Reserve your driving time to reduce traffic congestion

For his thesis, EPFL PhD student Raphaël Lamotte studied rush-hour traffic congestion. He suggests implementing a system whereby commuters reserve time on a special traffic lane - like booking a seat on a flight - to help cities accommodate a growing number of car-sharing programs and, eventually, self-driving cars. We've all sat frustrated in rush-hour traffic - either in the morning on the way to work, in the evening on the way home, or both. Some try to get around the problem by leaving a little earlier or a little later. That helps balance out traffic flows and create a certain equilibrium - which many transportation engineers and economists have been studying. Their goal is to better understand the mechanisms behind this equilibrium so that large infrastructure projects can be better designed and help reduce congestion. Lamotte's thesis - supervised by Nikolas Geroliminis, a professor at EPFL's Urban Transport Systems Laboratory - investigates this equilibrium and weighs up different methods for reducing traffic congestion.