Congratulations Ilze!

Congratulations to one of our department members, Ilze Ziedins, whose research project into improving traffic systems has been funded from the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund.

Her research aims are covered in a story in today’s NZ Herald:

Dr Ziedins said past research has found that when travelling, either by car or through cyberspace, people chose their route without thinking of other people. Statisticians called this behaviour selfish routing, and said it was the cause of long delays and queues.

Road users could already choose to use GPS or webcams to plan their journeys. Backed by the $465,000 grant, Dr Ziedins will investigate whether this more detailed, accurate information could change people’s behaviour and reduce congestion on the road or on the internet.

“The main thing we’re looking at is: ‘Will giving people more information lead to a better distribution of traffic, just in itself? If you more information about the state of the network, will your choices end up making the network work better?,” she said.

The answers to solving these problems were not simply in adding lanes to highways or building more roads.

“In fact, increasing capacity may lead to worse behaviour overall,” said Dr Ziedins.