In Pursuit of Elegance

[Martin Cassini]

After reading Matthew May’s book, In Pursuit of Elegance, another element fitted into place. If you magnify a fractal, or a slice of nature - e.g. a section of coastline or segment of a tree - the underlying pattern in the close-up will replicate the pattern in the wide shot. Just as there is deep symmetry in apparent chaos, we can expect the elements that pertain on a micro scale to pertain on a macro. Thus the efficient filtering which breaks out whenever traffic lights break down at a single junction should work just as well across a network. It seems incredible that this has never been put to the test, and that councils are still squandering money on intrusive, high-cost controls. What is so negative about traffic engineering is its distrust of our greatest resource: human nature. It denies us the freedom to make the simplest decisions. The whole over-managed road network is a continuing insult to our intelligence. I’m still pursuing a JET (Junction Efficiency Trial) to test the idea that we’re better off left to our own devices. (Today I heard that the Westminster JET might get lift-off at the end of October ...)

[phunksta]

Yes, in theory, self-organising systems are functional at any scale. For a good demonstration of this, you only have to watch human movements on a busy New York street, or maybe in a music festival or other heavy pedestrian area. The sheer elegance of movement is a joy to behold.

The problem here is that the large junctions we are stuck with were probably designed with traffic control in mind; not the shared space or FiT principles you champion. Even then I'd say human nature will do its best to 'retrofit' a human approach to an imperfect junction; but I would posit that most major junctions require some redesign to facilitate self-organisation?