Globe, and the Roadhouse
made up the bar Muda Triangle and you could access
(29:29):
them all through the alley to get to the next
so most decided they could. Quite often you would hop
around into State 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 Zaxpiece, even though it's the
same thing. Yeah, I was automatic for the people, were you? Yeah?
(29:50):
I lived right around the corner from there, so remember
what was the name of that restaurant? I went to
Weaverdece 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. It was I put the
(30:12):
food up against any in Atlanta. Ero wrap nna eat
a lot of e rose in college. Alright? Uh, Kristen, No, Randy,
who's the cat who won't cop out when there's danger
all about? I think we both know shaft nice who's
the cat that won't cop out? That's one of the
lesser quoted lines from that song. Yeah, I've got one
(30:35):
from chavon. How do your significant others feel about your
legion of man crushes and equally strong lady crushes? Chuck,
I wasn't aware that anyone had to crush on us,
were you? I didn't know that. I've seen them 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
(30:57):
hair and Laura, how many emails do you it? Per podcast?
We get about three hundred a week. Laura Alan, who
put the bomb in the bomb shabamp shabamp um. The
only reason I read that it's because he stressed his
mill house in 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. One is more
(31:18):
surprising than last. I've got one. Um Oh, I can't
remember her name. There's a girl who stars in Secret
Life of the American Teenager. 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
(31:39):
pretty cool. Bradley Cooper Yeah, Will Wheaton, Yeah, Renee's l Wager,
Aisha Tyler Yes. And the couple of The Daily Show guys,
why at 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 you hear that, I think it's cool. Yeah,
(32:02):
uh yeah, I got one more pirates, Shelley says, pirates
are ninjas. Ninjas clearly definitely that's it. Okay, Chuck's given
the He's out. Isn't it called Vegas? Yeah, it's like
when the dealer finishes, they're 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 how stuff works dot com.
(32:30):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
that how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
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