Think Airports Are Chaotic? You Are Right. 24
jonfromspace writes "Nature is running a brief, but interesting article on Chaos Theory, (as opposed to KAOS) and how it relates to that damn airport shutle service. I knew there was no way to predict arrival times with any degree of certainty. >Also worth a read is this paper on applying Chaos Theory to fisheries management."
In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bunching buses (Score:5, Insightful)
Regular bus commuters might be familar with the phenomenon where buses tend to come in groups - often in threes. For example, instead of 1 bus every 10 minutes you get 3 every 30 minutes.
Why? My theory is that as the system becomes crowded, a bus will be delayed by having to pick up and drop off extra passengers. As it gets slower, two things happen:
People have to wait longer at the bus stops. This causes the first bus to have to deal with a greater number of passengers, and makes the bus slow down even more.
The bus behind it starts to catch up. This occurs partly due to the slower speed of the first bus, but is amplified by the fact that as the second bus gets closer, there will be less passengers waiting at the stops, thus allowing the second bus to travel even faster.
The solution would be for the first bus to deliberately miss stops wherever possible so as to keep some distance between it and the next bus, and to even up the passenger load.