Exodus limits and carpooling

[barnz]

In this system cars gathered in staging lots, turned off their engines, waited and partied, and then were all given the go to leave into a clear lane. So no stop and go and idling. It must not have worked out, since it was not repeated, do you know why?

This is akin to what I have proposed. I would like to hear from people who experienced it as well.

[bradtem]

No, it wasn't the same as what you were thinking of, which is an appointment style system, where you get an appointment for when you will actually leave the playa, and then go to a staging lot just before that time.

This was a much simpler plan, where you still got into line when ready but instead of spending 3 hours in stop and go, you were to spend the 3 hours parked in a lot, and then everybody in the lot would head out in a stream at 10mph.

My guess would be that it was not done again because the bottleneck is not on the playa, it's on the blacktop, and it requires more volunteers to manage the parking lots. I will also guess there were problems with rulebreakers.

(I often think that while the police and feds force us to pay for large numbers of their officers during the week so they can bust us for smoking pot, what the community could really use them for is their traffic enforcement skills and powers.)

However, I would like to hear about what the true reason for not doing it again was. Even if it didn't speed up the exodus, it seems that a parking lot full of stopped cars, not idling, is a better party and better for the environment, than a 4 hour stop and go line.

[Teo del Fuego]

man, i'm taking a guess here, but I think the delay is primarily the turn from the playa onto the blacktop. That necessarily has to be one car at a time and its pretty prudent to look both ways before making that turn. I left at 10pm Sunday night and it took about 2.5 hours to hit the blacktop. After touching the road, the speed of the traffic was fine.

Im thinking about Jungo Road next year....where does it hit the playa?

[unjonharley]

holding and letting one line go for a set number of cars "could work.. the other line/s can turn off there engines.. there would be rude line jumpers.. but i could handle that with if i m not burning gass..

we left early sat this year.. a water truck passed us so we sped up on the wet playa.. it took one hour from camp to the Gerlack dump site.. so two hours in crunch time is not bad at all..

[bradtem]

No, people in theory are not stopping for the left turn. For the past few years a flagger has stood there waving people on (in fact 2 lanes at a time, I think) and having them stop in the rare times that there is other traffic on the road. Indeed, if people had to stop and look both ways and turn left there it probably would be the major bottleneck. I expect one bottleneck still remains from those whose instincts take over and they disobey the flagger and stop anyway. Don't know how many of those there are.

There's no flagger at non-peak times, though. I try to avoid peak exodus whenever I can.

Actually, what could be useful is a portable traffic light with a big green left-turning arrow on it, and red lights for the blacktop directions that the flagger can switch to green for the blacktop directions and red for playa if traffic comes. People somehow might obey a green arrow more than a flagger because their instincts allow them to zoom left on those.

[barnz]

No, people in theory are not stopping for the left turn.
...
People somehow might obey a green arrow more than a flagger because their instincts allow them to zoom left on those.

Instinct is an issue, and even with a flagger waving excitedly at people, there will always be a slow down when dealing with a significant transition like that. If you've spent time in the Bay Area, think about how even when traffic is light coming over the Bay Bridge into the city, there will be brake lights (at least) as people come through the tunnel onto the suspension span. You've got a change in angle and a change in environment, and people slow down without being conscious of it. I think this will always be an issue when turning onto 447 - you've got the change of surface, change of direction, and a somewhat bumpy transition between the two. From my limited experience this is the prime (but not single) limiting factor for traffic volume.

I like the temporary traffic light idea, as it addresses the 'instinct' (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say 'conditioning' that most motorists are subject to. We are conditioned to follow traffic lights more easily than people standing in the road. (People in the road, of course, are an indication of trouble, for which we should slow down, not an indication that everything is fine and we should keep rolling. In order to follow their instructions we have to get over our conditioning to slow down and look for the unexpected and uncontrolled elements around us).

As far as potential changes to Exodus go, I think there are two major issues at play:

1) Efficiency of dispersing vehicles onto major roadways

2) Quality of time, how ever long it is, (i.e. stop and start driving in bumper traffic vs. "continuing the burn").

Personal behavior plays a major role in both issues, but I think there are things the BMORG can do to address both to some degree.

One thing that can address both is releasing traffic in unified groups instead of merging individual vehicles - be this by appointment or simply releasing thirty cars one lane at a time.

Allegedly this was done after some fashion around 2000 or 2001, but I haven't heard anyone talk about how it went and why it was abandoned.

[Badger]

One thing that can address both is releasing traffic in unified groups instead of merging individual vehicles - be this by appointment or simply releasing thirty cars one lane at a time.

You might be just the person for it. You live in the bay area. You have an idea on how it might be done better. Meetings for Exodus folks are relatively benign. Contact [email protected] to let him know that you wann get involved in dealing with the problem of Exodus.

Go for it. Od's always looking for volunteer folk to help out with one of the most difficult, thankless jobs at the event.

[barnz]

Meetings for Exodus folks are relatively benign. Contact [email protected] to let him know that you wann get involved in dealing with the problem of Exodus.

Go for it. Od's always looking for volunteer folk to help out with one of the most difficult, thankless jobs at the event.

Thanks Badger!

[mdmf007]

Jungo is downplayed officially as t is maintained mostly by the Mining companies that use it 95% of the time.

It is a public road, I have used it more than a hundred times and never had a flat.

other than that it is in the bst shape I have seen in years.

later

[bradtem]

Problem is as long as the official word on it is "don't take it" or even at best "take it at your own risk, and that risk is not tiny" they are very unlikely to official things, like opening one of the playa exits onto jungo road.

Though rumour has it that those blessed with car passes (various staff and senior rangers, and presumably feds and sherrifs) use that exit to bypass exodus lines.

[Badger]

Problem is as long as the official word on it is "don't take it" or even at best "take it at your own risk, and that risk is not tiny" they are very unlikely to official things, like opening one of the playa exits onto jungo road.

I m i g h t be wrong here but my understanding about Jungo's inability to be widened with any marhin of safety has damn near everything to do with railroad right-of-way which in this country is about as sacrosanct and damn near inviolable - especially in the western portion of the US.

[theCryptofishist]

Aside. Why are railroad right-of-ways sacred, when the railroads themselves are so marginalized?

[Kinetik V]

Jungo Road Annual Average Daily Traffic counts can be found here:

http://www.nevadadot.com/reports_pubs/t ... port/2006/

Check out Humboldt (Winnemucca inset on Pg 2) and Washoe counties.

Quick summary: Jungo traffic averages 105 cars on the East end in Winnemucca, 385 on the West end where it connects to 447.

A road with this low of an annual traffic count (yes that does include BM traffic) would not justify the expenditures necessary to handle an expansion. Even 447 itself using the higher traffic counts between Empire and Gerlach sits at 426 cars...hardly enough traffic to warrant major expenditures.

Badger's RR angle is very interesting...that line is part of the original transcon route that opened the West...I wonder how much right of way they were given back then and how much they still hold? That's an interesting question.

[Lassen Forge]

Unless i'm misreading the report, that's average *daily* traffic, not annual.

447 at the Gerlach Tracks was 710 per day last year - 260,000 vehicles per year. A lot of those are BRC, but not all, not by a long shot. Plus a lot are multi-axle commercials... Semis, 3 axle trucks, etc. If you have a twin axle trailer behind your pickup that's *2* vehicles. But still... 260K isn't chicken feed.

Of course, we see that in a 24 hour period here on the bridge...

bb

[dr.placebo]

I volunteered for a couple of traffic control shifts at Exodus this year. That does not make me an expert, but I did get to observe traffic flow near the T (where the playa meets the highway) for 6 hours on each of Sunday and Monday.

The best outflow rate was when we had two lanes going from the playa onto the highway (this requires flaggers). Unfortunately, this flow can be greater than can be sustained through Gerlach (at least sometimes). We sometimes had to throttle back to a single lane to reduce the congestion in Gerlach. So improving the rate of exit onto the highway during peak periods is not going to help much.

There were significant delays due to breakdowns and accidents. These reduced the flow rather dramatically. Even before the T we had several breakdowns that reduced us to using a single lane when two would have been better.

What can help with the flow (in my non-expert opinion):

1. Fewer breakdowns (keep vehicle in good repair, keep load secure)
2. Fewer accidents (stay alert, drive carefully, vehicle in good repair)
3. More flaggers to cover more hours (requires volunteers)
4. More people per vehicle

Note that all of these require cooperation from those who attend.

One thing that BMorg exodus planning might improve is not the amount of time waiting, but the amount of time waiting with the engine on. This requires more complex flow control, effectively batching cars in groups. My guess is that even this improvement requires more volunteers.

[Teo del Fuego]

Aside. Why are railroad right-of-ways sacred, when the railroads themselves are so marginalized?

Hardly,

as people movers railroads are marginalized, but for hauling that nasty stuff that makes electricity, and a big percentage of our goods, railroads are pretty crucial to our economy.

(Im not connected with the railroad industry in any way, just recently read a big New Yorker article on it. )

Instinct to stop is EXACTLY right. There was no flagger when I left, and people were pulling out onto the road after looking both ways and did so one car at a time.

The portable traffic light is BRILLIANT! Traffic lights are obeyed almost instinctively.

[bradtem]

Boy, accidents and breakdowns are pretty tough things for the exodus procedure to control. As a community, it's true we come in crappy vehicles and we are very tired. I would bet another source of problems is stuff falling off of vehicles the first time they get up to speed, I've seen a lot of vehicles pulled off on the road to Gerlach for such reasons. Pretty hard to tell people not to do that. This year during the exodus dust storm, many also had to pull off to clean their windshields.

The main slowdown I've seen is the Empire store but it's not the only one. However, your experiences show that since we can always add lanes on the Playa, and since with a flagger or traffic light we can put people onto the blacktop faster than Gerlach can handle them, the Exodus crew efforts on the playa are already doing fine as far as traffic flow is concerned.

If Empire is not the issue, it seems the Jungo Road south of the Playa leading to 447 could be used to expand capacity in the future (it's a much shorter stretch) though I expect the merge would then become another bottleneck needing a flagger or temporary traffic light. However, as a plus the traffic going North will have left the flow by then. I don't know if anybody tracks the traffic going that way, but Burning Man of course knows roughly where the tickets are bought from which could provide a decent estimate.

[Kinetik V]

I meant daily on the numbers (sorry, I wasn't fully caffeinated when I posted that)....still when you compare the Jungo numbers say against Las Vegas's numbers you can see where the lion's share of highway dollars will naturally go.

One other idea that I doubt would go over is to raise ticket prices slightly to cover roadside assistance vehicles that could be strategically placed along 447, similar to what various highway departments do in congested areas.

Using Jungo Road as another avenue for Southbound traffic means there's a need for an improvement to an existing crossing of UP's mainline or a new crossing would be needed. UP's speedlimit through Gerlach is reduced which increases the safety factor...that gets yanked further out towards the playa where speeds increase to 70 mph for freight traffic.

While I'm on the same thought process...I would be willing to pay an exodus surcharge / fee and sign a release of liability that would allow me to head North onto the deep playa and then pick my own way across one of the various UP crossings, then back to Jungo to head East to Winnemucca. I don't know if that could be done...but it's at least another idea.

[barnz]

well, I think I'm on record as wanting Exodus to go better, but I would hope the BMORG doesn't change anything that would result in more burners crossing any more railroad crossings.

Railroad accidents are bad, real bad. And please don't tell me anything about Radical Darwinism.

Bad. Real Bad.

[bradtem]

Hard to say if they can simultaneously say "we don't recommend jungo road" and then sell access to it for a premium.

As for emergency road service, I doubt you need to raise the ticket price. Tell burners to ask their insurance company how much the emergency road service addon to their car insurance is. For me on state farm it was $8 per year including an RV tow -- vastly cheaper than AAA. Many members have AAA itself, of course. In many cases you can also get it as an add-on with cell phone service, man car makers offer it -- it's all over the place, and in some cases you can get it for just the month for a few bucks.

Anway, if people do that, then the next step is to convince a road service supplier it is worth their time to be in good position to help vehicles. I would imagine that's true since while normally the cheap insurance only tows you as far as the nearest service, on 447 that's a giant tow I presume they get to charge for. (The insurance company evens it out.) Of course it is the long weekend so it might be harder to convince them.

While accidents have indeed created major jams, how often does it jam all the way back to the playa?

One of the other major traffic killers is the missing kid policy. Any kid goes missing and they shut the gate. And apparently they have found a kidnapper trying to leave at the gate, which surprises me, but it is the reason for this policy. BRC seems a strange place to go to kidnap kids, to me, but who knows with sickos?

There seems to be at least one of these gate closures every year, or close to it, so it's another tough factor.

[Kinetik V]

I'm tossing ideas out but I know the ideas are sometimes at odds with each other. As for the missing kid policy...I can't imagine someone squawking about that...shame on them if they do.

One thing I'd like to see / hear is better Exodus info. When it comes to Exodus info BMIR is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WORTHLESS. WORTHLESS! I can't do it myself but I kinda wish there could be a station dedicated to Exodus info that stayed on focus...and didn't give us Malcolm X speeches and crappy music for 15 minutes between the same regurgitated reports that were just as fucking WORTHLESS as the last.

[barnz]

Tell burners to ask their insurance company how much the emergency road service addon to their car insurance is. For me on state farm it was $8 per year including an RV tow -- vastly cheaper than AAA. Many members have AAA itself, of course. In many cases you can also get it as an add-on with cell phone service, man car makers offer it -- it's all over the place, and in some cases you can get it for just the month for a few bucks.

Bear in mind that there is often a hidden cost to roadside assistance plans - that being mileage charges. Even in urban locations like the San Francisco Bay Area, an individual tow can wind up costing HUNDREDS of DOLLARS. I'm not kidding. Basic AAA roadside assistance will tow you only 5 miles before they start charging. The mileage rate is up to the local towing company, and who's going to argue when getting towed off the side of the freeway (or off the playa?!)

I strongly recommend to everyone, particularly my good friends here on ePlaya (we come here to know the good stuff, right?) the "PLUS" service from AAA. This upgrades your tow distance from 5 miles to 100 miles. When my alternator broke in Palo Alto, this got me towed to the dealership in Albany. Years ago when my car broke in Detroit, it got me towed to my dealer in Ann Arbor.

...I'm not shilling for AAA, there may be some similar program with other companies, but this has not only saved me lots of money but taken a lot of the frustration and consternation out of some otherwise unhappy events...If I broke down on 447 I would rather get a tow into Reno.

[unjonharley]

\/
What would happen if you put twice as many cars on the road in a set time??

How far down the road would the bottle neck happen??

[unjonharley]

\/
doubling the cars entering the hwy would not effect your exit wait time.. 50 000 people are waiting to leave..

[bradtem]

Road capacities aren't exact, they depend on how far people space themselves, how fast they are going, how comfortable they feel on the road etc.

Full highway lanes are rated up to 2,000 cars per hour because cars can go very fast and people feel comfortable about space for lane changes.

Single lane each-direction roads are much lower in capacity. And once you drop to very slow or "stop and go" traffic capacity cuts in half from that for smooth flowing traffic, at least on a highway.

Bottlenecks have lower capacity, and due to merges or stop signs or turns they usually involve dropping to stop and go for a short period. However, the capacity of the whole system is the capacity of it slowest bottleneck, unless that bottleneck is very far away. If you put more cars into it the jam just backs up and takes longer to clear.

That's why highways use metering lights in the on-ramps. If you let fewer cars into the road than want to go into it, you avoid going over the limit and dropping to stop and go for a real slow-down. Metering lights actually are in enlightened self-interest. If you zoom on, you would just choke the highway and everybody, including you, gets there slower. If you are metered, you wait a few minutes at the meter, but you get there otherwise faster. The people already on the highway get there even faster, but that shouldn't matter.

That level of traffic management is an area of graduate study beyond most of us, I expect.

[theCryptofishist]

well, I think I'm on record as wanting Exodus to go better, but I would hope the BMORG doesn't change anything that would result in more burners crossing any more railroad crossings.

Railroad accidents are bad, real bad. And please don't tell me anything about Radical Darwinism.

Bad. Real Bad.

I'm living proof of how unutterably horrible they are.

[theCryptofishist]

iIn 02 it was ~$200 to AAAtow our monster truck (I miss you, Tania) from the playa to Reno.

[Tapestry]

There's one way out of Burning Man that never bottlenecks: the airport. Somebody with a little land along Hwy. 447 (like maybe the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation) could build a landing strip and start up an air shuttle service. It could ferry people on and off the playa by air. The service could charge people to park their cars during the event, too. Groups could pick one person to haul their gear in and out the old fashoned way. It might be expensive, but going to Burning Man isn't cheap, anyway. Just an idea...

[bradtem]

But you only get limited luggage. It's from Reno.

And then you're dropped at BRC airport and have to find a way to your camp, which can be a pain. Often art cars come by and rides can be hitched but I've known pilots who had to walk the long trek. I usually bike out there, it's a long bike haul into the wind even.

However, this goes full circle to the original topic -- does it make sense to have a bus, if the bus got some sort of special carpool status that got it past exodus and entry lines.

(As I noted, if the bus became a major effort, you could even have remote "gate" in that you could take people's tickets, sell them tickets and greet them before they get on the bus, or even on the bus during the ride, and then start a playa party on the ride -- or sleep.)

However, you still have to contend with people getting the rest of there gear there, walking from where the bus stops to camp, getting the empty bus back each time, and the notorious problem we all have of being read on time for things. (I don't know how the people who fly do it, I guess it's because they are inherently limited in what they can pack.)

[Alchemy]

Why dont we make use of directing and rerouting departing bulk traffic into intervals of ten cars..to three mile then issue the next 10
to 9 mileand the next routed to
the twelve mile exits?..
This would function at lot like the metered lights that get you syncronised with the rush hour crush back in the default as you enter onto the freeway.
Why do we all have to exit at one gate way when several exist?
It would definatley keep things moving.