Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Building roads does decrease congestion. Just don't place them randomly. Use simulations and modern traffic engineering. Do you think that inaction build the Netherlands?
The netherlands did a lot more than just build roads. They built bike lanes, transit, walkability and made it legal for density to exist in their city, all things that north american cities resist as if it were the plague.
Maybe bad example, given we're talking about americans.
Well the ones that are left will be resistant.
You're from .world so i can't assume this is a bit.
Bike lanes are a part of fucking road building. So is transit infrastructure.
Bike lanes and transit is part of street building. The netherlands respect road hierarchy much more than north American standards do. America is also severely lacking rail infrastructure like intercity trains and cross country trains. Are you about to say that train building is part of road building too?
America cannot exclussively build roads to get out of their congestion nightmare, especially given the current standard for american roads which is basically every lane is built like a highway with the only difference being the speed limit number on the sign.
I live in the Philadelphia area and they're about to cut public transportation service by 45%. It's beyond insane what kind of catastrophe this is going to cause. Unfortunately public transportation here is heavily dependent on state funding and the GOP-controlled state legislature is in full fuck-the-blue-cities mode.
It seems very important to you to just talk about the US.
Removing roads decreases congestion: Braess' paradox
Roads for private cars are generally overbuilt and run directly into Braess' paradox. E.g. Five years after Sepulveda Pass widening, travel times on the 405 keep getting worse.
You notice it particularily when one road segment is built out, but the fewer lanes on other segments still keep the effective traffic flow rate constant (or lower due to all the merging and yielding that's now required). Min-cut max-flow theorem, my beloved.
Its almost as if roads have a low capacity due to how much space each car takes up, often for just 1 person. The solution to congestion is alternatives to driving. Everything else is just a band-aid unless you significantly restrict growth and through traffic.
This is ehy im overall neutral on adding lanes.
This post is about the lack of scientific evidence for your theory. Care to supply some?
Case studies are not scientific evidence, they're well-documented anecdotes that suggest the need for scientific study.
Case studies are scientific evidence. They are just not strong scientific evidence.
Sometimes removing roads actually helps congestion
That's equivalent to only well placed roads removing congestion.
Sure an extra lane can relieve congestion, for a bit then 10 years later you're back to where you started or worse.
This is mostly due to the fact that American cities grow sprawl and not density. So basically unless there's a population collapse adding another lane is a temporary solution.
That's why they are basically always adding new lanes, they can't keep up with the demand. So instead of continually trying to keep up with demand it's time to work on reducing demand
Building roads is not an extra lane and an extra bus bike or tram lane has surely relieved congestion. Same for an extra lane for queueing in niche cases. Added a random feature at a random spot will not yield desired results.
Seems a bit pedantic, but sure.
New roads are unlikely to fix issues in many places. Small to medium sized town building a new connector would be helpful. Not so helpful for anything large or metro sprawl. Those places mostly limit themselves to adding additional lanes with little result
Fixing one bottleneck to find another bottleneck 3 years later is not an argument that bottlenecks should not be fixed
Though bottlenecks are complex and sometimes shouldn't be fixed, at least not without building up capacity to the roads they feed into, or else you might end up with new bottlenecks that back traffic back up to the original ones anyways. Without 3 years needing to pass.
Exactly this post is just extremely uninformed - but since we're in "fuck cars" I'm assuming things don't have to actually be true to fly here. Just anti-cars.
I've yet to see a study where additional lanes reduced congestion long term (3+ years), yet there have been many studies proving more lanes cause induced demand, which increases congestion
If we are just limiting the scope to three years than I assume building another lane causes more congestion short term anyway. Construction of new lanes slows down speed limits due to construction laws and construction eventually has to shut down the lane over at some point.
I should have clarified 3+ years after construction is completed.
I should've realized that TBH.
Either way, the point is the same, more lanes do not help.
When Malmö built the outer ring the congestion on the inner ring decreased substantially. This is common knowledge with the hundreds of thousands of people who live and drive cars here but you can at least find a sentence about it here as well: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Ringv%C3%A4gen
I'm guessing you 1) live in the US and 2) don't drive a car.
Build a new road is not equal to adding lanes to existing roads as the original meme implies.
If the roads are for the same traffic (origin/destination etc) - why not?
If you disagree with the echo chamber, you're gonna have a bad time.