If scalling your product is ultimately dependent on having a large group of users, then you have a chicken or egg dilemma. You fell like the magic feature just can’t come to fruition until you have a large userbase.This is a cold start problem, on network effect consumer products (eg. LinkedIn)

Problem Scale - Chicken Or Egg Dilemma

Work on batches. Find a small group of users who got a lot of value and use it as bootstrap to create value for others, even if they are not what you want to target. They will fill the gap until the product gets to the critical mass.Then find another small group of users and repeat. Use different growth hacks.

Solution For Chicken Or Egg Dilemma

On the early days, when the userbase of LinkedIn was small, the goal was for a recruiter to say: “I’m looking for an accountant, based on Mississippi, who has an engineering history, has 10 years of experience and capabilities to lead team” (smthing very picky for a job, impossible before LinkedIn)

When LinkedIn Encountered Chicken Or Egg Dilemma

Better to have 100 users who love you than 1 million who kinda like you. The true seed of scale is love, and you can't buy it, hack it or game it. Ask Sam Altman, the head of Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's legendary startup accelerator. He knows that a product that's deeply loved — even by a tiny base of users — is one that can scale. We also hear an epic story of customer love from chef Dominique Ansel, the inventor of the Cronut. Plus cameos from Sara Blakely of Spanx and Aubrie Pagano of fashion line Bow & Drape.Read a transcript of this interview at: hhttps://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-all-you-need/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter at http://eepurl.com/dlirtXSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Workgroup

17. Customer love is all you need, w/Y Combinator's Sam Altman

Web3 enhances the internet as we know it today with a few other added characteristics. Web3 is:<ul><li>Verifiable</li><li>Trustless</li><li>Self-governing</li><li>Permissionless</li><li>Stateful</li><li>Native built-in payments</li></ul>In Web3, developers don't build and deploy applications that run on a single server or that store their data in a single database (usually hosted on and managed by a single cloud provider).Instead, Web3 applications either run on blockchains, decentralized networks of many peer to peer nodes (servers), or a combination of the two that forms a <a href="https://thegraph.com/blog/modeling-cryptoeconomic-protocols-as-complex-systems-part-1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">cryptoeconomic protocol </a>.

What is Web 3.0?

People can make a living by participating in the protocol in various ways, in both technical and non-technical levels. Consumers of the service usually pay to use the protocol, similarly to how they would pay a cloud provider like AWS today. Except in Web3, the money goes directly to the network participants. In this, like in many forms of decentralization, you'll see that unnecessary and often inefficient intermediaries are cut out.

No More Intermediaries

Tokens also introduce a native payment layer that is completely borderless and frictionless. Companies like Stripe and Paypal have created billions of dollars of value in enabling electronic payments. These systems are overly complex and still do not enable true international interoperability between participants. They also require you to hand over your sensitive information and personal data in order to use them. Crypto <a dir="ltr" href="https://everest.link/category/0xc00f480db7754ce2e0f992a1080598e53fc511a0/">wallets </a>like <a dir="ltr" href="https://metamask.io/">MetaMask </a>and <a dir="ltr" href="https://toruswallet.io/">Torus </a>enable you to integrate easy, anonymous, and secure international payments and transactions into Web3 applications.

Native payments

The current state of building a software company. Someone comes up with an idea, but in order to start building they need money in order to support themselves.To get the money, they take on venture capital and give away a percentage of the company. This investment immediately introduces mis-aligned incentives that will, in the long run, not align well with building out the best user experience.Also, if the company ever does become successful, it will take a very long time for anyone involved to realize any of the value, often leading to years of work without any real return on investment.

Current State Of Building Software

In the blockchain anyone can participate in building it or investing in it from day one. The company announces the release of x number of tokens, and give 10% to the early builders, put 10% for sale to the public.Stakeholders can use their tokens to vote on changes to the future of the project, and the people who helped build the project can sell some of their holdings to make money after the tokens have been released.People who believe in the project can buy and hold ownership, and people who think the project is headed in the wrong direction can signal this by selling their stake.

Future State Of Building Software

In Web3, <a href="http://sinahab.com/identity-and-reputation-in-web-3/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Identity </a>also works much differently than what we are used to today. Most of the time in Web3 apps, identities will be tied to the wallet address of the user interacting with the application.Unlike Web2 authentication methods like OAuth or email + password, wallet addresses are completely anonymous unless the user decides to tie their own identity to it publicly.If the user chooses to use the same wallet across multiple dapps, their identity is also seamlessly transferable across apps, which lets them build up their reputation over time.

How Identity Works in Web3

<a dir="ltr" href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/breaking-into-ethereum-crypto-web3-as-a-developer/">How to Get Into Ethereum, Crypto, and Web3 as a Developer </a>– This is an introduction to the space in general, coming from a developer, for developers looking to break into the industry. <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/full-stack-ethereum-development/">The Complete Guide to Full Stack Ethereum Development </a>– This is a tutorial that teaches you how to build out your first dapp.

How to Build on Web3

If you’re reading this, you are already participating in the modern web (Web 2.0). The web we experience today is much different than what it was just 10 years ago (Web 1.0). And with Web3, it's getting ready to change again. In this article, I will lay

Decentralized Apps

If you’re reading this, you are already participating in the modern web (Web 2.0). The web we experience today is much different than what it was just 10 years ago (Web 1.0). And with Web3, it's getting ready to change again.

In this article, I will lay out how the web has evolved, where's it going next, and why this matters.

If history has taught us anything, these changes will matter a lot. Think about how the internet affects your life on a daily basis. Consider how society has changed as a result of the internet. Social media platforms. Mobile apps. And now the internet is going through another paradigm shift as we speak.

The web has evolved a lot over the years, and the applications of it today are almost unrecognizable from its most <a dir="ltr" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet">early days </a>. The evolution of the web is often partitioned into three separate stages: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0.

Web 1.0 was the first iteration of the web. Most participants were consumers of content, and the creators were typically developers who build websites that contained information served up mainly in text or image format. Web 1.0 lasted approximately from 1991 to 2004.

Web 1.0 consisted of sites serving static content instead of dynamic HTML. Data and content were served from a static file system rather than a database, and sites didn't have much interactivity at all.

You can think of Web 1.0 as the read-only web.

Most of us have primarily experienced the web in its current form, commonly referred to as <a dir="ltr" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0#top">Web2 </a>. You can think of Web2 as the interactive and social web.

In the Web2 world, you don’t have to be a developer to participate in the creation process. Many apps are built in a way that easily allows anyone to be a creator.

If you want to craft a thought and share it with the world, you can. If you want to upload a video and allow millions of people to see it, interact with it, and comment on it, you can do that too.

Web2 is simple, really, and because of its simplicity more and more people around the world are becoming creators.

The web in its current form is really great in many ways, but there are some areas where we can do a lot better.

In the Web2 world, many popular apps are following a common pattern in their life cycles. Think of some of the apps that you use on a daily basis, and how the following examples might apply to them.

Imagine the early days of popular applications like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube and how different they are today. The process usually goes something like this:

<ol><li>Company launches an app </li><li>It onboards as many users as possible </li><li>Then it monetizes its user base </li> </ol>

When a developer or company launches a popular app, the user experience is often very slick as the app continues rising in popularity. This is the reason they are able to gain traction quickly in the first place.

At first, many software companies do not worry about monetization. They strictly focus on growth and on locking in new users – but eventually they have to start turning a profit.

They also need to consider the role of outside investors. Often the constraints of taking on things like venture capital negatively affect the life cycle, and eventually the user experience, of many applications that we use today.

If a company building an application takes in venture capital, its investors often expect a return on investment in the order of magnitude of tens or hundreds of what they paid in.

This means that, instead of going for some sustainable model of growth that they can sustain in a somewhat organic manner, the company is often pushed towards two paths: advertisements or selling personal data.

For many Web2 companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others, more data leads to more personalized ads. This leads to more clicks and ultimately more ad revenue. The exploitation and centralization of user data is core to how the web as we know and use it today is engineered to function.

Web2 applications repeatedly experience <a dir="ltr" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches">data breaches </a>. There are even <a dir="ltr" href="https://haveibeenpwned.com/">websites </a>dedicated to keeping up with these breaches and telling you when your data has been compromised.

In Web2, you don’t have any control over your data or how it is stored. In fact, companies often track and save user data without their users' consent. All of this data is then owned and controlled by the companies in charge of these platforms.

Users who live in countries where they have to worry about the negative consequences of free speech are also at risk.

Governments will often shut down servers or seize bank accounts if they believe a person is voicing an opinion that goes against their propaganda. With centralized servers, it is easy for governments to intervene, control, or shut down applications as they see fit.

Because banks are also digital and under centralized control, governments often intervene there as well. They can shut down access to bank accounts or limit access to funds during times of volatility, extreme inflation, or other political unrest.

Web3 aims to solve many of these shortcomings by fundamentally rethinking how we architect and interact with applications from the ground up.

There are a few fundamental differences between Web2 and Web3, but decentralization is at its core.

Web3 enhances the internet as we know it today with a few other added characteristics. Web3 is:

<ul><li>Verifiable </li><li>Trustless </li><li>Self-governing </li><li>Permissionless </li><li>Stateful </li><li>Native built-in payments </li> </ul>

In Web3, developers don't build and deploy applications that run on a single server or that store their data in a single database (usually hosted on and managed by a single cloud provider).

Instead, Web3 applications either run on blockchains, decentralized networks of many peer to peer nodes (servers), or a combination of the two that forms a <a dir="ltr" href="https://thegraph.com/blog/modeling-cryptoeconomic-protocols-as-complex-systems-part-1">cryptoeconomic protocol </a>. These apps are often referred to as dapps (decentralized apps), and you will see that term used often in the Web3 space.

To achieve a stable and secure decentralized network, network participants (developers) are incentivized and compete to provide the highest quality services to anyone using the service.

When you hear about Web3, you'll notice that cryptocurrency is often part of the conversation. This is because cryptocurrency plays a big role in many of these protocols. It provides a financial incentive (tokens) for anyone who wants to participate in creating, governing, or improving one of the projects themselves.

These protocols often offer a variety of different services like compute, storage, bandwidth, identity, hosting, and other web services commonly provided by cloud providers in the past.

People can make a living by participating in the protocol in various ways, in both technical and non-technical levels.

Consumers of the service usually pay to use the protocol, similarly to how they would pay a cloud provider like AWS today. Except in Web3, the money goes directly to the network participants.

In this, like in many forms of decentralization, you'll see that unnecessary and often inefficient intermediaries are cut out.

Many web infrastructure protocols like <a dir="ltr" href="https://filecoin.io/blog/filecoin-circulating-supply/">Filecoin </a>, <a dir="ltr" href="https://docs.yearn.finance/faq#governance">Yearn </a>, <a dir="ltr" href="https://blog.sia.tech/sc-and-sf-the-economics-that-power-the-sia-network-f0b8d1899348">Sia </a>, and <a dir="ltr" href="https://thegraph.com/blog/the-graph-grt-token-economics">The Graph </a>(which is what I work with at Edge &amp; Node) have issued utility tokens that govern how the protocol functions. These tokens also reward participants at many levels of the network.

Tokens also introduce a native payment layer that is completely borderless and frictionless. Companies like Stripe and Paypal have created billions of dollars of value in enabling electronic payments.

These systems are overly complex and still do not enable true international interoperability between participants. They also require you to hand over your sensitive information and personal data in order to use them.

Crypto <a dir="ltr" href="https://everest.link/category/0xc00f480db7754ce2e0f992a1080598e53fc511a0/">wallets </a>like <a dir="ltr" href="https://metamask.io/">MetaMask </a>and <a dir="ltr" href="https://toruswallet.io/">Torus </a>enable you to integrate easy, anonymous, and secure international payments and transactions into Web3 applications.

Tokens also brings about the idea of tokenization and the realization of a <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/what-is-the/9781492072973/ch01.html">token economy </a>.

Take, for example, the current state of building a software company. Someone comes up with an idea, but in order to start building they need money in order to support themselves.

To get the money, they take on venture capital and give away a percentage of the company. This investment immediately introduces mis-aligned incentives that will, in the long run, not align well with building out the best user experience.

Also, if the company ever does become successful, it will take a very long time for anyone involved to realize any of the value, often leading to years of work without any real return on investment.

Imagine, instead, that a new and exciting project is announced that solves a real problem. Anyone can participate in building it or investing in it from day one. The company announces the release of x number of tokens, and give 10% to the early builders, put 10% for sale to the public, and set the rest aside for future payment of contributors and funding of the project.

Stakeholders can use their tokens to vote on changes to the future of the project, and the people who helped build the project can sell some of their holdings to make money after the tokens have been released.

People who believe in the project can buy and hold ownership, and people who think the project is headed in the wrong direction can signal this by selling their stake.

Because blockchain data is all completely public and open, purchasers have complete transparency over what is happening. This is in contrast to buying equity in private or centralized businesses where many things are often cloaked in secrecy.

This is already happening in the Web3 space.

One example is the app <a dir="ltr" href="https://radicle.xyz/blog/introducing-rad.html">Radicle </a>(a decentralized GitHub alternative) which allows stakeholders to participate in the <a dir="ltr" href="https://everest.link/category/0x46aff9a161267c2c01f5ce1b6e3b717a77f21480/">governance </a>of their project. <a dir="ltr" href="https://gitcoin.co/">Gitcoin </a>is another that allows developers to get paid in cryptocurrency for jumping in and working on Open Source issues. And <a dir="ltr" href="https://docs.yearn.finance/faq#governance">Yearn </a>allows stakeholders to participate in decision making and voting on proposals.

In Web3, <a dir="ltr" href="http://sinahab.com/identity-and-reputation-in-web-3/">Identity </a>also works much differently than what we are used to today. Most of the time in Web3 apps, identities will be tied to the wallet address of the user interacting with the application.

Unlike Web2 authentication methods like OAuth or email + password (that almost always require users to hand over of sensitive and personal information), wallet addresses are completely anonymous unless the user decides to tie their own identity to it publicly.

If the user chooses to use the same wallet across multiple dapps, their identity is also seamlessly transferable across apps, which lets them build up their reputation over time.

I'm a developer who recently transitioned into the Web3 space from a traditional development background. So I wanted to start building to get a sense of what the development experience felt like. And I wanted to get an understanding of the types of apps that we can build today.

I dove right in and decided to document some of the things I was doing in a couple of blog posts. If you are interested in learning more about this space, you can check out these two posts:

<a dir="ltr" href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/breaking-into-ethereum-crypto-web3-as-a-developer/">How to Get Into Ethereum, Crypto, and Web3 as a Developer </a>– This is an introduction to the space in general, coming from a developer, for developers looking to break into the industry.

<a dir="ltr" href="https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/full-stack-ethereum-development/">The Complete Guide to Full Stack Ethereum Development </a>– This is a tutorial that teaches you how to build out your first dapp.

What is Web3? The Decentralized Internet of the Future Explained

Book written by Michael Jordan &amp; Kobe Bryant personal coach.Addresed for those who realize that internal growth is a way of life and dedication of every minute to developing oneself to become master in their craft.

Intro

There are 3 levels of professionals.The ultimate goal is to become the best at your craft, i.e. becoming a cleaner.Example: there are ~250 mil. professional football players, but only one Messi and one CR7.

Coolers vs Closers vs Cleaners

<ul><li>Coolers can have an amazing game.</li><li>Closers can have an amazing season.</li><li>Cleaners have amazing carrers.</li></ul>

Achievements

<ul><li>Coolers worry about the competition.</li><li>Closers study the competition and plan their attack based on the opponent.</li><li>Cleaners make the competition study them; they don’t care whom they are facing, they can handle anyone</li></ul>

Competition

<ul><li>Coolers avoid taking the winning shot.</li><li>Closers take the shot if they know they have a good chance.</li><li>Cleaners just trust their gut and shoot; they don’t have to think about it.</li></ul>

Taking Risks

If you want to be truly successful, you can’t be content with pretty good. You’ve got to find an extra gear.

Cleaners have an intense rush of needing to control something, attack something, right now.Never go through a dat thinking “That was relaxing”. To a Cleaner, relaxing is something weaker people do because they can’t handle pressure.Stress keeps you sharp, it challenges you in ways you never imagined.Your level of success 🏆 is defined by how well you embrace it and manage it.

Pressure

An award-winning trainer draws on experience with such top athletes as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Ken Griffey, Jr. to explain how to tap dark competitive reflexes in order to succeed regardless of circumstances, explaining the importance of finding internal resources and harnessing the power of personal fears and instincts.

An award-winning trainer draws on experience with such top athletes as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Ken Griffey, Jr. to explain how to tap dark competitive reflexes in order to succeed regardless of circumstances, explaining the importance of finding internal resources and harnessing the power of personal fears and instincts.

Relentless

Temporary measures free up road capacity that is soon filled by induced demand: people adapt their lifestyles to prevailing road conditions. Such measures are therefore worth pursuing only if they either buy time or lay the foundations for more radical interventions.Virtuous measures start a feedback loop that induces more and more people to make a modal shift away from driving. Making a bus service more convenient or cheaper will increase patronage, which means that the service can be run more frequently and for longer hours, making it convenient and attractive to more people.

Introduction

Modern, sophisticated initiatives that are better than typical ‘big ideas’ include:<ul><li>Optimise traffic-light management</li><li>Use CCTV to monitor road conditions</li><li>Enforce existing road traffic laws</li><li>Improve perceptions of buses</li><li>Extend residents’ parking zones</li><li>Charge for workplace parking</li><li>Improve cycling infrastructure</li><li>Improve bus services</li><li>Develop and refine park-and-ride</li><li>Use Inbound Flow Control</li><li>Rationalise distribution and deliveries</li><li>Existing rail network</li><li>Light rail</li><li>Strategic Road Network resilience</li><li>Road pricing</li></ul>

Interventions to reduce traffic congestion

It is often incorrectly suggested that congestion may be solved with one big idea, such as:<ul><li>Widen roads</li><li>Narrow roads</li><li>Add bus lanes</li><li>Remove bus lanes</li><li>Build tunnels</li><li>Etc</li></ul>None of these can deliver a complete solution, and most of them provide only temporary relief.Road pricing (which we cover later) is the nearest to a one-hit solution.

The one-hit solution

Urban Traffic Management Control (UTMC) systems can be very effective in maximising road capacity by varying the timing of traffic lights to match demand in real time. When lights are all co-ordinated responsively to demand, incidences of ‘blocking back’ (vehicles stuck in junctions) leading to gridlock can be minimised. Traffic planners can also prepare and model programs to cope with specific scenarios (such as an incident on an arterial road), which can then be loaded into the UTMC immediately they’re needed.

1. Optimise traffic-light management

Use of CCTV at junctions allows traffic managers to see breakdowns, collisions and other causes of congestion. Combined with good communication systems with Highways England, the police and major road users (such as airports, train stations, retail parks), this can ensure traffic managers receive advance warning of issues that will impact their network.

2. Use CCTV to monitor road conditions

Illegal parking, waiting, loading/unloading obstructs traffic flow, reduces capacity at junctions, holds up buses, and increases danger to those walking or cycling. Blocking junctions, which is illegal where there’s a yellow box, can cause gridlock across a wide area of the road network.

3. Enforce existing road traffic laws

<ul><li>Pollution from diesel engines</li><li> electric buses, with quiet, battery-powered motors</li><li>Tickets are typically purchased before boarding a tram</li><li>Trams typically have multi-door boarding.</li><li>Tram routes are easier to understand and find.</li><li>The ride quality is smoother on trams</li><li> The ride quality of a bus is largely determined by the quality of the road:</li><li>The challenge is for bus manufacturers to up their game!</li><li>Bus windows often stream with condensation in the winter.</li></ul>This can be addressed by running buses through a washer during off-peak periods.

4. Improve perceptions of buses

Free parking at employment sites attracts traffic and therefore contributes indirectly to congestion. Nottingham has led the way in introducing a workplace parking levy (WPL). The effect on congestion is relatively small, but significant. More importantly it incentivises employers to help their employees find alternative ways to get to work.

6. Charge for workplace parking

“Build it and they will come” is as true of cycle paths as of roads – as long as they provide a continuous connection between places that people want to travel between, without dangerous junctions or road crossings.

7. Improve cycling infrastructure

The answer, at least at peak times, is to run express services that follow a direct route with widely-spaced stops, more like a train service. Those stops would include the travel hubs discussed.

8. Improve bus services

Park-and-ride (P&amp;R) is now an accepted traffic management tool.The model needs refining, in part by catering differently to local and longer-distance traffic.The cost of building and maintaining P&amp;R sites are substantial and should be borne by users rather than local taxpayers. Public money should be used to subsidise public transport, which is available to everyone, rather than parking, which is available only to those who are able to drive and can afford a car.

9. Develop and refine park-and-ride

There is no doubt that road pricing can work: in Singapore, for instance, a network of ‘gates’ that charge a toll that varies in relation to demand successfully keeps a lid on congestion. But there is a complex debate to be had around designing and implementing road pricing: the social, political and technical challenges are huge and will take years to resolve. That process needs to start now.

15. Road pricing

There needs to be much greater consideration given to the health aspects of transport. Reducing obesity and improving mental health requires for most people requires building more physical activity into their daily routines. That means walking and cycling must be attractive, convenient and safe for many more people.Planting trees between highways and homes has been shown to reduce the amount of pollution people are exposed to in their homes. It is also linked with greater willingness to walk and improved mental health.

Health and welfare

How do we reduce traffic congestion? A 5000-word paper submitted by Smarter Cambridge Transport to the UK Government's Urban Congestion Enquiry.

Solve Traffic

Traffic Congestion Problems & Solutions: A Submission to the UK Government Urban Congestion Inquiry

A version of this paper was submitted by Smarter Cambridge Transport to the House of Commons Transport Committee’s <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/urban-congestion-16-17/">Urban Congestion Inquiry </a>in January 2017. <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.smartertransport.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Urban-congestion-inquiry_2016-12-09-1e.pdf">A printable PDF version with information about Smarter Cambridge Transport is available here </a>.

We present here some ideas for reducing congestion and pollution in urban areas, applicable in the UK and worldwide. The ideas were developed in the context of the Greater Cambridge area (roughly Cambridge city and South Cambridgeshire district), which is typical of many UK towns and cities. The region has an urban population under 150,000, surrounded by a dispersed rural population.

Congestion-reduction measures can be thought of as falling into two categories: temporary and virtuous.

Temporary measures free up road capacity that is soon filled by induced demand: people adapt their lifestyles to prevailing road conditions. Such measures are therefore worth pursuing only if they either buy time or lay the foundations for more radical interventions. We take a quick look at measures in this category that should not be considered as solutions – at least not in isolation.

Virtuous measures start a feedback loop that induces more and more people to make a modal shift away from driving. Making a bus service more convenient or cheaper will increase patronage, which means that the service can be run more frequently and for longer hours, making it convenient and attractive to more people. These are the changes transport policy must support.

Modern, sophisticated initiatives that are better than typical ‘big ideas’ include:

<ul><li>Optimise traffic-light management </li><li>Use CCTV to monitor road conditions </li><li>Enforce existing road traffic laws </li><li>Improve perceptions of buses </li><li>Extend residents’ parking zones </li><li>Charge for workplace parking </li><li>Improve cycling infrastructure </li><li>Improve bus services </li><li>Develop and refine park-and-ride </li><li>Use Inbound Flow Control </li><li>Rationalise distribution and deliveries </li><li>Existing rail network </li><li>Light rail </li><li>Strategic Road Network resilience </li><li>Road pricing </li> </ul>

As can be seen, these begin with interventions requiring only a low level of capital investment, before moving on to those which require an increasing degree of public and/or private sector investment. We will look at each in turn, before finishing by looking at the role of transport in health and welfare and providing some concluding thoughts.

It is often incorrectly suggested that congestion may be solved with one big idea, such as:

<ul><li>Widen roads </li><li>Narrow roads </li><li>Add bus lanes </li><li>Remove bus lanes </li><li>Build tunnels </li><li>Build a new ring road </li><li>Build a light rail network </li><li>Switch off traffic lights </li><li>Ban cycling </li><li>Ban cars from city centres </li><li>Close through-routes to private vehicles </li><li>Close car parks </li><li>Build more car parks </li><li>Build more park-and-rides </li><li>Make buses free </li><li>Make park-and-ride free </li><li>Introduce a congestion charge/road pricing </li> </ul>

None of these can deliver a complete solution, and most of them provide only temporary relief until induced demand fills up the road space once more. Road pricing (which we cover later) is the nearest to a one-hit solution, but it still needs to be paired with big improvements to public and active transport options.

Heavy-engineering measures, such as bus lanes, street-running trams, and tunnelling, can attract support from politicians, mindful of their legacy. But such projects typically require years of highly disruptive work, destroy fragile streetscapes, and undermine the viability of other public transport options. Widening a road to add a bus lane makes it more difficult for pedestrians to cross, and may compromise the quality of cycling infrastructure that can be accommodated. A tram line or park-and-ride can cannibalise patronage of rural bus services. Business cases need to be built up carefully, and only after ‘softer’ measures have been implemented, or at least modelled in detail.

For those who believe that cycling causes congestion, the Cambridge Cycling Campaign has a mischievous suggestion: let’s have a no-cycle day! Experience is much more persuasive than theory.

We need only look to cities in Europe that manage congestion effectively, such as Copenhagen, Freiburg and Groningen: they employ a wide range of complementary measures, carefully balancing the needs of residents, commuters, businesses, visitors and tourists.

Urban Traffic Management Control (UTMC) systems such as SCOOT can be very effective in maximising road capacity by varying the timing of traffic lights to match demand in real time. When lights are all co-ordinated responsively to demand, incidences of ‘blocking back’ (vehicles stuck in junctions) leading to gridlock can be minimised. Traffic planners can also prepare and model programs to cope with specific scenarios (such as an incident on an arterial road), which can then be loaded into the UTMC immediately they’re needed.

UTMC can help prioritise buses by synchronising light phases to the movements of buses. Modern systems can even see whether a bus is running on or behind schedule, and vary the amount of priority it gives accordingly (e.g. by limiting green time from cross roads).

The non-linearity of the relationship between traffic ‘flow’ and ‘delay’ means that relatively small reductions in flow (say 10-15%) can result in very large reductions in congestion. In Cambridge this is experienced as a ’half term effect’: flow reductions of under 15% during school holidays lead to an almost congestion-free peak hour.

Use of CCTV at junctions allows traffic managers to see breakdowns, collisions and other causes of congestion. Combined with good communication systems with Highways England, the police and major road users (such as airports, train stations, retail parks), this can ensure traffic managers receive advance warning of issues that will impact their network.

Any CCTV equipment installed should comply with the minimum standards required to support legal enforcement.

Illegal parking, waiting, loading/unloading obstructs traffic flow, reduces capacity at junctions, holds up buses, and increases danger to those walking or cycling. Blocking junctions, which is illegal where there’s a yellow box, can cause gridlock across a wide area of the road network.

Driving at an inappropriate speed, jumping red lights, or driving through restricted areas all contribute to fatalities, injuries and an unwillingness for people to walk or cycle, or to allow their children to do so unaccompanied.

There is currently an acceptance that it’s OK for delivery vehicles to park up on the pavement outside a shop, even when there’s a safer alternative. The convenience of the delivery driver outweighs convenience and safety of pedestrians, wheelchair users and those with infant buggies.

The government is currently reviewing the law around pavement parking. It may decide to extend to the rest of the country the ban that exists in London, but that will still require enforcement. Penalty Charge Notices currently given for illegal unloading are seen simply as a cost of doing business, so perhaps an escalating penalty for repeat offences should be considered.

Enablement of Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004 would allow civil enforcement of a wide range of minor moving vehicle offences, which currently the police have neither the resources nor incentives to enforce.

Government and local authorities need to ‘sell’ enforcement as a positive effort to help responsible road users, and not as a ‘war on motorists’.

There is a perception (partly class-related) that trams are more attractive than buses. Rather than pander to this bias – potentially at huge expense – it makes sense to examine why the perception exists. Some of the commonly-cited objections are:

<ul><li>Pollution from diesel engines is a danger to health, and the smell and noise is offensive. All-electric buses, with quiet, battery-powered motors, will be commonplace within a decade, so this advantage of trams will diminish. </li><li>Tickets are typically purchased before boarding a tram, or there is contactless payment. Transport for London has proven there is no reason for buses to be different. </li><li>Trams typically have multi-door boarding. Two- and three-door bus models are available, bus operators tend to prefer single-door buses because they have higher seating capacity and it’s easier to prevent fare dodging. The advantage of having more doors, especially once ticketing is streamlined, is that dwell times can be greatly reduced, allowing buses to run more frequently, increasing the hourly capacity, for only a small increase in overhead. </li><li>Tram routes are easier to understand and find. Consistent, clear maps and signage, real-time passenger information displays, and online apps, like CityMapper, can make bus travel much more accessible. Naming routes can help too. </li><li>The ride quality is smoother on trams, making it more comfortable and easier to read and work on a laptop/tablet. The ride quality of a bus is largely determined by the quality of the road: roads on bus routes could be rebuilt to the same standards as a tramway, reducing wear and tear and improving the fuel economy for all vehicles. </li><li>The design and décor of trams is often seen to be more attractive. The challenge is for bus manufacturers to up their game! </li><li>Bus windows often stream with condensation in the winter. Buses should be fitted with a heat-recovery ventilation system, which extracts warm moist air and transfers the heat to cool, dry air drawn in from outside. </li><li>Buses often pick up more dirt from the road in wet weather. This can be addressed by running buses through a washer during off-peak periods. </li> </ul>

Requiring bus drivers to collect fares, verify tickets and passes, account for all money taken, and spot fare dodgers adds considerable stress to their job, and increases the dwell time at stops. Instead, operators should employ specialist revenue protection officers with powers to impose on-the-spot fines. CCTV on board buses provides a means to spot and target repeat offenders.

In most towns and cities, only streets in the centre have comprehensive parking controls, typically including a mix of residents’ parking and pay-and-display or limited-wait bays. Congestion, high parking charges and increasing fares on public transport are encouraging more and more people to drive and park outside controlled parking zones. They then walk, or sometimes cycle, the rest of the way.

This is exacerbating congestion and pollution in cities as more commuters drive around looking for parking spaces. This in turn makes walking and cycling less pleasant and safe for residents. It also leaves no space for visitors (including those providing health and personal care services) to park, and for delivery vehicles to stop safely.

The answer is to extend parking controls much further out from the centre of the city in a co-ordinated way. Adding new residents’ parking zones in a piecemeal fashion simply pushes problems to a new area. By co-ordinating the expansion it’s possible to have one-hour residents’ parking zones, which can be patrolled by one or two civil enforcement officers. A patrol route can be designed through consecutive one-hour restrictions: 10-11am in one area, 11-noon in the next, noon-1pm in the next, and so on. Combined with ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) technology, enforcement can be quick and cheap.

The challenge with introducing new parking controls is political: to gain support from those who see themselves facing additional costs and inconvenience rather than benefits. The steps to gaining popular buy-in are:

<ul><li>Collect data on commuter parking and its impacts </li><li>Identify local problems that parking controls can solve and include these at an early stage in scheme proposals </li><li>Minimise costs to residents through efficient enforcement using appropriate technology, such as virtual permits </li><li>Offer a trial (using experimental traffic regulation orders) of controversial aspects of a scheme. Undertake in advance to remove or change the scheme if there is less than 50% support shown in a consultation held after, say, nine months. </li> </ul>

As part of a general review of parking allocation, space should be allocated for short-stay parking for visitors and loading bays for deliveries.

Free parking at employment sites attracts traffic and therefore contributes indirectly to congestion. Nottingham has led the way in introducing a workplace parking levy (WPL). The effect on congestion is relatively small, but significant. More importantly it incentivises employers to help their employees find alternative ways to get to work. Measures may include:

<ul><li>Re-allocate car parking for cycle parking </li><li>Set up or join a car-share scheme </li><li>Pay for taxis as a back-up when car-sharing does not work out </li><li>Provide financial assistance (e.g. loans) to buy train or bus season tickets </li><li>Build a changing room and showers </li><li>Assist with subsidising public bus services to extend the hours of operation </li><li>Where there is no (nearly) suitable public bus service, run a works bus. </li> </ul>

WPL also incentivises employers to re-evaluate their land use. There are clear economic and environmental benefits to be had from businesses releasing city land currently used for parking and developing it instead for new offices or housing.

WPL is politically easier to introduce than a congestion charge and can provide local authorities with a revenue stream to invest in public and active transport options.

“Build it and they will come” is as true of cycle paths as of roads – as long as they provide a continuous connection between places that people want to travel between, without dangerous junctions or road crossings.

The keys to good design that is attractive to people of all ages and abilities are:

<ul><li>Build protected cycle lanes, with as much separation as possible from busy roads and, where possible, from pedestrians </li><li>Design segregated crossings at busy junctions, where potential conflicts between cars, cycles and pedestrians are reduced to a minimum </li><li>Introduce the <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/campaigning/article/20161215-campaigning-news-Turning-the-Corner---road-user-groups-respond-0" rel="noopener noreferrer">Turning the Corner </a> simplification of the Highway Code and underlying law (essentially, turning vehicles and cycles must give way to all cars, cycles and pedestrians proceeding straight on), as proposed by British Cycling, the AA and RAC Foundation </li><li>Create and sign cut-throughs to create networks of quiet routes that connect up residential areas, schools, libraries, shops and other amenities </li><li>Remove physical obstacles, especially if they require people to dismount. Research by academic Rachel Aldred has found that many people with impaired mobility get around on bicycles and tricycles but are unable to negotiate steps. </li> </ul>

Buses are seeing a sustained reduction in patronage since 2008. There is a vicious circle of subsidy withdrawal leading to service reductions, which make services less convenient, so patronage falls, requiring further reductions in service.

Bus operators try to make their services commercially viable by designing circuitous routes that pass close to as many houses as possible. This can make a 5 mile trip take the best part of an hour, which is particularly unattractive to commuters.

The answer, at least at peak times, is to run express services that follow a direct route with widely-spaced stops, more like a train service. Those stops would include the travel hubs discussed below in section 9.

At off-peak times, there needs to be more flexibility about how buses are routed for greater efficiency. For instance, on routes served by P&amp;R and rural services, the rural service could replace some of the P&amp;R services by calling in en route.

A single rural bus service can serve only a small minority of people whose journeys happens to begin and end close to the bus route. Interchanging to other services is essential to making public transport work for more people. The travel hubs described above can provide an interchange between express and traditional rural, stopping services (which become, in effect, feeder services).

Within cities, transport planners need to design bus routes around facilitating interchanging. The typical model is hub-and-spoke: all buses come into a central bus station, where passengers can change to another bus. Often though, this central location is highly congested, with little scope for building new bus priority measures.

Another model is ring-and-spoke, where buses circulate around an inner ring road. This effectively makes it one big hub: you can hop off anywhere and catch a bus headed to any other part of the city. Oldenburg in Germany uses this model.

Where a company puts on a works bus service, this will often compete with and undermine the viability of public services. Therefore it is far preferable (and probably cheaper) for the company instead to subsidise public services for the hours or frequency needed to make it serviceable for their workers. Hopefully the Bus Services Bill will make this kind of arrangement easier to organise.

Park-and-ride (P&amp;R) is now an accepted traffic management tool. However research has identified two unwanted side effects:

<ul><li>Competition with rural bus services, where people who have a car prefer to use P&amp;R rather than a rural bus service. (The ‘abstraction’ rate of people switching from rural bus and train services was about 20% at one Cambridge P&amp;R site.) This almost inevitably leads to a reduction in rural bus services, hurting those (disproportionately disadvantaged) people who depend on them </li><li>As P&amp;Rs become more popular, congestion occurs on the approach roads, delaying buses and other traffic (including vehicles not heading for the city). </li> </ul>

The model needs refining, in part by catering differently to local and longer-distance traffic.

Those travelling from the local area would be served best by rapid bus services from close to home. To make this work, buses need to run more like trains or coaches. Rather than calling at multiple road-side stops, buses need to call at one, well-connected travel hub in each rural centre along the route.

Those travelling from further afield will continue to be served best by P&amp;R. They are unlikely to be tempted to abandon their cars far away from the city so sites need to be located close to the city edge. But, in order to minimise congestion, sites also need to be located closed to exits from the strategic road network, with dedicated lanes to funnel cars rapidly into the P&amp;R.

Travel hubs in rural centres should be well-connected to the surrounding homes and amenities by foot- and cycleways. Local buses (where these are commercially viable) and community transport should provide links to the wider area.

A large car park would be neither desirable nor necessary at most such hubs: many busy train stations have little parking provision, with most people walking, cycling or being dropped off. But what space is allocated for cars could be used for communal events, such as a farmers’ market, craft fair, and by providers of mobile community services (e.g. county library, NHS health screening, police and fire service contact points, and CAB advice centres).

In order to incentivise use of public transport, there needs to be a hierarchy of cost to travel into the city, where it is (typically) most expensive to drive and park in the centre, less expensive to drive and use P&amp;R, and even less expensive to take a bus from close to home.

The cost of building and maintaining P&amp;R sites are substantial and should be borne by users rather than local taxpayers. Public money should be used to subsidise public transport, which is available to everyone, rather than parking, which is available only to those who are able to drive and can afford a car.

Inbound Flow Control (our term for ‘gating’ or ‘queue relocation’) is a powerful technique for managing morning peak traffic flows efficiently, and for providing bus priority without the need to build bus lanes right into a city.

The idea is that some of the traffic that would normally sit in a queue somewhere in the city is held back temporarily at the edge. Here there is typically land of relatively low environmental or heritage value that may be used to widen the road to queue traffic and provide a bypass lane for buses (and emergency services and potentially other authorised vehicles).

Clear signage in advance of the queuing area should inform drivers of expected queuing times and direct them to the nearest park-and-ride.

Vehicles are released from the ‘gate’ at a rate that matches the road’s outflow rate, i.e. the rate at which vehicles are able to disperse. This ensures that all traffic flows freely beyond the gate. This obviates the need for bus lanes, and improves journey times for all road users.

11. Rationalise distribution and deliveries

Efforts to reduce car traffic in cities are being undone by growth in commercial traffic. The largest growth in traffic in cities is in LGVs (up 13.5% from 2012 to 2015) used to deliver goods and groceries ordered online to homes, and just-in-time deliveries to stores.

The solution is to use consolidation and redistribution depots and many fewer vehicles making the ‘last mile’ deliveries and collections in the city. This is the General Post Office model pre-deregulation.

City authorities should look to encourage companies wishing to set up and run the depots, and find ways to incentivise logistics companies to start using them. They should also explore ways to restrict the number of delivery companies operating in the city, perhaps by creating access restrictions for “authorised vehicles only”, and setting fees and conditions for gaining access licence. In this way, authorities can also incentivise use of low-emission vehicles.

Once depots and ‘last mile’ delivery firms are established, the cost savings will themselves be a strong incentive, so local authorities will be able to step back.

Cambridge is one of the few cities to have an established and successful cycle logistics business delivering small packets and parcels from a depot close to a junction on the A14.

Problem Scale - Chicken Or Egg Dilemma

17. Customer love is all you need, w/Y Combinator's Sam Altman

What is Web 3.0?

What is Web3? The Decentralized Internet of the Future Explained

Intro

Relentless

Introduction

Reducing Traffic Congestion and Pollution in Urban Areas

What is Atomic Design

Atomic Design | Brad Frost

.css-d7z4j9{font-family:'Source Sans Pro',sans-serif;font-size:2rem;line-height:2.5rem;letter-spacing:-0.125%;font-weight:700;}Problem Scale - Chicken Or Egg Dilemma

17. Customer love is all you need, w/Y Combinator's Sam Altman

What is Web 3.0?

What is Web3? The Decentralized Internet of the Future Explained

Intro

Relentless

Introduction

Reducing Traffic Congestion and Pollution in Urban Areas

What is Atomic Design

Atomic Design | Brad Frost

Problem Scale - Chicken Or Egg Dilemma