Bala: Hello Yashwanth! How are you? How was your day?
Yashwanth: Hello Bala! It was a very busy day. Morning I went to east bay to meet a client. I was driving over the Dumbarton bridge. The traffic was so bad. My side was okay; but the opposite side was bumper to bumper. The whole bridge looked like a parking lot.
Bala: That is because of Facebook office. Facebook is in Menlo Park and most of its employees live in east bay. So, the morning traffic is bad on one direction and the evening traffic is bad on another direction.
Yashwanth: Yes. That is true. On my way back, around noon, both sides of the bridge were normal. Then, from 3 to 7 in the evening, one direction would be heavy traffic and then in the night, the bridge must be empty without any vehicles. Why don't bridge construction companies take everything into consideration when they build these bridges?
Bala: They do. When they build a bridge, the construction companies take the number of vehicles would go across the bridge at any time into consideration and they build the strength of the bridge to hold that many vehicles on it.
Yashwanth: That makes sense for the construction company. Who is responsible for the smooth movement of vehicles on the bridge.
Bala: That is transportation authority. It is the responsibility of the county transportation authority.
Yashwanth: Do they take into consideration about vehicle movement on the bridge at different point of time in a day, weekdays traffic, weekend traffic and special event traffic.
Bala: I don't think so. They work on fixed numbers and average of total number of vehicle movement on that bridge. They make a huge assumption that whether it is morning or evening; whether it is weekday or weekend; whether it is special event or no event; they assume that 100 vehicles always move in one direction and 100 vehicles always move in other direction.
Yashwanth: How could they assume like that? That's not a practical thing. Why don't the transportation authority look at the flow of the vehicles first and design the bridge flexible to meet the demands of the road traffic.
Bala: The road traffic is similar to the traffic on the internet. In the beginning, site-builders used to build a web site expecting 100 users per day. When a million users hit the web site, the server couldn't scale and go down.
Yashwanth: [with irritation] what web site traffic. I am expressing concern on road traffic and you compare road traffic with web site traffic. I don't understand. Road traffic is a serious problem. People do suffer with it. How could you bring in topic which is totally irrelevant?
...and this is not the first time. You don't stay focused on current topic of discussion. You bring in other topics into discussion and also you always go way off from the current topic.
Bala: Like what?
Yashwanth: for instance, I told you about my experience in Dumbarton bridge. You may go into Golden Gate, Bay Bridge and all other bridges. Perhaps, you may extend the same problem with highways too.
Bala: That's true, Yash. Whatever you had been through, the same sufferings others may go through on the Golden Gate bridge, Bay Bridge and exactly on highway 101 too.
Yashwanth: That may be true. But if we go off from the current topic of discussion, then we may not find a solution to it. Some time, you go way off from the original topic of discussion.
Bala: Again, like what? Let me know, how far, I go way off from the Dumbarton bridge.
Yashwanth: You go into entire US and then into Europe, Brazil, China, Japan, India and some time, even to other planets. If we go way off from the current topic, then we may go out of focus and couldn't find a solution to solve the Dumbarton traffic problem.
Bala: That is a very good observation. Yash, you're the world and the world is you. That means, whatever the joy or the suffering you have been going through, others also go through almost in the same way in their life.
Yashwanth: So, Dumbarton bridge issue is a global issue. Am I right?
Bala: Absolutely! It is a global issue.
Bala: In fact, web site traffic is also people problem. People would like to know the results of a presidential election. It may cause a huge traffic to the web site and that sudden increase in hits may bring the server down. It is a people problem. People couldn't get information on time. In some emergency situation, information on time may save many lives too.
Yashwanth: But these companies in Silicon Valley solved all those web site traffic problems. People no longer see messages like: server down due to high traffic; sorry for the inconvenience. Please try to access the site after some time.
Bala: That's interesting. How did these Silicon Valley companies solve the web site traffic issue? Did they add additional number of high-computing servers in data centers?
Yashwanth: They did try adding more numbers of high-computing powerful servers; but that didn't help. Most of the time, those high-value resources were idle. They were not scalable to the demand from people living all around the world.
Bala: Then, how did they solve the problem?
Yashwanth: Cloud Computing. It allocates resources such as computing power, managing network traffic based on the demand. As demand increases, the Cloud allocates more resources. When demand decreases, the Cloud recovers its resources. The allocation of resources aren't a fixed one. Dynamically, based on the demand, the resources are allocated and then recovered.
Bala: Perhaps, we offer the same kind of solution to the global city transportation issue.
Yashwanth: What? City Transportation Cloud! I don't believe that you're suggesting a cloud computing platform for city transportation issue.
Bala: Yes. That would be a long term solution for global city transportation issue. But we need to fix the current issue of heavy traffic on one side and light traffic on other side issue.
Yashwanth: Cloud Platform for City Transportation is way beyond my imagination. I don't want to say anything on that wild concept. It may or may not come true. But, I agree on one thing.
Bala: Interesting. What is that thing?
Yashwanth: Dumbarton bridge issue is not only for that bridge; it may be the same for other bridges too.
Bala: That's surprising. I guess this is the first time, we both agree on a thing. Have you gone through the same kind of traffic issue on other bridges too?
Yashwanth: Not same kind of issue; but a solution to it.
Bala: A solution? Did you find a solution to traffic problem? Way too many surprises! What is it?
Yashwanth: The other day, I was driving over the Golden Gate bridge. There I saw, a Road Zipper...
Bala: a Road Zipper! What is it? I never heard of a zipper for a road.
Yashwanth: It's hard to explain. Let me show you the video from YouTube.
Then, they talked about its advantages and its limitations.
Yashwanth: Do you agree that this zipper would solve the traffic problems in all bridges and highways?
Bala: How long does it take to move the barriers from one lane to anther lane?
Yashwanth: It may take an hour to move the barrier from one lane to another lane. In Golden Gate bridge, the road zipper moves the barrier two times a day.
Bala: Moving the barrier from one lane to another lane sounds good. Could we do it without the zipper? It looks huge and it may occupy more space in the congested road. On narrow and steep bridges like Dumbarton, it may not work.
Yashwanth: Could we have the barriers as a sliding ones? Just by pulling a lever, could these barriers move from one lane to the next lane without a zipper?
Bala: That is a good idea. It is possible in railway tracks. By pulling a lever, a track could move to the side and make a new lane. It is difficult to make these barriers slide on the surface of the road. We need to build a lot of mechanical equipment under the road surface. Maintenance of those mechanical equipment would be very challenging.
Yashwanth: Do we really need these barriers on the road?
Bala: That is a very good question. In fact, vehicles need smooth road surface for their movement. Vehicles don't need lanes or barriers in the middle. But, drivers do need. Drivers need lanes and drivers need barriers in the middle.
Yashwanth: In my view, if drivers drive their vehicle with great responsibility then we don't need all these physical solid heavy barriers on the middle of the road. Barriers are dead weight on the bridge too. They just occupy space in the middle of the road.
Bala: That's true. If drivers act with great responsibility then we could just have yellow lights on those lanes. Just by switching on, we could shift three lanes on one side and two lanes on the other side. In fact, we could even go to the extreme level such as, one lane on one side and four lanes on the other side.
Yashwanth: Any thing physical has got its own limitations. Even in computers, they couldn't build scalable systems with physical servers. When they introduce virtual machines, then they could build infrastructure with great elasticity.
Bala: Look what, who is now going off the topic from road traffic to virtual machines in the computer system. Virtual lanes are now introduced in sports activities. For swimming events, instead of physical lanes, they have virtual lanes.
Yashwanth: I didn't realize it. It happens naturally. Even in road infrastructure, if we could replace those huge physical barriers with virtual barriers like yellow lights, then we could get lot of flexibility on road infrastructure.
Bala: Drivers may not feel safe in driving a vehicle without any physical barriers in the middle and without any clearly marked lanes on the road surface. Without barriers there may be head-on collision on the bridge. Human drivers tend to go ahead of others and in that effort, they may have head-on collision with others.
Yashwanth: So, the physical barriers were built for bad drivers. In that case, we need to replace current vehicle with self-driving vehicles. Machines do not violate rules. Only human violates rules.
Bala: Self-driving cars. They do the same mistake what Steve Jobs did.
Yashwanth: What mistake did Steve Jobs do? In fact, he transformed the smart phones with his iPhone invention.
Bala: iPhone was like a high-powered sports car with lot of sophistication features. What is the use of such a car, if we don't have modern roadways. iPhone had started to take off only when the service providers start building 4G, LTE and city-wide wi-fi network.
Yashwanth: How does iPhone story relates to self-driving cars.
Bala: self-driving vehicle cannot fit into traditional roadways. They need modern road infrastructure. Self-driving cars are like packets in computer communication networks.
Yashwanth: Then, do you suggest routers, switches, multiplexer and virtual lanes for road transportation.
Bala: Exactly. This modern times need self-driving vehicles and modern road infrastructure with information flowing from Cloud for City Transportation.
Yashwanth: I came across, Vehicle to Vehicle communication protocols and Vehicle to Road Infrastructure protocols.
Bala: For any human problems, we need to have whole perspective. Look at the way, our discussion move from one topic to another.
Yashwanth: We covered physical barriers, road zipper, mechanical movement of lanes, moving yellow lanes, self-driving cars, routers and switches for road transportation and so on.
Bala: The future generation, when they build roadways in other planets, they may start with virtual lanes and virtual barriers with self-driving vehicles for their city transportation.
Yashwanth: Thanks. Bye now.
Bala: Thank you. Bye.
