Karl E. Wunderlich, Ph.D.
Fellow, Noblis
Presentation: "The Congestion Management Trap"
Noblis Technology Tuesdays
March 9, 2010
Large sums of taxpayer money are thrown at the surface transportation congestion problem every year, but empirical studies suggest that congestion reduction may have more to do with luck than the brilliance or incompetence of system designers and operators. In a political environment that stresses performance-driven investment and traffic management, is the first mistake to tie incentive-based performance management to quantitative measures of congestion? In this talk we explore the subtle and not-so-subtle inefficiencies inherent in the management of complex systems using measures of unwanted system by-products like congestion.