Every driver, bus rider, bicyclist and pedestrian has surely grumbled about what it takes to move around Seattle and perhaps many have even dreamed about what they would do differently if they had the ability to reimagine roadways, intersections, bike lanes, parking and more. Here’s a game that does just that.

Dustin Carlino released the alpha version of A/B Street on Monday, complete with a trailer on YouTube (above), writing in a post on Reddit that he has spent the past two years working on the open source computer game.

“I started this because I wondered what would happen if Broadway and Pine were bus-only,” Carlino wrote, while rattling off other traffic fixes he’d like to see the city make. “I kept going because I didn’t see light rail expansion saving the day soon enough. I also wanted to see decisions from SDOT become completely transparent and reproducible, and an open source simulator that anyone can run is a start.”

Dustin Carlino.

Carlino, who spent more than three years at Google as a software engineer, now calls himself a “speculative cartographer.” Before joining Google, he attended the University of Texas in Austin where he worked in a lab studying the impact of autonomous vehicles on traffic. Carlino helped develop a simple traffic simulator to predict how Austin traffic would flow if all cars were driverless. That sparked an enduring interest in transportation infrastructure. Carlino’s project mission states that his ultimate goal is for real proposals to emerge from the game that could positively adjust Seattle’s infrastructure.

“A lot of people are interested in transportation changes and I think there’s a danger of thinking about long term solutions,” Carlino told GeekWire. “A lot of people are excited by things like driverless cars or the light rail expansion coming to Seattle but those things are very far away and some of the implications aren’t really understood. I think it’s important to think about short term changes that are very low cost and we could do overnight, at least try them out. That’s a gap that I feel is missing today.”

The detailed map of Seattle was built from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Carlino says a realistic set of daily trips by car, bike, foot, and bus are simulated. Players on Mac, Windows and Linux can make small changes to roads and intersections and then explore how the changes affect trips. More details on how it all works are spelled out here.

Readers on Reddit couldn’t wait to give it a shot, and called out some of the most dreaded traffic spots in Seattle as places worth tinkering with, from Mercer Street in South Lake Union, to the newly bridge-free situation in West Seattle.

“Whether you have some serious idea you want to try or you’re just stuck at home and want to get angry at your virtual commute, please try it out and tell me what direction you want to see this go,” Carlino said on Reddit. He also mentioned a desire to map other cities.

He gave special thanks to Yuwen Li, who he said “transformed the game’s awful UI into something awesome in just a few months.” Carlino is also looking for help with design, programming, mapping traffic lights and pitching the idea to the right people.

“This should get adopted by the city. I love it,” Redditor @LockeSteerpike wrote.

GeekWire’s Monica Nickelsburg contributed to this story.

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