Purposely stalling 20% of cars in Manhattan could trigger total gridlock

boing
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Let’s take Toronto: I’d say one stalled vehicle each direction every 5km or so on each major expressway, one at Yonge and Dundas, a couple on University and on Jarvis and you’ve pretty much shut the city down. If half of those need emergency services then the city is done for the day.

(That 2m strong Raptors parade? All public transit, it seems. :+1:)

The 2014 flooding and power outage turned my 35m no traffic commute into a bit over 4 hours.

I don’t know New York that well, but after a couple of cab rides in from La Guardia I just started heading there via Newark and taking the train onto Manhattan.

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Yes. This is a stunningly underwhelming statistic. There are, famously, a lot of vehicles in Manhattan. That’s the whole problem.

The coverage has the tone you’d expect if somebody claimed they could shut Manhattan down by stalling seventeen vehicles.

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Did you know you can completely shut down all traffic in America by stalling 100% of vehicles?

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Some alternative shocking headlines:

Purposely burning down 20% of your house could trigger homelessness

Purposely shutting down 20% of your internal organs could trigger total death

Purposely losing 20% of the economy could trigger total economic disaster

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Gotta be the second, since it fits with a guy who could use his money and and influence to help people en masse, but instead just punches individual crazy people in the streets instead of getting therapy for watching his parents killed.

(I say this because mockery is the highest form of flattery).

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I had avoided making a post like this because I couldn’t think of sufficiently comical parallels. You’ve done some fine work here.

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I used to work for a research lab that studied cybersecurity, particularly as it related to critical infrastructure. This movie was frequently trotted out as a fun example of something that was entirely possible.

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Well, there’s this:

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OMG. Hasselhoff and Kathy Ireland? I think I found my next submission for drunk movie night with the friends.

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Man, I’m loving my e-bike more and more every day.

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I remember we were trying to help my brother move to Manhattan for school. We had to drive his stuff in. It certainly wasn’t easy.

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Does this mean stalling 19.9% wouldn’t cause gridlock? That’s impressive!

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Yes! I was to busy being annoyed be the apparent non-story to see the real conclusion.

You don’t have to close all the streets to cars all the time, but pretty sure you could randomly close 5% of them and improve life immensely. Give it a bit more thought and even better.

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