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Adding an extra lane to a congested road will always cause that road to be more congested, and will also increase traffic on nearby roads.
When China removed a highway, it reduced car traffic thought the entire city while not reducing the number of people travelling to and around the city.
The only solution to car traffic is viable alternatives to driving.
Tangential but nobody seems to know how to drive in traffic. Pick a lane and stay in it, leave extra following distance, and try to change speed as smoothly as possible. If everyone did these three things, traffic congestion would be significantly less severe.
Don't forget zipper merging. I lived in an area where hundreds of hours spent commuting allowed me to observe the inability to merge was the primary driver of freeway congestion.
The main problem I've observed with zipper merging is nobody can seem to agree on what it is. People get aggressive when you try to use the available space on the road, and in discussions online it seems people think you're trying to queue jump if you don't merge as early as possible.
Probably not always. You build a 12 lane road entirely within a random small town, and it will stay empty and stupid. But, in the range of what actually might be built, yes, there's pretty strong empirical evidence that cars fill any available space.
Jevons Paradox.
Which this actually isn't a straight example of, exactly. Jevon's paradox says more and better roads will mean more cars operating, not less. That happens, but in this case the increase is so great, that it leads to the same level of congestion on the roads all over again.
The wiki uses the example of coal. Better boilers and engines increased the use of coal, but it's fair to say industrial Europe had better coal powered equipment afterwards, not the same or worse. (Although, to be fair, congestion is only one metric of traffic performance)
I agree, Jevon's is not the perfect way to describe this affect. Is there a better way to classify this? It's bugged me for a bit as I've had good debates about adding biking lanes and better sidewalks instead of just more lanes for cars. But Jevon's is the best I could come up with.
No, it's relevant enough, thanks for bringing it up.
You could say something about the elasticity of road usage being 1, but if you're not a wonk that means nothing. Induced traffic is another technical term you might see around. Saying "research suggests another lane means an equal number of additional cars, eventually" is about what gets the best comprehension.
This is definitely not always true. They added a lane in my city a few years ago and my commute went from 45 minutes to 30 minutes.
IIRC the trend is observed over longer periods, where it feeds into people's decisions about whether to have a car or second car, and how far to commute. And even then, congestion and travel time are two different things - an extra lane probably makes no difference, but a new route or higher speed limit will get you there faster regardless.
this logic asssumes more road == population growth
sure, and telescopes created all the stars in the sky.
The number of car-hours per person per year isn't even close to fixed over the long run. The trend is basically that in the past, people might have carpooled, taken a bus or even hitchhiked, and usually lived close to their job. If the roads get better, they drive more.
so your idea is installing a system is pushing for classism and hoping to furthering socioeconomic downturn on the landscape of select neighbourhoods with select individuals with large populations that are struggling, paying the most taxes, yet expected to travel for lower wage jobs and you want to make their travel to work harder.
how bigotted.
WTF are you even saying, we're talking about cars.