<story><title>Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API</title><url>http://www.density.io/?ref=hn</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codeshaman</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;After adding Density, we saw as much as a 950% increase in site traffic to supported locations. Our users love it.&amp;quot; - Darren Buckner, Workfrom CEO&lt;p&gt;When I use google maps, it shows me how busy various roads are and it also chooses the fastest route based on how fluid the traffic is. 
Seems like google maps is just observing the world and making decisions based on those observations.&lt;p&gt;Now I was wondering, what if all the drivers used google maps at the same time ?&lt;p&gt;Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it mean that google maps is influencing and even &lt;i&gt;creating&lt;/i&gt; the traffic patterns ?&lt;p&gt;Same here - just measuring the &amp;#x27;density&amp;#x27; has the effect of actually influencing it  which is an interesting outcome and resembles quantum mechanics voodoo stuff :).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pdeuchler</author><text>I live in Boulder and this happens all the time during ski season. When traveling towards I-70 there&amp;#x27;s a longer, more circuitous route which breaks off of Highway 6 and goes through Idaho Springs. This path is longer, but cuts off the beginning of the initial drive into the Front Range... it&amp;#x27;s also just a two lane mountain road.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes google maps will detect heavy traffic on I-70 and start re-routing drivers the other way... unfortunately this very quickly creates a bottleneck that Google Maps can&amp;#x27;t detect in time (traffic goes from 0mph to 60mph to 0mph in the mountains) so it&amp;#x27;ll continue to funnel people down that &amp;quot;shortcut&amp;quot; until the traffic essentially equalizes with the I-70 traffic.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s an even worse side effect, as those who went through Idaho Springs eventually have to get back onto I-70 to get to the ski resorts, so now that on ramp (which is a metered on ramp) backs up, further hurting both I-70 and the &amp;quot;shortcut&amp;quot; traffic. It&amp;#x27;s a real terrible feedback loop that essentially is caused by Google Maps not being able to adequately predict how much traffic the Idaho Springs route can handle, which seems like a hard problem to solve (especially generally).&lt;p&gt;Edit: Thought about this more and realized predicting ski traffic is more or less a proxy for predicting the weather, so I highly doubt this is a fixable problem (at least in this specific case)</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API</title><url>http://www.density.io/?ref=hn</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codeshaman</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;After adding Density, we saw as much as a 950% increase in site traffic to supported locations. Our users love it.&amp;quot; - Darren Buckner, Workfrom CEO&lt;p&gt;When I use google maps, it shows me how busy various roads are and it also chooses the fastest route based on how fluid the traffic is. 
Seems like google maps is just observing the world and making decisions based on those observations.&lt;p&gt;Now I was wondering, what if all the drivers used google maps at the same time ?&lt;p&gt;Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it mean that google maps is influencing and even &lt;i&gt;creating&lt;/i&gt; the traffic patterns ?&lt;p&gt;Same here - just measuring the &amp;#x27;density&amp;#x27; has the effect of actually influencing it  which is an interesting outcome and resembles quantum mechanics voodoo stuff :).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mmorris</author><text>Since in NYC taxis are a substantial portion of road traffic, I once had the idea that NYC should have a special navigation platform (maybe based on Google Maps?) that the taxis are mandated (or, more likely, highly encouraged) to follow, which would essentially load balance the traffic.&lt;p&gt;The city could include data about road closures, police &amp;amp; fire incidents, etc.&lt;p&gt;This might even be used to reduce traffic along bus routes, thereby increasing efficiency for them as well.&lt;p&gt;If someone works in the T&amp;amp;LC and wants to implement this feel free. ;)&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Note this works particularly well in Manhattan where the grid system means there are generally many routes of equal length between any two points.</text></comment>