In this blog we try to demystify the correlation between rain and traffic jams.
According to a Traffic Analysis Survey the usual mix of vehicles on the road are 30% being 2 wheelers, 40% public transport and the rest private 4 wheelers.
The 2 wheelers follow the same pattern as do the movement of an army of ants whose nest has just been disturbed. They oscillate from one side of the road to the other, into the foot path, over tree roots, under electric posts etc. When the traffic halts, they will even stop in their tracks, take a U turn and go around other vehicles if required under a truck and over a sitting cow all this to arrive at a new stationary position which happens to be 5.5 inches ahead of their prior stationary position.
Now when it rains everything bordering the road becomes a bunch of slush and muck. So all our two-wheeler folks abandon their otherwise used paths and land up on the road.
Next the pedestrians, on a normal day a pedestrian would walk almost in a straight line looking out and avoiding stepping on the filth and scum on the road. This is an easy mental calculation which gets processed in the brain and the brain jots out the route the legs have to take to avoid all of this.
However when it rains.. the same road gets flooded, and all of this dirt n scum comes to life and starts floating around. Now it becomes like a video game. You have all of this muck moving in random shapes at various speeds and heading towards you. The brain now has to double its processing capacity mapping and re-routing against moving targets. The result .. people also move in a haphazard manner occasionally entering the road once every 20 seconds causing traffic to swerve in order to avoid them which again cause a chain reaction to other vehicles adjacent to it.
The next significant factor are the buses. By default buses move in a straight line in the middle of the road. Unless there is a cow sleeping in the middle in which case the bus will climb onto the footpath and over the sidewalk to avoid the cow. Once it arrives at the bus stop, the bus stops right in its tracks in the middle of the road.
Due to the rain, everyone who alights first pauses for 2 seconds to open his /her umbrella and only then steps out. After stepping out with the umbrella open, the entire land below the circumference of the umbrella is blocked and off limits to fellow passengers. This in turn results in the entire bus having to wait for more than double the time at each stop. And since the bus waits right in the middle of the road. This blocks up all the traffic behind it for double the time.
Next coming to the IT culture in Bangalore, at any point of time 30 - 35 % of the people would be working from home. Now out of these people who are working from home, 80% would be working from home without even being at home.
The day it rains, all these Work From Home people realize that they would have to remain at home anyways due to the rain and cannot complete their errands so what’s the point in Working from Home? , might as well go to the office.
So now we have 100% of the workforce all on the road suddenly headed in the same direction at peak time.
The road is burdened with 3 additional classes
- Pedestrians who have abandoned the footpath
- All the adventurous 2 wheelers who would have otherwise been everywhere except on the road
- All the Work From Home people who are now heading to office
With the additional load on the same road, there is now a mad rush for space.
Picture this scene, 2 people riding on a 2 wheeler. The pillion rider would initially be sitting in a comfortable position elbows bent with his hands resting on his waist. Now suddenly he wants to scratch his back so he takes out his right hand from this position. After this he would have to continue to sit in the new position, because the free space that was earlier occupied by his elbow would now be occupied by a vehicle that just pulled into the free gap. With such a mad rush for space. the average distance maintained between 2 vehicles becomes around 1.25mm.
With such tightly packed traffic how fast can you move?
The traffic has now come to a stand still, This causes boredom and the easiest thing to do when you are board is pull out your mobile phone. While on the phone your driving reflexes automatically slow down there by causing you to maneuver your vehicle in a lethargic manner. Again this chain reaction, further slows down of the entire grid.
Put all this together and any average Joe with a normal brain will understand why traffic halts when it rains. Unless of course if you are a Six Sigma certified black belt. Then you will not understand this until you do a full blown Six Sigma Project using Minitab.
