a-b-street/abstreet
1
1
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet.git synced 2024-12-29 17:34:58 +03:00
Code Issues Projects Releases Wiki Activity
cfe2537604
abstreet/print.html
dabreegster cfe2537604 deploy: d44245211e
2020-08-10 20:52:49 +00:00

1195 lines
62 KiB
HTML
Raw Blame History

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en" class="sidebar-visible no-js light">
<head>
<!-- Book generated using mdBook -->
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>A/B Street</title>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<meta name="theme-color" content="#ffffff" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.png">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/variables.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/general.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/chrome.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/print.css" media="print">
<!-- Fonts -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="FontAwesome/css/font-awesome.css">
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:300italic,400italic,600italic,700italic,800italic,400,300,600,700,800" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Code+Pro:500" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<!-- Highlight.js Stylesheets -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="highlight.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="tomorrow-night.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="ayu-highlight.css">
<!-- Custom theme stylesheets -->
</head>
<body>
<!-- Provide site root to javascript -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var path_to_root = "";
var default_theme = window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme: dark)").matches ? "light" : "light";
</script>
<!-- Work around some values being stored in localStorage wrapped in quotes -->
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var theme = localStorage.getItem('mdbook-theme');
var sidebar = localStorage.getItem('mdbook-sidebar');
if (theme.startsWith('"') && theme.endsWith('"')) {
localStorage.setItem('mdbook-theme', theme.slice(1, theme.length - 1));
}
if (sidebar.startsWith('"') && sidebar.endsWith('"')) {
localStorage.setItem('mdbook-sidebar', sidebar.slice(1, sidebar.length - 1));
}
} catch (e) { }
</script>
<!-- Set the theme before any content is loaded, prevents flash -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var theme;
try { theme = localStorage.getItem('mdbook-theme'); } catch(e) { }
if (theme === null || theme === undefined) { theme = default_theme; }
var html = document.querySelector('html');
html.classList.remove('no-js')
html.classList.remove('light')
html.classList.add(theme);
html.classList.add('js');
</script>
<!-- Hide / unhide sidebar before it is displayed -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var html = document.querySelector('html');
var sidebar = 'hidden';
if (document.body.clientWidth >= 1080) {
try { sidebar = localStorage.getItem('mdbook-sidebar'); } catch(e) { }
sidebar = sidebar || 'visible';
}
html.classList.remove('sidebar-visible');
html.classList.add("sidebar-" + sidebar);
</script>
<nav id="sidebar" class="sidebar" aria-label="Table of contents">
<div class="sidebar-scrollbox">
<ol class="chapter"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="index.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">1.</strong> Overview</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="map/index.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.</strong> Map model</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="map/importing/index.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.1.</strong> Importing</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="map/importing/convert_osm.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.1.1.</strong> convert_osm</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="map/importing/geometry.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.1.2.</strong> Road/intersection geometry</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="map/importing/rest.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.1.3.</strong> The rest</a></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="map/edits.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.2.</strong> Live edits</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="map/misc.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.3.</strong> Misc</a></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="trafficsim/index.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">3.</strong> Traffic simulation</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="trafficsim/discrete_event.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">3.1.</strong> Discrete event simulation</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="trafficsim/travel_demand.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">3.2.</strong> Travel demand</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="trafficsim/gridlock.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">3.3.</strong> Gridlock</a></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="project/index.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">4.</strong> Project</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="project/roadmap.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">4.1.</strong> Roadmap</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="project/motivations.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">4.2.</strong> Motivations</a></li></ol></li></ol>
</div>
<div id="sidebar-resize-handle" class="sidebar-resize-handle"></div>
</nav>
<div id="page-wrapper" class="page-wrapper">
<div class="page">
<div id="menu-bar-hover-placeholder"></div>
<div id="menu-bar" class="menu-bar sticky bordered">
<div class="left-buttons">
<button id="sidebar-toggle" class="icon-button" type="button" title="Toggle Table of Contents" aria-label="Toggle Table of Contents" aria-controls="sidebar">
<i class="fa fa-bars"></i>
</button>
<button id="theme-toggle" class="icon-button" type="button" title="Change theme" aria-label="Change theme" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="theme-list">
<i class="fa fa-paint-brush"></i>
</button>
<ul id="theme-list" class="theme-popup" aria-label="Themes" role="menu">
<li role="none"><button role="menuitem" class="theme" id="light">Light (default)</button></li>
<li role="none"><button role="menuitem" class="theme" id="rust">Rust</button></li>
<li role="none"><button role="menuitem" class="theme" id="coal">Coal</button></li>
<li role="none"><button role="menuitem" class="theme" id="navy">Navy</button></li>
<li role="none"><button role="menuitem" class="theme" id="ayu">Ayu</button></li>
</ul>
<button id="search-toggle" class="icon-button" type="button" title="Search. (Shortkey: s)" aria-label="Toggle Searchbar" aria-expanded="false" aria-keyshortcuts="S" aria-controls="searchbar">
<i class="fa fa-search"></i>
</button>
</div>
<h1 class="menu-title">A/B Street</h1>
<div class="right-buttons">
<a href="print.html" title="Print this book" aria-label="Print this book">
<i id="print-button" class="fa fa-print"></i>
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div id="search-wrapper" class="hidden">
<form id="searchbar-outer" class="searchbar-outer">
<input type="search" name="search" id="searchbar" name="searchbar" placeholder="Search this book ..." aria-controls="searchresults-outer" aria-describedby="searchresults-header">
</form>
<div id="searchresults-outer" class="searchresults-outer hidden">
<div id="searchresults-header" class="searchresults-header"></div>
<ul id="searchresults">
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Apply ARIA attributes after the sidebar and the sidebar toggle button are added to the DOM -->
<script type="text/javascript">
document.getElementById('sidebar-toggle').setAttribute('aria-expanded', sidebar === 'visible');
document.getElementById('sidebar').setAttribute('aria-hidden', sidebar !== 'visible');
Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('#sidebar a')).forEach(function(link) {
link.setAttribute('tabIndex', sidebar === 'visible' ? 0 : -1);
});
</script>
<div id="content" class="content">
<main>
<h1><a class="header" href="#ab-street" id="ab-street">A/B Street</a></h1>
<p>I'm consolidating documentation here.</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#map-model" id="map-model">Map model</a></h1>
<p>A/B Street builds a rich representation of a city map using OpenStreetMap (OSM) and other sources. This chapter describes how.</p>
<p>TODO: Integrate pictures from
<a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cF7qFtjAzkXL_r62CjxBvgQnLvuQ9I2WTE2iX_5tMCY/edit?usp=sharing">these slides</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/chYd5I-5oyc?t=439">This recorded presentation</a> covers some of
this.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#the-map" id="the-map">The map</a></h2>
<p>A single city is broken down into different pieces...</p>
<p>A/B Street comes with a few maps, each defined by a bounding/clipping polygon
for some portion of Seattle. Each map has these objects:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Roads</strong>: A single road connects two intersections, carrying OSM metadata and
containing some child lanes.</li>
<li><strong>Lanes</strong>: An individual lane of traffic. Driving (any vehicle), bus-only, and
bike-only lanes have a direction. On-street parking lanes don't allow any
movement, and they have some number of parking spots. Sidewalks are
bidirectional.</li>
<li><strong>Intersections</strong>: An intersection has references to all of the incoming and
outgoing lanes. Most intersections have a stop sign or traffic signal policy
controlling movement through it.
<ul>
<li><strong>Border</strong> intersections on the edge of the map are special places where
agents may appear or disappear.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>Turns</strong>: A turn connects one lane to another, via some intersection.
(Sidewalks are bidirectional, so specifying the intersection is necessary to
distinguish crosswalks at each end of a sidewalk.)</li>
<li><strong>Buildings</strong>: A building has a position, OSM metadata, and a <strong>front path</strong>
connecting the edge of the building to the nearest sidewalk. Most trips in A/B
Street begin and end at buildings. Some buildings also contain a number of
off-street parking spots.</li>
<li><strong>Area</strong>: An area has geometry and OSM metadata and represents a body of
water, forest, park, etc. They're just used for drawing.</li>
<li><strong>Bus stop</strong>: A bus stop is placed some distance along a sidewalk, with a
pointer to the position on the adjacent driving or bus lane where a bus stops
for pick-up.</li>
<li><strong>Bus route</strong>: A bus route has a name and a list of stops that buses will
cycle between. In the future, they'll include information about the
frequency/schedule of the route.</li>
<li><strong>Parking lot</strong>: A parking lot is connected to a road, has a shape, and has
some internal driving &quot;aisles.&quot; The number and position of individual parking
spots is auto-generated.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#coordinate-system" id="coordinate-system">Coordinate system</a></h2>
<p>A/B Street converts (longitude, latitude) coordinates into a simpler form.</p>
<ul>
<li>An (x, y) point starts with the top-left of the bounding polygon as the
origin. Note this is screen drawing order, not a Cartesian plane (with Y
increasing upwards) -- so angle calculations account for this.</li>
<li>The (x, y) values are f64's trimmed to a few decimal places, with way more
precision than is really needed. These might become actual fixed-point
integers later, but for now, a <code>Pt2D</code> skirts around Rust's limits on f64's by
guaranteeing no NaN's or infinities and thus providing the full <code>Eq</code> trait.</li>
<li>A few places in map conversion compare points using different thresholds,
usually below 1 meter. Ideally these epsilon comparisons could be eliminated
in favor of a fixed-point integer representation, but for now, explicit
thresholds are useful.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#invariants" id="invariants">Invariants</a></h2>
<p>Ideally, the finalized maps would satisfy a list of invariants, simplifying the
traffic simulation and drawing code built on top. But the input data is quite
messy and for now, most of these aren't quite guaranteed to be true.</p>
<ul>
<li>Some minimum length for lanes and turns. Very small lanes can't be drawn, tend
to break intersection polygons, and may lead to gridlocked traffic.</li>
<li>Some guarantees that positions along adjacent lanes actually match up, even
though different lanes on the same road may have different lengths. Examples
include the position of a bus stop on the sidewalk and bus lane matching up.
<ul>
<li>Additionally, parking lanes without an adjacent driving lane or bus stops
without any driving or bus lanes make no sense and should never occur.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Connectivity -- any sidewalk should be reachable from any other, and most
driving lanes should be accessible from any others. There are exceptions due
to border intersections -- if a car spawns on a highway along the border of
the map, it may be forced to disappear on the opposite border of the map, if
the highway happens to not have any exits within the map boundary.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#connectivity" id="connectivity">Connectivity</a></h2>
<p>For a single mode, each lane is connected to two intersections. Turns connect
two lanes. There are no turns between sidewalks and driving/bike/bus lanes.</p>
<p>All buildings and parking lots have driveways. This must connect to a sidewalk,
allowing pedestrians to enter/exit that object. The driveway OPTIONALLY
connects to the nearest driveable lane. This allows cars to enter/exit that
object for parking.</p>
<p>Public transit stops are located somewhere on a sidewalk. They're associated
with a driveable position where the bus or train stops. In the future, this
will need to account for dedicated surface-level platforms and for underground
transit stations, likely associated with a building.</p>
<p>There's a concept of &quot;parking blackholes.&quot; If you treat every road as
bidirectional without access restrictions, then the graph is connected. But the
more detailed view has to factor in one-way roads and things near the map
border. These blackholes influence where cars will try to look for parking
(since we don't want them entering a blackhole and getting stuck) and also, for
temporary/unintentional reasons, where pedestrian&lt;-&gt;bicycle transitions will
happen.</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#importing" id="importing">Importing</a></h1>
<p>Overview of the process. The importer tool.</p>
<p>Don't be afraid of how complicated this seems. It started simple -- just bring
in OSM roads, chop into pieces, generate turns.</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#from-osm-to-rawmap-convert_osm-crate" id="from-osm-to-rawmap-convert_osm-crate">From OSM to RawMap (<code>convert_osm</code> crate)</a></h1>
<p>The first phase of map building reads in data from OSM files and a few others,
producing a serialized <code>RawMap</code>. Importing all maps (one for each pre-defined
bounding polygon) takes a few minutes. Players don't see this cost; it only
takes a few seconds to load a serialized map.</p>
<ul>
<li><code>osm.rs</code>: Read .osm, extracting the points for road-like ways, buildings, and
areas
<ul>
<li>Areas usually come from a relation of multiple ways, with the points out of
order. Gluing all the points together fails when the .osm has some ways
clipped out. In that case, try to trace along the map boundary if the
partial area intersects the boundary in a clear way. Otherwise, just use a
straight line to try to close off the polygon.</li>
<li>Also read traffic signal locations and turn restrictions between OSM ways</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>split_ways.rs</code>: Split OSM ways into road segments
<ul>
<li>OSM ways cross many intersections, so treat points with multiple ways and
the points at the beginning and end of a way as intersections, then split
the way into road segments between two intersections.</li>
<li>This phase remembers which road segment is the beginning and end of the OSM
way, for per-lane turn restrictions later</li>
<li>Apply turn restrictions between roads here. Since OSM ways cross many
intersections, the turn restrictions only apply to one particular road
segment that gets created from the way. Make sure the destination of the
restriction is actually incident to a particular source road.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>clip.rs</code>: Clip the map to the boundary polygon
<ul>
<li>Osmosis options in <code>import.sh</code> preserve ways that cross the boundary</li>
<li>Trim roads that cross the boundary. There may be cases where a road dips out
of bounds, then immediately comes back in. Disconnecting it isn't ideal, but
it's better to manually tune the boundary polygon when this happens than try
to preserve lots of out-of-bounds geometry.</li>
<li>Area polygons are intersected with the boundary polygon using the <code>clipping</code>
crate</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>lib.rs</code>: Remove cul-de-sacs (roads that begin and end at the same
intersection), because they mess up parking hints and pathfinding.</li>
<li><code>lib.rs</code>: Apply parking hints from a King County GIS blockface dataset
<ul>
<li>Match each blockface to the nearest edge of a road</li>
<li>Interpret the metadata to assign on-street parking there or not</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>lib.rs</code>: Apply offstreet parking hints from a King County GIS dataset
<ul>
<li>Match each point to the building containing it, plumbing through the number
of spots</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>lib.rs</code>: <strong>Disabled</strong>: Apply sidewalk presence hints from a King County GIS
dataset
<ul>
<li>Match each sidewalk line to the nearest edge of a road</li>
<li>Update the road to have a sidewalk on none, one, or both sides</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>lib.rs</code> using the <code>srtm</code> module: Load (extremely poor quality) elevation data</li>
</ul>
<h1><a class="header" href="#roadintersection-geometry-rawmap-to-initialmap" id="roadintersection-geometry-rawmap-to-initialmap">Road/intersection geometry: RawMap to InitialMap</a></h1>
<p>The remainder of map construction is done in the <code>map_model</code> crate. There's one
intermediate structure between <code>RawMap</code> and <code>Map</code>, called <code>InitialMap</code>.</p>
<ul>
<li><code>make/remove_disconnected.rs</code>: Remove disconnected roads
<ul>
<li>Just floodfill from some road, assuming all roads are bidirectional, to get
different partitions.</li>
<li>Remove roads from all but the largest partition</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>make/initial/mod.rs</code> and <code>make/initial/lane_specs.rs</code>: Interpret OSM tags to
figure out what lanes are on each side of each road, also figuring out the
total width of the road.</li>
<li><code>make/initial/geometry.rs</code>: Figure out the polygon for each intersection, and
trim back road center-lines to end at a face of the polygon.
<ul>
<li>For every road touching the intersection, get the polyline of each side,
based on the road's width
<ul>
<li>See appendix for how to shift polylines</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Sort all the polylines by the angle to the intersection's shared point</li>
<li>Intersect every polyline with every other polyline
<ul>
<li>More specifically -- the second half of each polyline, to get the correct
collision point</li>
<li>Look at the perpendicular infinite line to the collision point on the
shifted polyline, then find where it hits the original center line. Trim
back the center line by the max distance from these collisions.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Compute the intersection's polygon by considering collisions between
adjacent roads' polylines</li>
<li>Deal with short roads and floating point issues by deduping any adjacent
points closer than 0.1m</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h1><a class="header" href="#initialmap-to-map" id="initialmap-to-map">InitialMap to Map</a></h1>
<p>Still in the <code>map_model</code> crate.</p>
<ul>
<li><code>map.rs</code>'s <code>make_half_map</code>: Expand roads to lanes, using the list of lane
types from before</li>
<li><code>make/turns.rs</code>: Generate turns for every intersection.
<ul>
<li>Vehicle turns (for cars, bikes, buses)
<ul>
<li>Consider every pair of roads in the intersection. Try to match up lane
types -- if there's a bike lane on both roads, don't add a turn from
driving-&gt;bike or bike-&gt;driving. If there's not, then fallback to
transitions between different lane types.</li>
<li>Classify the turn based on the difference between the angle of the
incoming lane's last line and the outgoing lane's first line
<ul>
<li>For straight turns, use the Cartesian product to link every incoming
with every outgoing lane. If the indices dont match up, the turn becomes
a <code>LaneChangeLeft</code> or <code>LaneChangeRight</code> turn. This is used later for
intersection policies to prioritize turns appropriately.</li>
<li>Right and left turns only originate from the one lane on the appropriate
side</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Walking turns for pedestrians
<ul>
<li>Consider pairs of adjacent roads around the intersection
<ul>
<li>Make a crosswalk to the other side of the road, assuming there's a
sidewalk on both sides</li>
<li>Make a shared sidewalk corner over to the adjacent road</li>
<li>If the adjacent road doesn't have a sidewalk on the close side, then
consider skipping that road and making a crosswalk over to the next
road. An example of this is a crosswalk over a highway on/off ramp.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Verify all the turns so far are unique</li>
<li>Filter by the OSM turn restrictions (&quot;only straight&quot; between road1 and
road2)</li>
<li>Try to apply the OSM per-lane restrictions (&quot;straight or left&quot; from lane 3)
<ul>
<li>The number of lanes in the OSM metadata might not match up with how many
lanes created</li>
<li>Some of these OSM tags are just completely wrong sometimes. If the filter
makes an incoming lane lose all of its turns, then ignore that tag.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>make/parking_blackholes.rs</code>: Find well-connected roads near &quot;blackhole&quot;
lanes.
<ul>
<li>Starting from most driving/biking lanes, most other lanes are reachable.
Some aren't -- such as one-way highways inevitably leading from or to a
border. These are &quot;blackholes&quot; -- pathfinding to or from here may fail.</li>
<li>Find the largest strongly-connected component (SCC) in the driving graph.
From every other lane (a blackhole), floodfill both forwards and backwards
to find the nearest driving lane part of the main SCC.</li>
<li>Later, if a car needs to park by a building on a blackhole road, it'll
instead start searching for parking at the redirect. This prevents it from
being forced to instead exit the map through a border.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>make/buildings.rs</code>: Match buildings up with sidewalks
<ul>
<li>Find the closest sidewalk polyline to each building's center. Then draw a
straight line for the front path between the edge of the building and the
sidewalk point.</li>
<li>Filter out buildings too far away from any sidewalk</li>
<li>The front path might cross through other buildings; this is probably not
worth fixing.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>make/buildings.rs</code>: Same for parking lots
<ul>
<li>Similar process to match parking lots to nearest sidewalk and driving lane</li>
<li>Try to place parking spots along both sides of parking aisles</li>
<li>Filter out overlapping spots</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>make/bridges.rs</code>: Find what roads lie beneath bridges, and update their
Z-order accordingly for later drawing.</li>
<li><code>stop_signs.rs</code>: Instantiate default stop sign policies
<ul>
<li>Rank incoming roads by OSM priority (arterial beats residential)</li>
<li>If there's only one rank, then make an all-way stop</li>
<li>Otherwise, the highest rank gets priority and others stop
<ul>
<li>Check if there are any conflicts based on this. If so, then fall-back to
an all way stop.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>traffic_signals.rs</code>: Instantiate default traffic signal policies
<ul>
<li>Apply the first predefined policy that works.
<ul>
<li>4-way 4 phase, 4-way 2 phase, 3-way 3-phase, degenerate policy for 2
roads, 2-phase for 4 one-ways</li>
<li>Fallback to a greedy assignment that just randomly starts a new phase,
adds all compatible turns, and repeats until all turns are present
priority in some phase.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>pathfind/mod.rs</code>: Prepare pathfinding
<ul>
<li>A/B Street uses contraction hierarchies (CH) for fast routing, using the
<code>fast_paths</code> crate.</li>
<li><code>pathfind/vehicle.rs</code>: For cars, bikes, buses
<ul>
<li>There's a separate CH for cars, buses, and bikes, since they can use
slightly different sets of lanes.</li>
<li>Building the CH for buses and bikes is much faster than the one for cars,
because the algorithm can re-use the node ordering from the first CH.</li>
<li>Every lane is a node in the graph, even if it's not an appropriate lane
type -- it might change later, and reusing orderings is vital for speed.</li>
<li>If two lanes are connected by a turn, then there's an edge in the graph.
<ul>
<li>The edge weight is the length of the lane and turn. Later this could
take into account speed limit, penalize lane-changing and left turns,
etc.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>pathfind/walking.rs</code>: For pedestrians
<ul>
<li>Only sidewalk lanes are nodes in the graph -- sidewalks can't ever be
changed in A/B Street, so there's no concern about reusing node orderings.</li>
<li>All turns between two sidewalks become edges, again using length</li>
<li>When actually pathfinding, we get back a list of sidewalks. The actual
paths used in the traffic simulation specify forwards or backwards on a
sidewalk. Looking at adjacent pairs of sidewalks lets us easily stitch
together exact directions.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>make/bus_stops.rs</code>: Match bus stops with a sidewalk
<ul>
<li>Also precompute the position where the bus stops on the adjacent driving or
bus lane.</li>
<li>This &quot;equivalent position on another lane&quot; process has a few weird cases,
since two lanes on the same road might have different lengths. Right now,
the same distance from the start of the lane is used, with clamping for
shorter lanes. Ideally, the position would be found by projecting a
perpendicular line out from one lane to the other.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>make/bus_stops.rs</code>: Finalize the list of bus routes
<ul>
<li>Between each pair of adjacent bus stops, run pathfinding to verify there's
actually a path for the bus to follow. If any are disconnected, remove the
bus route</li>
<li>Remove bus stops that have no routes serving them.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><code>pathfind/walking.rs</code>: Precompute the CH for pedestrians who will use buses
<ul>
<li>Nodes in the graph are sidewalks and every bus stop</li>
<li>There's an edge with weight 0 between a bus stop and its sidewalk</li>
<li>There's also an edge with weight 0 between bus stops that're adjacent via
some route. Ideally this weight would account for the time until the next
bus and the time spent on the bus, etc.</li>
<li>Later when figuring out which bus to use for a pedestrian, the resulting
list of nodes is scanned for the first and last bus stop along the same
route.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h1><a class="header" href="#live-edits" id="live-edits">Live edits</a></h1>
<p>A key feature of A/B Street is the player editing the map and seeing how traffic
responds. The possible edits include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Change lane types (driving, bus, bike, parking -- sidewalks are fixed)</li>
<li>Change speed limits</li>
<li>Reverse a lane</li>
<li>Change a stop sign policy (which roads have a stop sign and which have
priority)</li>
<li>Change a traffic signal policy</li>
</ul>
<p>The map conversion process outlined above takes a few minutes, so reusing this
process directly to compute a map with edits wouldn't work at all for real
gameplay. Instead, the process for applying edits is incremental:</p>
<ul>
<li>Figure out the actual diff between edits and the current map
<ul>
<li>This is necessary for correctness, but also speeds up a sequence of edits
made in the UI -- only one or two lanes or intersections actually changes
each time. Of course when loading some saved edits, lots of things might
change.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>For any changed roads, make sure any bus stop on it have a good pointer to
their equivalent driving position for the bus.</li>
<li>For any modified intersections, recompute turns and the default intersection
policies</li>
<li>Recompute all the CHs for cars, buses, and bikes -- note sidewalks and bus
stops never change
<ul>
<li>This is the slowest step. Critically, the <code>fast_paths</code> crate lets a previous
node ordering be reused. If just a few edge weights change, then recomputing
is much faster than starting from scratch.</li>
<li>While making edits in the UI, we don't actually need to recompute the CH
after every little tweak. When the player exits edit mode, only then do we
recompute everything.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>A list of lanes and intersections actually modified is then returned to the
drawing layer, which uploads new geometry to the GPU accordingly.</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#development-tricks" id="development-tricks">Development tricks</a></h1>
<ul>
<li>Separate phases for fast incremental development
<ul>
<li>Don't reimport all data from OSM every time there's a change to part of the
map construction code!</li>
<li>For slow steps that don't change often, make them separate binaries -- hence
<code>convert_osm</code> being separate from the rest.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Don't be afraid of manual intervention
<ul>
<li>The data isn't perfect. It's easy to spend lots of time fiddling with code
to automatically handle all problems</li>
<li>Instead of automatically resolving problems, prefer good tooling for finding
and specifying fixes</li>
<li>Be careful of derivative structures that could get out of sync with OSM.
Prefer contributing real fixes to OSM.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Screenshot diff testing
<ul>
<li>When working on the code for intersection geometry, it's easy to check a few
example cases get fixed by some change. But what if another part of the map
regresses somehow?</li>
<li>Take screenshots of the entire map, keep the checksums under version
control, look at the diffs visually, and manually verify any changes.</li>
<li>Implementation details: One huge gif or png is too slow to read and write,
so take a bunch of tiled screenshots covering everything. Amusingly,
rendering to a file with <code>glium</code> is slow unless compiling in release mode
(which isn't an option for quick incremental development). So instead, pan
to each section of the map, render it, call an external screenshot utility,
and move on -- just don't wiggle the mouse during this process!</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Different IDs for objects make sense during different phases
<ul>
<li>For the final product, lanes and such are just a contiguous array, indexed
by numeric IDs.</li>
<li>But sometimes, we need IDs that're the same between different boundary
polygons of maps, so that player edits can be applied anywhere. Using
(longitude, latitude) pairs hits floating-point serialization and comparison
issues, so referring to roads as (OSM way ID, OSM node ID 1, OSM node ID 2)
works instead.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#appendix-polylines" id="appendix-polylines">Appendix: PolyLines</a></h2>
<p>Add some pictures here to demonstrate how polyline shifting works, the
explode-to-infinity problem, and the bevel/miter fix.</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#ab-streets-traffic-simulation" id="ab-streets-traffic-simulation">A/B Street's Traffic Simulation</a></h1>
<p>This article describes how cars, bikes, buses, and pedestrians are modeled in
A/B Street. All code lives in the <code>sim</code> crate.</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/chYd5I-5oyc?t=1086">This recorded presentation</a> covers some of
this.</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#discrete-event-simulation" id="discrete-event-simulation">Discrete-event simulation</a></h1>
<p>The traffic simulation models different agents (cars, bikes, buses, pedestrians,
and intersections) over time. Agents don't constantly sense and react to the
world every second; instead, they remain in some state until something
interesting happens. This is a discrete-event architecture -- events are
scheduled for some time in the future, and handling them changes the state of
some agents. The core simulation loop simply processes events in order -- see
<code>scheduler.rs</code> and the <code>step</code> method in <code>sim.rs</code>.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#cars" id="cars">Cars</a></h2>
<p>(Note: Cars, bikes, and buses are all modeled the same way -- bikes just have a
max speed, and buses/bikes can use restricted lanes.)</p>
<p>Cars move through a sequence of lanes and turns (movements through an
intersection). They queue and can't over-take a slow lead vehicle. The main
simplifying assumption in A/B Street is that cars can instantly accelerate and
decelerate. This wouldn't model highway driving at all, where things like jam
waves are important, but it's reasonable for in-city driving. The essence of
scarcity is the capacity on lanes and the contention at intersections. What
happens in between isn't vital to get exactly right.</p>
<p>A car has a few states (<code>mechanics/car.rs</code>):</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Crossing</strong> some distance of a lane/turn over some time interval</li>
<li><strong>Queued</strong> behind another car on a lane/turn</li>
<li><strong>WaitingToAdvance</strong> at the end of a lane, blocked on an intersection</li>
<li>A few states where the car stays in one place: <strong>Parking</strong>, <strong>Unparking</strong>, and
<strong>Idling</strong> (for buses at a stop)</li>
</ul>
<p>State transitions happen in <code>mechanics/driving.rs</code>. This is best explained by an
example sequence:</p>
<ul>
<li>A car enters the Unparking state, taking a fixed 30s to exit a parking spot
and enter the adjacent driving lane. The driving lane is blocked during this
time, to mimic somebody pulling out from a parallel parking spot.</li>
<li>The car is now fully somewhere on the driving lane. It enters the Crossing
state, covering the remaining distance to the end of the road. The time
interval is calculated assuming the car travels at the max speed limit of the
road.</li>
<li>After that time, the car checks if there's anybody in the queue before it.
Nope? Then it attempts to initiate a turn through the intersection, but the
stop sign says no, so the car enters the WaitingToAdvance state.</li>
<li>Some time later, the stop sign wakes up the car. The car starts the turn,
entering the Crossing state again.</li>
<li>After finishing the turn, the car starts Crossing the next lane. When it's
finished, it turns out there are a few cars ahead of it, so it enters the
Queued state.</li>
<li>When the lead vehicle directly in front of the car exits the lane, it wakes up
the car, putting it in the Crossing state, starting at the appropriate
following distance behind the lead vehicle. This prevents the car from
immediately warping to the end of the lane when the lead vehicle is out of the
way.</li>
<li>And so on...</li>
</ul>
<h3><a class="header" href="#exact-positions" id="exact-positions">Exact positions</a></h3>
<p>For a discrete-event simulation, we don't usually care exactly where on a lane a
car is at some time. But we do need to know for drawing and for a few cases
during simulation, such as determining when a bus is lined up with a bus stop in
the middle of a lane. <code>mechanics/queue.rs</code> handles this, computing the distance
of every car in a lane. For cars in the <code>Crossing</code> state, we linearly
interpolate distance based on the current time. Of course, cars have to remain
in order, so Queued cars are limited by the lead vehicle's position + the lead
vehicle's length + a fixed following distance of 1m.</p>
<p>Another case where we need to know exact positions of cars is to prevent the
first vehicle on a lane from hitting the back of a car who just left the lane.
All vehicles have length, and position is tracked by the front of the car. When
a car's front leaves a lane, its back is still partly in the lane. Logically,
the new lead car in the lane still needs to act like it's Queued. So each lane
keeps a &quot;laggy head&quot;, pointing to the car with its back partly in the lane.
After the laggy head has made it sufficient distance along its new turn or lane,
the laggy head on the old lane can be erased, unblocking the lead vehicle. This
requires calculating exact distances and some occasionally expensive cases where
we have to schedule frequent events to check when a laggy head is clear.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#lane-changing" id="lane-changing">Lane-changing</a></h2>
<p>Lane-changing (LCing) deserves special mention. A/B Street cheats by not
allowing it on lanes themselves. Instead, at intersections, cars can perform
turns that shift them over any number of lanes. These LCing turns conflict with
other turns appropriately, so the contention is still modeled. Why do it this
way? In a
<a href="http://apps.cs.utexas.edu/tech_reports/reports/tr/TR-2157.pdf">previous project</a>,
I tried opportunistic LCing. If a car had room to warp to the equivalent
distance on the adjacent lane without causing a crash, it would start LCing,
then take a fixed time to slide over, blocking both lanes throughout. This meant
cars often failed to LC when they needed to, forcing them to reroute, botching
their trip times. In many cases the cars would be permanently stuck, because
pathfinding would return paths requiring LCing that couldn't be pulled off in
practice due to really short roads. Why not try making the car slow down if
needed? Eventually it might have to stop, which could lead to unrealistic
gridlock. This LCing model was using a detailed discrete-time model with cars
accelerating properly; maybe it's easier with A/B Street's simplified movement
model.</p>
<p>Currently in A/B Street, cars will pick the least backed-up lane when there's a
choice. They make this decision once when they reach the front of a queue; look
for <code>opportunistically_lanechange</code> in <code>router.rs</code>. The decision could be
improved.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#pedestrians" id="pedestrians">Pedestrians</a></h2>
<p>Pedestrian modeling -- in <code>mechanics/walking.rs</code> is way simpler. Pedestrians
don't need to queue on sidewalks; they can &quot;ghost&quot; through each other. In
Seattle, there aren't huge crowds of people walking and slowing down, except for
niche cases like Pike Place Market. So in A/B Street, the only scarce resource
modeled is the time spent waiting to cross intersections.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#intersections" id="intersections">Intersections</a></h2>
<p>I need to flesh this section out. See <code>mechanics/intersections.rs</code> for how stop
signs and traffic signals work. Two things I need to fix before making this
section interesting:</p>
<ul>
<li>Only wake up relevant agents when a previous agent finishes a turn.</li>
<li>Don't let an agent start a low-priority turn (like an unprotected left) if
it'll force a high-priority vehicle approaching to wait. The approaching
vehicle is still in the Crossing state, so we need to notify intersections
ahead of time of intended turns and an ETA.</li>
</ul>
<p>One contributor to permanent gridlock is cars and bikes being stuck in an
intersection, preventing conflicting turns from being performed. To help avoid
this, one of the last checks that stop signs and traffic signals perform before
accepting a new turn request is that the target lane has enough space for the
new vehicle. This is &quot;reserved&quot; space, not necessarily currently occupied by
vehicles in that lane. This accounts for other vehicles performing a turn bound
for that lane. See <code>try_to_reserve_entry</code> in <code>mechanics/queue.rs</code>. When a car
completely leaves a lane (determined by the &quot;laggy head&quot; described above), this
space is freed, and blocked cars are woken up.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#appendix-discrete-time-simulation" id="appendix-discrete-time-simulation">Appendix: discrete-time simulation</a></h2>
<p>A/B Street's first traffic model was discrete-time, meaning that every agent
reacted to the world every 0.1s. Cars had a more realistic kinematics model,
accelerating to change speed and gradually come to a halt. Cars did a worst-case
estimation of how far ahead they need to lookahead in order to satisfy different
constraints:</p>
<ul>
<li>Don't exceed any speed limits</li>
<li>Don't hit the lead vehicle (which might suddenly slam on its brakes)</li>
<li>Stop at the end of a lane, unless the intersection says to go</li>
</ul>
<p>After fighting with this approach for a long time, I eventually scrapped it in
favor of the simpler discrete-event model because:</p>
<ul>
<li>It's fundamentally slow; there's lots of busy work where cars in freeflow with
nothing blocking them or stopped in a long queue constantly check to see if
anything has changed.</li>
<li>Figuring out the acceleration to apply for the next 0.1s in order to satisfy
all of the constraints is really complicated. Floating point inaccuracies
cause ugly edge cases with speeds that wind up slightly negative and with cars
coming to a complete stop slightly past the end of a lane. I wound up storing
the &quot;intent&quot; of an action to auto-correct these errors.</li>
<li>The realism of having cars accelerate smoothly didn't add value to the core
idea in A/B Street, which is to model points of contention like parking
capacity and intersections. (This is the same reason why I don't model bike
racks for parking bikes -- in Seattle, it's never hard to find something to
lock to -- this would be very different if Copenhagen was the target.)
Additionally, the kinematics model made silly assumptions about driving anyway
-- cars would smash on their accelerators and brakes as hard as possible
within all of the constraints.</li>
</ul>
<h1><a class="header" href="#travel-demand" id="travel-demand">Travel demand</a></h1>
<p>A/B Street simulates people following a schedule of trips over a day. A single
<em>trip</em> has a start and endpoint, a departure time, and a mode. Most trips go
between buildings, but the start or endpoint may also be a border intersection
to represent something outside the map boundaries. The mode specifies whether
the person will walk, bike, drive, or use transit. Without a good set of people
and trips, evaluating some changes to a map is hard -- what if the traffic
patterns near the change aren't realistic to begin with? This chapter describes
where the travel demand data comes from.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#scenarios" id="scenarios">Scenarios</a></h2>
<p>A <em>scenario</em> encodes the people and trips taken over a day. See the
<a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/master/sim/src/make/scenario.rs">code</a>.</p>
<p>TODO:</p>
<ul>
<li>talk about vehicle assignment / parked car seeding</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#data-sources" id="data-sources">Data sources</a></h2>
<h3><a class="header" href="#seattle-soundcast" id="seattle-soundcast">Seattle: Soundcast</a></h3>
<p>Seattle luckily has the Puget Sound Regional Council, which has produced the
<a href="https://www.psrc.org/activity-based-travel-model-soundcast">Soundcast model</a>.
They use census stats, land parcel records, observed vehicle counts, travel
diaries, and lots of other things I don't understand to produce a detailed model
of the region. We're currently using their 2014 model; the 2018 one should be
available sometime in 2020. See the
<a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/tree/master/importer/src/soundcast">code</a>
for importing their data.</p>
<p>TODO:</p>
<ul>
<li>talk about how trips beginning/ending off-map are handled</li>
</ul>
<h3><a class="header" href="#berlin" id="berlin">Berlin</a></h3>
<p>This work is <a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/issues/119">ongoing</a>. See
the
<a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/master/importer/src/berlin.rs">code</a>.
So far, we've found a population count per planning area and are randomly
distributing the number of residents to all residential buildings in each area.</p>
<h3><a class="header" href="#proletariat-robot" id="proletariat-robot">Proletariat robot</a></h3>
<p>What if we just want to generate a reasonable model without any city-specific
data? One of the simplest approaches is just to spawn people beginning at
residential buildings, make them go to some workplace in the morning, then
return in the evening. OpenStreetMap building tags can be used to roughly
classify building types and distinguish small houses from large apartments. See
the <code>proletariat_robot</code>
<a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/master/sim/src/make/activity_model.rs">code</a>
for an implementation of this.</p>
<p>This is <a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/issues/154">ongoing</a> work
spearheaded by Mateusz. Some of the ideas for next steps are to generate
different types of people (students, workers), give them a set of activities
with durations (go to school for 7 hours, 1 hour lunch break), and then further
pick specfic buildings to travel to using more OSM tags.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#modifying-demand" id="modifying-demand">Modifying demand</a></h2>
<p>The travel demand model is extremely fixed; the main effect of a different
random number seed is currently to initially place parked cars in specific
spots. When the player makes changes to the map, exactly the same people and
trips are simulated, and we just measure how trip time changes. This is a very
short-term prediction. If it becomes much more convenient to bike or bus
somewhere, then more people will do it over time. How can we transform the
original demand model to respond to these changes?</p>
<p>Right now, there's very preliminary work in sandbox mode for Seattle weekday
scenarios. You can cancel all trips for some people (simulating lockdown) or
modify the mode for some people (change 50% of all driving trips between 7 and
9am to use transit).</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#research" id="research">Research</a></h2>
<ul>
<li>https://github.com/replicahq/doppelganger</li>
<li>https://github.com/stasmix/popsynth</li>
<li>https://zephyrtransport.github.io/zephyr-directory/projects/</li>
<li>https://activitysim.github.io</li>
<li>https://github.com/BayAreaMetro/travel-model-one</li>
<li>https://github.com/RSGInc/DaySim</li>
</ul>
<h1><a class="header" href="#gridlock" id="gridlock">Gridlock</a></h1>
<p>Here &quot;gridlock&quot; refers to the general problem of trips getting permanently
stuck, preventing the full simulation from completing. Most of the work is
tracked <a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/issues/114">here</a>.</p>
<p>My general approach right now to get a map working is to cancel some percent of
all trips, look for individual problems, fix them, and repeat. Once the full day
works, cancel less trips. It's easier to isolate the root cause of problems when
there are less of them erupting simultaneously.</p>
<p>The general lesson is: you can't code your way around all edge cases. The data
in OSM often needs manual fixes. It's often useful to spend coding effort on
tools to detect and fix OSM problems.</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#problems" id="problems">Problems</a></h2>
<p>The choices in the movement model matter. Some gridlock is inherent to any
system with queueing and conflicting turns. But in reality, people wiggle around
partly blocked turns. And some of this comes from the treatment of the
front/back of vehicles.</p>
<ul>
<li>Short roads in OSM causing very weird geometry</li>
<li>Intersection geometry being too large, requiring too much time to cross</li>
<li>Unrealistic traffic patterns caused by everyone trying to park in one big
garage (downtown) or take some alley (the UW soundcast issue)</li>
<li>Too many people try to take an unprotected left turn (often at a stop sign)</li>
<li>Bad individual traffic signals, usually at 5- or 6-ways</li>
<li>Groups of traffic signals logically acting as a single intersection</li>
<li>Separate traffic signals along a corridor being unsynchronized</li>
<li>Vehicles performing illegal sequences of turns</li>
<li>Vehicles are stuck with their plan and not reacting to traffic by changing
route</li>
<li>Real traffic would result in a gridlock without a deliberate actions to avoid
it. Such actions range from individual decisions of drivers to police manually
controlling traffic. Intelligent avoidance of gridlock is not simulated and is
extremely hard to simulate.</li>
<li>Vehicles will wait in lane filled with already waiting vehicles, even if there
is a completely empty lane allowing travel in desired direction. It makes
easier for entire lane between crossings to fill, contributing to gridlocks.
Note that while this and other clearly stupid behaviors are clearly
unrealistic, it is not trivial to implement more realistic and more efficient
decisions.</li>
<li>Issues caused by the unrealistic
<a href="https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/blob/master/docs/articles/trafficsim/article.md#lane-changing">lane-changing model</a>
<ul>
<li>Two turns that go to the same lane (one going &quot;straight&quot;, the other often a
lane-change) conflict. The conflict is coarse, at the granularity of the
entire intersection. So if vehicles are piled up in two lanes trying to
merge into one, then one group is likely to go through as expected, but the
second group will wait for the first to completely clear the intersection.
Until then, it looks like a conflicting turn is being done.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#solutions" id="solutions">Solutions</a></h2>
<p>Divide into implemented or not.</p>
<ul>
<li>Synchronizing pairs of signals</li>
<li>Uber-turns
<ul>
<li>for interpreting OSM turn restrictions</li>
<li>for synchronizing a group of signals</li>
<li>for locking turn sequences
<ul>
<li>Once a vehicle starts an uber-turn, prevent others from starting
conflicting turns on nearby intersections. Until groups of traffic signals
are configured as one, this is necessary to prevent somebody from making
it halfway through a sequence then getting blocked.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Cycle detector</li>
<li>block-the-box protection
<ul>
<li>the manual list of overrides</li>
<li>likely shouldn't apply during uber-turns</li>
<li>is it always fine to block the box at degenerate intersections?</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>hacks to allow conflicting turns at really broken intersections</li>
<li>manually timing signals</li>
<li>penalties for lane choice to make lane usage realistic</li>
</ul>
<h3><a class="header" href="#not-implemented" id="not-implemented">Not implemented</a></h3>
<ul>
<li>Dynamic rerouting</li>
<li>Allow multiple vehicles through intersection at once if there is enough space
on lane where given vehicle is going. Currrently vehicles travel through
crossings one by one (or, with <code>--disable_block_the_box</code> enabled - will enter
crossing even if leaving it will be impossible).</li>
<li>Last resort: if someone's waiting on a turn &gt;5m, just go.</li>
<li>Uber-turns
<ul>
<li>Group both stop sign and traffic signal intersections when looking for
uber-turns. Even a single traffic signal surrounded by tiny roads with stop
signs is causing problems.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#fixing-data-used-in-simulation" id="fixing-data-used-in-simulation">Fixing data used in simulation</a></h2>
<p>Give more examples of changesets.</p>
<ul>
<li>upstreaming turn restrictions into OSM to prevent invalid U-turns and other
crazy movements
<ul>
<li>ex: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/87945050</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>upstreaming lane count fixes into OSM to improve geometry</li>
</ul>
<h1><a class="header" href="#project-logistics" id="project-logistics">Project logistics</a></h1>
<p>This has some background/logistics about the project.</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#roadmap" id="roadmap">Roadmap</a></h1>
<p>A/B Street has been under active development since June 2018. That's a long time
-- what work is happening now and how can you contribute?</p>
<h2><a class="header" href="#next-steps-summer-2020" id="next-steps-summer-2020">Next steps, summer 2020</a></h2>
<p>Afer the alpha launch in June, I plan to focus on:</p>
<ul>
<li>shared biking/walking trails like the Burke Gilman</li>
<li>light rail</li>
<li>more score functions besides trip time, like safety/comfort</li>
<li>changing trip mode choice (if you make a bus route more desirable, switch some
trips)</li>
<li>web support (so people can try out proposals without installing anything)</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#ongoing-work" id="ongoing-work">Ongoing work</a></h2>
<p>If I had resources to hire a team, this is roughly how I'd organize different
roles. If you're interested in helping, these aren't strictly defined positions,
just ideas of related tasks.</p>
<h3><a class="header" href="#ui-and-data-visualization" id="ui-and-data-visualization">UI and data visualization</a></h3>
<p>We've got a UX designer, but implementing all of the new designs takes time.
Also:</p>
<ul>
<li>improve color schemes for colorblind players, implement night mode, rain
effects, etc</li>
<li>refactor and clean up the GUI library for other Rust users</li>
<li>lots of data viz design / implementation needed</li>
</ul>
<h3><a class="header" href="#game-design" id="game-design">Game design</a></h3>
<ul>
<li>the tutorial mode needs attention</li>
<li>many ideas for challenge/story modes, but playtesting, tuning, and game design
needed</li>
</ul>
<h3><a class="header" href="#map-data--gis" id="map-data--gis">Map data / GIS</a></h3>
<p>Support more cities:</p>
<ul>
<li>write docs/tools to help people add new cities without programming experience</li>
<li>add support for non-OpenStreetMap input: GeoJSON for parking in Perth, other
trip demand sources, etc</li>
<li>fix bugs for driving on the left side of the road</li>
</ul>
<p>Improve the quality of map geometry derived from OpenStreetMap:</p>
<ul>
<li>try new algorithms to generate intersection polygons</li>
<li>make tools for easily improving relevant data in OSM</li>
<li>use ML and lidar/satellite data to get extremely accurate curb / planter /
sidewalk geometry</li>
</ul>
<p>Build tools and organize community mapping:</p>
<ul>
<li>organize an effort to map how traffic signals are timed (partly started)</li>
<li>divide and track work for distributed mapathons</li>
</ul>
<p>Bring in new data to understand more about cities:</p>
<ul>
<li>PM2.5 pollution</li>
<li>Tax / land value (is there inequitable access to transit?)</li>
</ul>
<h3><a class="header" href="#simulation--modeling" id="simulation--modeling">Simulation / modeling</a></h3>
<p>Totally new areas:</p>
<ul>
<li>light rail</li>
<li>shared bike/pedestrian paths</li>
<li>ridesharing</li>
<li>micromobility (scooters, floating bikeshare)</li>
<li>more score functions (elevation gain, biking safety)</li>
<li>generating trip demand / activity models from scratch or modifying existing
ones</li>
</ul>
<p>Improve existing models:</p>
<ul>
<li>overtaking / lane-changing</li>
<li>pedestrian crowds</li>
<li>instant vehicle acceleration</li>
<li>pedestrians walking on road shoulders (some streets have no sidewalks)</li>
<li>buses: transfers, proper schedules, multiple buses per route</li>
</ul>
<h3><a class="header" href="#web" id="web">Web</a></h3>
<p>A/B Street runs on the web via WASM and WebGL; just waiting on vector text
support. Besides that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Share community proposals online, discuss them, vote, etc</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#contributing-for-non-programmers" id="contributing-for-non-programmers">Contributing for non-programmers</a></h2>
<p>There's plenty to do besides programming!</p>
<ul>
<li>Mapping, most of which directly contributes to OpenStreetMap:
<ul>
<li>sidewalks and crosswalks</li>
<li><a href="https://dabreegster.github.io/abstreet/map_parking.html">on-street parking</a></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Od_7WvBVYsvpY4etRI0sKmYmZnwXMAXcJxVmm8Iwdcg/edit?usp=sharing">traffic signal timing</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Playtesting by attempting to implement real proposals would also be helpful,
to expose where it's awkward for A/B Street to edit the map and to write up
problems encountered.</li>
<li>Advocacy: I'm not great at finding the right people to to get ideas
implemented for real. Maybe you are?</li>
</ul>
<h2><a class="header" href="#long-term-vision" id="long-term-vision">Long-term vision</a></h2>
<p>Longer term, I'd like to take lots of the work in generating and interacting
with high-detail OpenStreetMap-based maps and generalize it, possibly as a new
OSM viewer/editor.</p>
<p>More generally, I'd like to see how simulation can help individuals understand
and explore other policy decisions related to cities. Domains I'm vaguely
interested in, but not at all knowledgable about, include land-use / zoning,
housing, and supply chains. In late March 2020, a new collaborator started a
pandemic model using the existing simulation of people occupying shared spaces.
What are other domains could benefit from the rich agent-based model we're
building?</p>
<h1><a class="header" href="#project-motivations" id="project-motivations">Project motivations</a></h1>
<p>I thought it'd be helpful to explain what motivates my work in A/B Street. These
are just my personal values; I don't intend to make a careful argument about
these here. In no particular order:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>Transparency and reproducibility</strong>: if city government uses data, modeling,
or simulation to inform a decision affecting the general public, then anybody
ought to be able to repeat that analysis.</p>
<ul>
<li>This means code and data should be open.</li>
<li>Businesses like <a href="https://replicahq.com/">Sidewalk Lab's Replica</a> and
<a href="https://www.remix.com/solutions/streets">Remix</a> still need to generate
income, but it's unclear why governments use taxes to pay for something only
they see.</li>
<li>Decision making should be documented clearly. Why were the
<a href="https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/maintenance-and-paving/current-paving-projects/35th-ave-ne">35th Ave bike lanes</a>
scrapped? Was the amount of on-street parking on nearby residential roads
factored in? Was there analysis of how trip time is impacted by parking in
the neighborhood and walking a few blocks to a business on the arterial?</li>
<li>I'm personally inspired by approaches like
<a href="https://info.vtaiwan.tw/">vTaiwan</a> and
<a href="https://po.pdis.nat.gov.tw/en/opengov/">PDIS</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Accessibility leads to participation</strong>: There's overhead to taking small
ideas to advocacy groups or inconveniently timed public meetings. If the
planning process is easier to interact with, more people will participate.</p>
<ul>
<li>Seattle's
<a href="https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-services/your-voice-your-choice">Your Voice, Your Choice</a>
program is maybe an example of this</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Short-term changes</strong>: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transit_3">ST3</a>
is exciting, but 2040 isn't close. There are much cheaper changes that can be
implemented sooner.</p>
<ul>
<li>Most of the edits in A/B Street are inspired by tactical urbanism; they
could be prototyped with signs and paint.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>The US is too dependent on cars</strong>: This has an unacceptable impact on the
environment. Even ignoring that, many cities are out of room to build more
roads. We can't keep scaling population like this.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Autonomous vehicles will NOT save the day</strong>: They can squeeze more
throughput out of existing infrastructure, but only up to a point. They might
encourage people to move and tolerate longer commutes. Mass transit and dense
land-use patterns handle population growth better.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Compromise and trade-offs</strong>: I see lots of rhetoric calling for extreme,
sudden change. I don't want to ban all cars from downtown Seattle, because
that's not realistic. I want to focus on immediate steps forward. I want to
come up with estimates about impacting drivers by a median 3 minutes in order
to save a bus route 1 minute, and to shift public discourse towards that.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</main>
<nav class="nav-wrapper" aria-label="Page navigation">
<!-- Mobile navigation buttons -->
<div style="clear: both"></div>
</nav>
</div>
</div>
<nav class="nav-wide-wrapper" aria-label="Page navigation">
</nav>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.playpen_copyable = true;
</script>
<script src="elasticlunr.min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
<script src="mark.min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
<script src="searcher.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
<script src="clipboard.min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
<script src="highlight.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
<script src="book.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
<!-- Custom JS scripts -->
<script type="text/javascript">
window.addEventListener('load', function() {
window.setTimeout(window.print, 100);
});
</script>
</body>
</html>
Reference in New Issue View Git Blame Copy Permalink