Ideas for traffic jams for the first century: discussing ideas where technology is not the focus, bu

Technology is not the only solution to things.

Ricardo Álvarez

His opinion filled me with bewilderment, but in a good way. As part of the researchers current at MIT's Senseable Cities Lab, he was in charge of the presentation: Digital Technologies and Cities of the 21st Century; in the past MIT CARIBBEAN in Santo Domingo, and nevertheless he mentioned that the transport in our country can be improved with creole (local) technologies and without the use of intelligent systems.

To talk about traffic, you just have to transit

About 2 weeks ago, under this concept, we uploaded to our platform videos of different people: a girl who just wants to get home to play with her dolls, after spending 9 hours at school, a taxi driver that in order to have a productive day, must deliver each of his passengers to their destination quickly, and a private driver of a family home, which has to drive an entire family to their activities, run errands for each family member, as well as run errands for the house.

We saw how it affects all those who transit, and how everyone could give their opinion on how to improve traffic jams. Through their collaboration we can explore various ideas on how to improve traffic jams without technology; understanding that a great idea is made up of not-so-good little ideas.

Schedules among employees;

Dividing schedules or vehicle quantity has been the oldest measure to improve vehicular flow, however, one of the proposals is to divide schedules of public and private employees. This would be an equitable division. It is possible to establish a schedule in which, half of the employees of one sector are dismissed earlier from work, and another day another sector is dismissed later from work.

More Traffic Lights

Although traffic lights are an equitable system where drivers do not play a very important role, they help mobilize traffic impartially, but not in the most effective way.

More AMET (Metropolitan Transportation Authority)

This is a somewhat complex issue because in order for the city to flow, an AMET should be placed in each intersection, since their range of vision does not cover the entire section of vehicles.

In the Dominican Republic, cases such as road space made by means of Vehicle Restriction have been implemented, prohibiting the circulation of different types of vehicles at a given time and place. This is a measure to regulate road traffic, mainly at peak time. The first implementation of vehicle restriction which is known of took place in Rome, because the carriages and horse carriages created severe congestion problems in several Roman cities.

Some of the most well-known measures are the restriction of large vehicles by tunnels, and large bridges. Also, changing the meaning or putting a unique meaning to a route at specific times is usually done in school sectors or with a volume of fixed cars at a certain time.

Also restrictions to provide recreational or sports spaces to the population.

Other cases such, as Bogota, Santiago de Chile, and city of Mexico, are restricted to using a percentage of vehicles each day. Thus, each day of the week certain cars are restricted from circulating the streets, those with predetermined plate numbers wich the public are very aware of, and these cars rotate throughout the week.

Although the rationalization of vehicles on the roads is a strategy of the last century.

And in each country in a different way. In this century it has been implemented several times, but for special reasons, as is the case seen in China. With the aim of substantially improving the air quality, the Beijing Municipality temporarily implemented a system during the 2008 Olympic Games. The restriction came into force on July 2008, and was implemented for two months, as the Olympics were followed by the Paralympic Games from the 6th to 17th of September.

In the specific case of Bogotá, Colombia began with the restriction of the last number of the license plates. The restriction was exercised with the last number of the license plate, restricting the entry of 4 digits per day, which results in that each car should not leave two days a week. Elsewhere in Bogota it is applied during the hours of traffic in the city, taking into account the last figure of the vehicle. As of December 2012, it works at specific times and specific days.

In Ecuador after many variations and protests, as of 2010 it is applied mandatorily in the months of March and April.

Costa Rica: although in July 2013 there were 10 models of hybrid and electric cars available in the Costa Rican market, in October 2014, the General Direction of Traffic Engineering announced that after six studies, it was determined that the vehicle restriction decreases between 14% and 16% the number of vehicles entering the city center of San José, so that even it is questionable whether it is feasible to reduce mobility that wreaks havoc in the economy by only 2% less congestion and road pollution.

Some countries have adopted it because of vehicular pollution rather than congestion; this is the case of Mexico that returned to be effective from 2008, under the slogan “Hoy no circula”.

However, these are measures based on citizens' road education; so that, to the extent they are met, the flow of the city will significantly improve.