HBN QR codes, promoting solutions not services and Road traffic limits

Todays HBN meeting was a relaxed affair with many attending also having been at the Wood Green Business Fair yesterday. The latte was deemed a great success in terms of the interest and impact that we had there. I had uploaded the photos of the stand to https://picasaweb.google.com/HBNPhotoManager/WoodGreenFair2011#.

In particular, we were the only organisation with members sporting and promoting the use of QR codes.  Member Martin Straus, whilst manning his own stand, was also using his QR code prolifically on banners and bottle labels.

The debate then shifted to the perennial problem of all businesses that provided services or advice to other companies. The better approach in theory is to offer solutions to client problems. Our discussions swirled around how this could be achieved in practice for experts in diverse areas from inheritance to logistics.

Back on the A14 road travelling south towards Cambridge, traffic numbers were coursing through my mind as these are a real issue on this stretch. A surprising fact that I had picked up, was that irrespective of speed, the average distance between cars in free flowing traffic is about 2 seconds. This effectively means that the carrying capacity of a single traffic lane is about 1800 vehicles per hour, or 3600 vehicles on two lanes in the same direction.

The frequent chaos and queues on the A14 at peak rush hours then become eminently understandable. Just north of Cambridge, the M11 joins the A14 Northwards with a possible conjunction of traffic from four lanes (2 from the A14 from the East and 2 from the M11 from the South) - this means that potentially up to 7200 cars per hour converge on a stretch of road with a capacity of only 3600 vehicles per hour in one direction.

The increased traffic load can be accommodated by reducing the traffic speed, as the carrying capacity per mile is doubled if the vehicle speed is halved, say from 60mph to 30mph. Traffic does not however flow in a truly laminar manner, especially at high traffic densities; slight changes in vehicular speed can result in waves of stasis being generated, causing an overall slowing of traffic flow even further.

Back home tonight, I wrote two blog texts in addition to this one, one still in draft form and the other published as "The continuing evolution of QR code design".