Technology

You probably already know that the largest mass transit system in North America is in New York City.  Perhaps you didn’t know that this system is supplemented by a very heavily used sister-system between New York City and New Jersey called the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, or PATH for short.  PATH runs two lines through Jersey City, Newark, and Hoboken, carrying tens of thousands of passengers daily.  My hometown, Hoboken, is considered one of the most densely populated cities in the country, and a large number of those residents commute via PATH on a daily basis.  As the popularity of living in the city has increased, so have the swarms of passengers crowding onto PATH each morning and afternoon in their daily commute between New Jersey and Manhattan.  The cars are very old and make for a rickety, sometimes enthralling ride.  So it is not with anything but a huge warm welcome that we began to receive new rail cars over the past month.

Move over XBox; step aside Playstation.  The height of game-playing action is free and it's online.  The new game in town is University of Minnesota, Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute's "Gridlock Buster".  Test your mettle on the increasing levels of difficulty in processing vehicular traffic through a network of intersections.