Love the idea of traffic congestion? Pray for construction barricades that reroute your commute? Of course you don't. But, oddly enough, watching traffic come to a near standstill on a computer screen seems to be fun, like a SimCity video game. Tools and applications have popped up recently which have sought to improve traffic flow. What's more--it's become a big business and certainly a concern of most governments with massive urban areas.

We stumbled upon the good Professor Dr. Martin Treiber's homepage within the University of Dresden's Institute for Transport & Economics (yes, it's been a slow morning here). But in reality, the university's work is interesting stuff. "Who was not yet amazed by traffic jams or stop-and-go waves, seemingly appearing 'out of nothing,' without any obvious cause?" says Treiber on his homepage. "We investigate these instabilities and other aspects of nonlinear traffic."

Click this applet (warning: it's slow to load and gets a bit buggy if you run it for too long) and plot your own traffic problems. Change the rate of cars entering the on ramp. Close lanes. Change the speeds. You can do it all!

Of course, out in the real world traffic isn't controllable like this. You're stuck and have little say over the matter. Parking, on the other hand, still allows for some amount of control and gamesmanship. Case in point: commercial sleight-of-hand artist Florentijn Hofman's fake DHL truck, which allows him to parking in any commercial loading zone he can find. It isn't legal, but it has worked. But, not even Hofman's DHL truck could help if he was stuck in one of Professor Dr. Treiber's traffic horror shows.

+ Traffic simulation