Alex Bayen on why traffic apps make congestion worse

Prof. Alexandre Bayen, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies, is working on smarter traffic apps that will talk to one another to prevent clogged freeways and city streets.  When Bayen spoke at the Cal Future Forum in 2017, he described how UC Berkeley transportation researchers are developing the science and technology to “enable collaboration both at the commuter level — you and me — and the city level.”  Since “we can’t build our way out of congestion,” he says, the only way this will work is if the apps collaborate and steer different people along different routes to prevent congestion.