For critics of widening projects, the prime example of induced demand is the Katy Freeway in Houston, one of the widest highways in the world with 26 lanes.
Immediately after Katy’s last expansion, in 2008, the project was hailed as a success. But within five years, peak hour travel times on the freeway were longer than before the expansion.
Matt Turner, an economics professor at Brown University and co-author of the 2009 study on congestion, said adding lanes is a fine solution if the goal is to get more cars on the road. But most highway expansion projects, including those in progress in Texas, cite reducing traffic as a primary goal.
“If you keep adding lanes because you want to reduce traffic congestion, you have to be really determined not to learn from history,” Dr. Turner said.
But think of the alternative. In Japan the trains arrive every 10 minutes are publicity subsidized so cost is minimal and because of this there exists an entire generation of train nerds that just want to go out and photograph trains. Are you gonna let the nerds win?
Can’t let a bunch of train virgins take away my Ford F-750.
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,
65 tons of American Pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
It’s getting to the point where that isn’t exaggerating all that much.
I’m all for trains and against cars, but is Japan really the best example? Don’t they have people stuffing passengers into cars with special passenger packing sticks?
In Tokyo there are 20 million people
The yamanote line at peak hour has a lot of folks, it’s true
But if these 20 million people were in cars? My friend the entire city would be a gigantic 100 lane highway and things would be significantly shittier I guarantee
Trains are the solution and america is insane for ripping up lines to force people to buy cars
100 lanes sounds like a massive exaggeration but is actually undercutting it lol. It’s insane how space and energy inefficient it is to transport that many people in individual cars.
The yamenote line transports 5 million people a day
The Katy Freeway transports 219 000 cars. Let’s say that’s 400 000 people. (pretty generous I think, most cars are just one guy driving to work)
You would need 5 million / 400 000 = 12.5 Katy freeways.
That would be 12.5*26 lanes =325 lanes!
Absolutely true. The amount of land required for not only all the damn traffic, but parking as well. Cars do not make any sense. I can see individual battery assist bikes and scooters but cars in a city are just stupid. And don’t get me started on the colossal idiocy of Musks ‘hyperloop’
I was there as a tourist this summer and it was fine overall. Middle of the day there were often lots of seats open but early morning or around 6 you had to stand but it wasnt bad at all. No pushing or anything.
The Tokyo metro system is amazing, I rode like 50 trains all over the city the entire day, and it was really pleasant the entire time
And housing is still affordable because they control zoning at the federal level and build houses to meet demand.
Whut? Everything I’ve read about housing in Japan (which admittedly is little) tell me housing is super expensive.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-japan-home-prices-stay-flat-11554210002
https://thinkrealstate.com/why-are-houses-in-japan-so-cheap/
https://marketurbanism.com/2019/03/19/why-is-japanese-zoning-more-liberal-than-us-zoning/
They are cheap compared to other major cities. It is because of vastly different zoning laws that limit sprawl (they do not have a lot of excess land) and stops NIMBY issue. They keep building to match demand.
Yup. Been plenty of studies to show that increasing lanes only alleviates traffic in the short term and long term only makes it worse. Better to spend money on trains and busses that actually work and get people where they need to go with minimal hassle and a reasonable cost than to do this crap.
to me it’s like the military industrial complex - they don’t care what evidence supports, they want their fucking money and they’ll keep building roads until it’s a giant parking lot from sea to fucking sea. we could have an ecosystem, but fuck you, because cars.
trains and busses that actually work and get people where they need to go with minimal hassle and a reasonable cost
Trains predate cars and busses have always been with us since the car. People have voted – with their cars.
The Interstate Highway System started in the 1950s. Population has more than doubled since then. Of course, we have more traffic, we have more people!
The auto industry lobbied to kill public transportation back in the day to sell more cars. For a recent example see Ellen Musk and the Hyper Loop.
This is because the extra lane allows demand to change. It is not congested so people feel ok building and moving to further out suburbs. This continues until demand has increased to cause delays.
Note that Houston and Paris have about the same population. Paris is 1/3 the size. They are actually removing a lane from their loop highway and planting trees, and turning another lane into busses only. Only considering transportation, I would much rather live in Paris.
If you also consider the weather and politics, I would still much rather live in Paris.
Let’s list the reasons why Houston is better…hrmmm…I got nothing.
But what options do you have in Houston, compared to Paris?
You can’t just not widen roads but instead
— less sprawl - places to live closer to each other and to destinations
– useful transit or short distance commute options
– remove bottlenecks
These are a lot harder to do, and I don’t imagine Houston even considered it
Investing is public transport can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be. Sure building a full on subterranean high density metro system might be the utopia, but actually developing a high frequency, high quality bus route with dedicated bus lanes can be low cost and hugely increase the volume of people carried Vs the lane you took from cars.
Compliment this with docking cycle rental schemes, and some dedicated cycle infrastructure and you can transform how a big chunk of people get to work …you start to win back the city from one which is built around cars and instead making it a city for people.
I stayed in Paris for a few months once, never once used a car. Never once had a problem getting somewhere, either.
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History? Is that a recent thing?
Source: live in Texas :(
History is a conspiracy cooked up by cultural Marxists to push their gay liberal agenda
Remember the Alamo? It’s like that but the stuff that happened after, up until now. I don’t know if there was anything before.
Source: I paid attention during my Texas History classes. (It’s an actual required class in Texas, at least when I went)
They got rid of everything before the Alamo. They towed it out of the environment.
Simply make it a single flat wide open surface, drive where you’re trying to go in a straight line.
If you die, you die.
Sounds like Moscow
Well the population decrease would certainly decrease traffic so I think you’re on to something.
Otherwise called, the Mad Max method.
Yes. This is the basic driving style on the Katy. No rules, no lanes. Just wide open spaces, bumper to bumper at a minimum of 75 mph. On a good day.
Why, oh why didn’t they build 27 lanes?!?
99% of urban planners stop just one lane short of permanently solving traffic for good.
For anyone wondering what that looks like-
Absolute insanity.
Where are the bridges? How do you walk from one side to the other?
Oh yeah, right, of course. But how do you even drive from one side to the other?
I have no idea. I’ve never driven on it. I was just searching around and was mortified.
Walk? In Houston? Nope.
Hey this looks just like my failed Cities Skylines build!
The fools, if they had made in 27 lanes they would have been fine!
27 is an odd number, do I assume the center lane switches direction for rush hour. That’s sure to fix it.
27 lanes in each direction.
I live in Katy. Driving through this from 4-7 pm is an absolute nightmare. Horrible traffic jams, erratic drivers and multi-car accidents daily. Mornings aren’t fun either.
After Hurricane Katrina I lived in Houston for about six months. I still have nightmares about your highways. I don’t know how y’all do it.
Who knew that adding complexity to a system entirely reliant on millions of autonomous drivers who only communicate with each other through lights, horns, and middle fingers would slow things down.
Lived out there for a few years and i can tell you no one is communicating through the lights on their cars.
Perhaps drivers who can’t understand the “complexity” of highways shouldn’t be on the road.
Exactly, it’d be great if said drivers had some compelling alternative to get around.
Proud to not understand that systems can be varying degrees of complexity? Not really something to be proud of.
There are limits on how well you can train a dry nosed monkey to drive a car.
You, one of those autonomous drivers, going from point A to point B might not be that complex. Traffic management in a system with millions of drivers is obviously very complex.
Houston is commonly used as an example for what NOT to do, when it comes to civil planning and development.
Literally play 2 minutes of cities skylines and you will discover how bad of an idea this is lmao
I say the words “shitty skylines” way too often driving around the real world. My city lives and dies on suicide lanes >_>
If you’ve got more lanes then you’ve got more lanes for idiots to cross right before the exit they need to take because they weren’t paying attention and they MUST take this particular exit or their life is over or something.
Consider adding gift links to this community: https://sopuli.xyz/post/2743454
Just one more lane bro. I promise. It’ll fix everything, I swear. Just one more lane bro.
