Jonas Eliasson: How to solve traffic jams

It's an unfortunate reality in nearly every major city—road congestion, especially during rush hours. Jonas Eliasson reveals how subtly nudging just a small percentage of drivers to stay off major roads can make traffic jams a thing of the past. (Filmed at TEDxHelvetia.)

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[Xhaleon]

"Why are people wanting to keep a charge on something that used to be free?"

Stockholm Syndrome.

[garretburrow]

Did anybody else get totally enraged when he showed the picture of what traffic looked like on Jan 3rd to the audience but the camera didn't show it?

[neil]

In NYC it's almost $10 just to go over the bridge. Hasn't stopped many people.

[sstr]

You are right, stopping (like keeping tension of road under control) plays very huge role on this.

But also the little trick behind this is to keep "unncessary" cars at their home. Or to poke people to use public transport... if you make bridge cost 2€ and public transport 1€, people will stop using cars.

[Aaustin]

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
-Futurama Galactic Entity

[Maradnus]

I forgot about the cold! you have a great point.
In germany they have a system called mitfahr meaning travel with.
You register with a company as a driver or passenger, then when your going some place ether to work or taking a trip you let them know where you will be and how much space you have, they then arrange people to ride with you and that covers petrol etc.
Its a fantastic system I have travelled all over Germany for pennies and met some really nice people along the way

[Sondre]

Excellent talk! Concise, well-informed and eye-opening!

[alcesmir]

Great talk. Really showed me how effective this method can be. I can't wait to see the results when it gets implemented in Gothenburg in a few months.

[fritzy]

I'm looking for this clip for the longest time. Thus alas! This was shown to my class during my college days and it's so informative in a sense on how to improve the transportation system.

[kevinmm]

If people would just quit fucking tailgating the problem would largely disappear! This would prevent a sustained wave in the traffic.

[linuxgeek]

With the internet and other technology a lot people can be working from home instead of helping create gridlock.
Its really very simple, you only commute for your first year at a job after which you should have gotten enough training be proficient at your job and company evaluates your performance and tells you to work from home.
With the use of Voip, VNC and email, cheap internet, headsets and other technology a company can set up a system that would make working from home very easy and cheap.

[BarnyWaterg]

Traffic isn’t bad. You are the traffic.

[Ficktao]

Once again: What happened to the people who stopped using the road? People who couldn't (or wouldn't) pay the price, were forced to somehow, someway think of a "solution": Perhaps changing office-location, quitting the job, stop school, who knows? Without knowing more about those people (and perhaps the hardships they went through) I wouldn't call this approach a complete success.

[QazwerDave]

How amazing how the swedish accent and speach melody comes through his english !!

[maggot]

he basically said that if governemt sets a fee on a road which has traffic jams, people will have to pay for it or take a longer and not optimal road to the work (and pay more for fuel) or start using public transportation (which takes more time)

[sulfianasafitri]

A good rule of thumb is "congestion rates", which can reduce congestion rates by as much as 20 percent in Stockholm. It is possible that some people choose to avoid rush hour to avoid congestion to avoid congestion rates. Maybe they choose to go more to make their money safe

[joemaffei]

It's a band-aid method. Traffic will continue to increase as more people live within the same area. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, they have a system that guarantees that 20% of cars won't be on the street during certain times (based on the last number on the license plate, look it up). Did it help? Not really - I was there recently and it's as bad as I remember it from 15 years ago. The main problem with traffic is that everyone needs to do the same thing at the same time. There are ways around that.

[meowbrunei]

I think he should have included figures on public transportation usage in Stockholm and as explained how its managed. The big question is how easily reproducible are the results in car dominated cities.

[tohopes]

Shifting shifts would probably help. I bet some companies have conventional shifts for a mix of purposes (keeping tradition, supporting employees with families, calling or meeting with with other businesses during the day). The question remains: how to incentivize employers to run different shifts.

Also, around here morning rush hour already lasts roughly from 7am to 10am. We would only gain so much from scattering (a subset of) shifts, and then we'd be back in the same dilemma.

[MoowChair]

Yes, maybe limit it to the local area residents or who work there. Something like that works well in estonia.