Linklist: August 9, 2012

  • Wired: Road-Paver Concept Lays Asphalt Underneath Traffic
  • Sybil Derrible: PLoS ONE: Network Centrality of Metro Systems
  • Jarrett Walker: San Francisco: all-door boarding on buses!
  • Nokohaha: Nicollet Avenue Night and Day
  • Reihan Salam: Stephen Smith on the Missing Driverless Trains
  • Lisa Schweitzer: David King on not getting to stoked about the back-to-the-city numbers
  • Lewis Lehe: Unite y’all
  • Wired: How Your Smartphone Could Stop a Car From Running You Over
  • Multi-agent Route Choice Game for Transportation Engineering (working paper)

    MARC
    Xuan Di, Henry Liu, and David Levinson. (2012) Multi-agent Route Choice Game for Transportation Engineering. (Working paper)

    In undergraduate transportation engineering courses, traffic assignment is a difficult concept for both instructors to teach and for students to learn, because it involves many mathematical derivations and computations. We have designed a multiplayer game to engage students in the process of learning route choice, so that students can visualize how the traffic gradually reach user equilibrium (UE). For one scenario, we employ a Braess’ Paradox, and explore the phenomenon during the game-play. We have done the case-control and before-after comparisons. The statistical results show that, students who played the game improve their understanding of the Braess’ Paradox more than those who did not play. Among game players, younger students benefit more in their learning; while those who are not comfortable with exploring a phenomenon on their own think this game not as effective as those who prefer hands-on learning experiences.