UPS Using Software To Eliminate Left Turns 511
cybermage writes "The NY Times has a story about UPS using software to dramatically reduce the number of left turns their drivers take. With a fleet of vehicles their size, the time and money saved by pre-planning routes that try to eliminate left turns means big savings." Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.
I have a solution. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:5, Funny)
If two wrongs don't make a right, try a third.
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Re:I have a solution.... and a racist comment (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:4, Informative)
"Calwell's remark in Parliament in 1947 that 'Two Wongs don't make a White' is widely quoted. The remark was intended as a joke, being a reference to a Chinese resident called Wong who was wrongly threatened with deportation, and a Liberal MP, Sir Thomas White. Today the remark is seen as evidence that Calwell was a racist."
[see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Calwell [wikipedia.org] ]
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SiO2
Re:I have a solution. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have a solution. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know you're joking, but Brasilia [aboutbrasilia.com] was originally designed like that. The idea wasn't to eliminate the left wing (heh, heh...the city was also designed in a shape that resembles an airplane or bird from an aerial view, depending on who you ask), but to make traffic lights unnecessary. Didn't quite scale as the city grew, and there are traffic lights now, but the idea was awesome...
My rant. (Score:2, Interesting)
Aside from my thought of 'this just doesn't work, I have also wondered about how much time and gas is wasted for people to sit and wait for their time for the 'green light'.
One car per green. The wait can be from about 2 seconds between greens and 20 seconds (or more). I have seen cars waiting for several minutes, when the highways are very open. I can't figure it out
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Those are being installed all around Atlanta as we speak. I was at a public feedback meeting for adding HOV lanes to I-285 a month or so ago, and happened to find out that, at least in Atlanta, they were planning to control those onramp lights manually, using cameras and human operators. I don't know how many onramps a single operator is supposed to control, but I could easily imagine him not paying sufficient attention and leaving a ramp sitting on red for a few minutes, or going to the bathroom, or any nu
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The flaw is simple: the feedback is not taking into account the number of cars lined up at the light.
perception != reality (Score:5, Insightful)
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Subject SL610249 is getting unruly, better move the cheese again...
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It's so you don't have 80 cars coming from the same ramp trying to merge onto the freeway at the same time. When you have that many cars merging at once, they are invariably going at a very slow speed because some jackass who is afraid of the freeway is slowing everyone down,
Maybe it depends on the area and freeway capacity, but we have them in our area, and guess what? If there are 80 cars merging from the on-ramp, that means it's rush hour and the average speed in all lanes is already below 20mph. If t
Oregon has them too (Score:2)
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Bangkok (Score:2)
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As someone who has been to Bangkok I am going to have to turn down your invitation to get myself killed. I also think in the interest of public safety you should withdraw your invite, especially to those from countries that drive on the right side of the road - it is hard enough to get used to that change let alone the loose traffic laws and darting motorcycle taxis.
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This page tells a little about them. [imsasafety.org]
Well, it's better than stop signs. (Score:2)
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I would be VERY surprised if it does not work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes sense (Score:2)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
I live in the UK (Score:5, Funny)
No turns on red in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
I remember driving in San Francisco, my first time driving in the US. I only got caught the once being beeped because I'd just stopped at red and didn't turn right although it was clear, but my other local transgression was a lot worse. We came up to some flashing red lights - I had no idea what they were for. There was one car in front of us before the lights, it stopped for a while and then went. I thought "ah ha - flashing red means stop and go if clear".
It doesn't. It means "tram coming". I found this out at the end of the week we stayed there, suddenly realising I'd spent the entire week running red lights against trams...
Cheers,
Ian
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Re:No turns on red in the UK (Score:4, Informative)
Two horizontal red lights flashing alternately and various train crossing signs = stop, train is coming or passing.
Re:No turns on red in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
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One flashing red light (either single or because the light has malfunctioned) indicates you treat it as if it were a stop sign.
Further, usually a traffic signal which has lost power completely is treated as an all way stop for all roads intersecting, but few people seem to realize (or care) about this rule.
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I'm from the Midwest, I've driven from Washington DC to Seattle, and I've never seen a flashing green light in my life, or if I did I didn't given it enough thought to warrant trying to figure out what it meant and just drove through it. I'm glad someone posted the Wikipedia article about it too, or I never would have known that it can mean any number of things depending on where you are.
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Re:I live in the UK (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I live in the UK (Score:5, Funny)
And this is all because (Score:3, Funny)
Circle.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Wouldn't it still be a left turn to get out of a circle in either counties? if you made a right turn it would make you enter the middle of the circle. So wouldn't it be the same regardless on what side the steering wheel was on?
Clockwise vs Counter-Clockwise (Score:2)
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In America, roundabouts (what few we have, anyway) go counterclockwise. All turns (both into and out of the roundabout), are right turns.
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What people who've never used roundabouts (or just lame drivers) don't get is that if everyone always uses the correct lane and always gives way to the right, nobody ever gets trapped, and traffic continues pretty smoothly. Unfortunately, people get confus
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_on_the_left_or_right#Myths_and_miscellaneous_facts [wikipedia.org]
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Do you live in the deep south or west of the US? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hemispatial neglect (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, hey, at least UPS trucks can't turn left!
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Can you hear me now? (Score:5, Interesting)
I drove virtually every road from NW Chicago, to Door County Wisconsin, over to LaCrosse, and down to Iowa. And it only took a handful of days to start looking for route optimizations. We didn't have software to do it for us, we had state maps, plotter maps, and the laptop maps with GPS. Eliminating Left turns in busy areas, specifically those with out turn signals was always a high priority.
I can imagine the problem would be even more significant for UPS drives because of the number of left turns they will have to make in uncontrolled intersections. Turning left on a 4-lane avenue with no traffic lights into driveways, frontage roads, parking lots, what ever, can be a PITA in a car, let alone a straight-truck. The amount of gas they can save from idling, and gunning it hard to clear traffic probably adds up to a significant amount over the length of the day.
-Rick
Michigan is far ahead of the curve (Score:5, Interesting)
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Never has one sign that is technically correct confused so many before, than the hook turn (note, left side driving here, 's what makes it so fun).
Heard this before (Score:4, Interesting)
Last year, one of my coworkers told me the same story.
He also said he knew a place that was virtually unreachable unless you took a left turn. It was not uncommon to see a UPS truck circle around the place a few times before they arrived.
England (Score:2)
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In Related News.. (Score:5, Funny)
Said FedEx spokesman Dewey Shippit, "We've found that there is a significant savings in randomly tossing packages into a large warehouse and not delivering them. The cost of delivering those packages far exceeds the cost of repeatedly 'issuing a trace' to locate the missing item."
Stop lights are better (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope the mapping software is better then online. (Score:2)
And what do they when the map tells them to make a trun that can't be made as the road may be set to block that trun and what about roads that are not yet on the map?
The new part of I-355 is missing from all of the online maps.
Both UPS and Fedex's software can do this (Score:5, Informative)
The article is actually about how UPS is going to lessen global warming or some such silly thing like that. They aren't, the increased distance the route can plot makes you drive as long (it doesn't truly matter if your diesel truck is idling at a light or driving in a circle). It is, however, easier for a driver to make less left turns and probably has some sort of psychological effect on other drivers to not see them in the left lane.
"Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons."
The software is excellent, it makes great routes, can cut down on any number of hassles, but seriously the main point is NOT to eliminate left turns. The software is meant to get more packages out, more quickly, to more people, with less drivers, and more profit.
Silly NY Times writers.
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Nice to see Fedex have dragged themselves into the 90s.
Nice idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, having used the DIAD IV system, I can't see it working out too well. If you're not familiar with it, DIAD is the little brown LCD screen you sign whenyou get a package and has all the stops a driver makes in his day organized in an order that is suppose to be the easiest and quickest. The problem is very rarely is it done right. So you'll be driving on 4th, and the next stop will be on the same end of 3rd. The problem is 3rd is a one way and if you turn on it you'll be hitting oncoming traffic. So you either need to swing around the block (wasteful use of time) or deliver it later via a different route.
Fortunately nobody with half a brain relies on DIAD for their route info. A driver with enough experience will know their route and what stops to make when.
With that being said, it was easily the worst job I ever had. I ran all day and barely ate. In a 2-3 week period I lost 15 pounds.
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, besides simply waiting for the technology to mature, delivery companies in particular are in the perfect position to gather valuable routing data (instead of just taking whatever Navteq gives them). Using the GPS on their vehicles, they should be tracking how long it takes to traverse each stretch of road and each intersection or turn, all depending on the day of week, time of day, etc. A simple rule such as "prefer right turns at all intersections" is an OK start, but it could get so much more detailed.
I first learned it watching Cop Land... (Score:2)
"Red light, don't fight, turn right."
It works in traffic, it works in life. Not all the time, mind you, but a lot more than you'd think.
pre-planning? Is that what they do (Score:2, Funny)
Somebody needs to use a spell checker. Something is either planned or unplanned. There is no "pre".
nothing new for New Jersey (Score:2)
Not the first (Score:2)
rj
In other news ... (Score:3, Funny)
Congress was working up a bill that would retrofit all the roads in the
US so we're either straight or turned right. The bill was dropped when
they discovered the principle designer, MC Escher had pased away and nobody
else was capable of drawing them.
Belthize
Not all left turns are created equal (Score:5, Interesting)
I found I wasn't unique, there is actually a name for people like me - "hypermilers". The EPA estimate on my large car (I'm not even a radical hypermiler) is 35 mpg on th ehighway, I can get 36 if I do 50MPH (which REALLY pisses people off, even though I stay in the right lane).
Any way, left turns onto a highway do, indeed, use gas, particularly if there's heavy traffic. But at an intersection, particularly with a left turn arrow, it uses no more gas than a right turn. You have to use as much gas idling to wait for traffic turning right from a side street as you do waiting for traffic turning left on to a side street.
But the seconds of idling don't use much gas at all. What REALLY uses gas is stopping, period. Every time you touch your brake you convert the kinetic energy you spent gas obtaining to heat and throw it away. If you're stopped completely you must overcome inertia, which takes even more energy.
So when I take my foot off the gas when the light ahead turns red, coast to it, and am forced to stop behind your stupid ass at a green light because you zoomed around me racing to the red light, I'm blasting my horn, you rich damned dumbass. Waste your own damned gas but waste mine and I'm pissed.
-mcgrew
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And meanwhile, in Europe, p
Re:Not all left turns are created equal (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll be the first to tell you that most people who gun it between intersection and weave through traffic trying to go faster are just flailing their arms and panicking. They're not helping anyone, especially not themselves.
However, if you're like me, and you travel the same routes day in and day out you start to see where problems occur. Well calculated lane changes to avoid things like probable stopped buses a block down and left turners without separate lanes can safe you very noticeable amount of time. Suddenly, racing past someone even if it means getting caught at the same light with them means that they're behind you when it all merges down to one lane. Instead of being stuck behind someone going 50mph on the highway, or more than likely 30mph, you're in a position to be in front of the person instead of behind them. Did it save gas? Don't know, don't care. Did it mean I could leave for work ten minutes later and not have to frustrated by slow person in front of me? Yep, and that's what I was looking for.
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The accordion effect kicks in with rapid changes in speed, not gradual ones. Now, if you don't make it to the lights before they change back to green you really are holding up traffic, but provided you do get to them before they change you're actually helping the traffic to flow more smoothly. The exception of course is lights which are ope
Old news? (Score:3, Informative)
Zoolander? (Score:3, Funny)
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I have an idea......
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Because they said so. And if you don't like it, the Teamsters Union will introduce you to their two friends, Bruno and Mad Dog.
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small turn diameter is bad for trucks (Score:2)
(yes, they do that -- I see it often enough!)
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Well, if the computer tells you your route and tells management how many miles that should put on the odometer and how much time it should take, it would be pretty hard to make side trips or otherwise slack off.
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Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.
Indeed, it's a reference to a classic computational logic problem, "the Traveling Salesman problem."
What's funny here is that a "few left turns" solution is still in the domain of the Traveling Salesman. It's not a case of "instead of," it's just a tiny bit more detailed as far as algorithms go. It simply attaches a different cost or weight on different edges of the graph, and in fact different directions of the same edge. Now, it takes a fair amount of work to provide accurate costs for each mile an
NASCAR (Score:2)