Top 4: Team Invincible Barriers - The I.Wall

Group Members from 104:
Yew Chin Siang, Chloe Wong, Tan Chuan Jie, Joshua Lee

“Makes your car’s journey a little smoother!”

According to the research on the 10 worst cities for traffic congestion, the two most congested cities are in Eastern Europe, Moscow and Istanbul. Four of the most congested cities are in China, three in Latin America and one is in Western Europe as shown in the chart. Traffic jam emits a lot of carbon monoxide which is very harmful to the environment and thus accelerating the greenhouse effect in global warming.

Not only is this frustrating, in the long run, this will slow down the economic growth of a country as time and money are wasted. This photo of the Woodlands causeway is a good example of such a situation.

Our idea for the I.Wall is to create a movable barrier that can create an extra lane for the traffic jam road whilst using the empty lane of the road in the opposite direction. The mechanism will involve gears which will move the barrier sideways just like the train tracks. 



Have you seen a zipper machine in the US? The machine is in the process of moving the temporary concrete median barrier over one lane. This is done to close one half of the bridge so that deck replacement operations can take place on the closed half, while one lane each way with a center emergency lane operates on the other half.

Have you seen how a train track changes it course by shifting the tracks using a gear system? Our solution is similar to that except that we are unable to move to the road, so what do we do?

We move the barriers instead!

This is the sketchup model of our idea. It shows how the I.Wall operates and how it can solve the problem effectively. You can see that there is a jam on the right lane and the opposite lane is very light in traffic. The I.Wall will be activated to shift to the left and now 3 lanes are created on the right. The traffic congestion can be now eased.

The I.Wall will move slowly towards the unjammed side of the road. One side of the barrier will tilt slightly before the entire barrier is shifted completely. There will also be an alarm which will alert drivers that the barrier is going to move and that they should shift to another lane.  This way, it will make it safer for the drivers to see and switch their lane to avoid accidents. Once the barrier is fully shifted towards the unjammed side, more lanes will be freed up for the cars on the jammed side.