Driving down to UT made me rethink the question of what is the optimal way to merge traffic. Is it best to use all the lanes until the merge point, or do what most people do and merge early?
I asked this question of CoFo once when we were driving back from the Water front. He said that in the traffic situation he would think of the physical world - fluid flow. Based on that, CoFo and I agreeded that it is best to merge a close to the merge point as possible.
Driving down to UT, however, I realized that the previous conclusion could be incorrect because of the discrete size of vehicles. It might be better to model the cars as part of the velocity profile (streamline). The streamline would then start to merge before the merge point.
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