More Enviro Nonesense - Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic

[jbg]

Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?

Link to article is in headline. A few excerpts:

The proposed solution was the same one transportation officials across the country have used since the 1960s: Widen the highway. But while adding lanes can ease congestion initially, it can also encourage people to drive more. A few years after a highway is widened, research shows, traffic — and the greenhouse gas emissions that come along with it — often returns.

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The concept of induced traffic has been around since the 1960s, but in a 2009 study, researchers confirmed what transportation experts had observed for years: In a metropolitan area, when road capacity increases by 1 percent, the number of cars on the road after a few years also increases by 1 percent.

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This view, that building highways causes congestion, is nonsense. What the critics of highway building are really aiming at is the ability of people to use cars at all. A part of the move to EV's is part of the same move, to cut mobility and living standards.

They don't like natural gas, a cleaner-burning fuel as a solution either. The problem with natural gas is that it makes carbon reduction too easy and doesn't accomplish their goals, i.e. control and self-abnegation (I'll leave to other posts whether there is hypocrisy involved. The solution, i.e. restricting mobility, lifestyles and choices, preceded identifying the problem, said to be "climate change." There is a school of thought, going back to the 1960's at least, that the West is too affluent. That affluence must, by this school of thought, be punished. These people feel virtuous by making a subliminal effort to punish the population of the West for the sin of affluence and waste, to wear the hairshirt if you will. See the Club of Rome report, written over a period between 1968 and 1972, affiliated with MIT (link). This punitive ideology has been kicking around for a while.

This is reflected in the move to prevent highway widening. It is also behind the move to deliberately "gel up" traffic. These ingenious steps designed to deliberately create traffic jams and make motorists' lives miserable include:

1. Shrinking five-lane avenues, such as 9th Avenue in NYC (with happens to lead to a major tunnel) to effectively two lanes when the bike lane and the bus lane aren't counted;
2. Traffic lights which restrict left turns from and to one-way streets;
3. Two bus lanes, 24/7, on Madison Avenue, creating middle-of-the-night traffic jams;
4. Blanket 25 mph speed limits;
5. Massive Citibike racks taking up a lane of traffic for almost the length of a block;
6. Traffic flow constriction on Third Avenue leading north to Queensboro Bridge;
7. Traffic flow constriction on Second Avenue leading to Queens Midtown Tunnel; and
8. The worst, concrete blocks reducing 43rd Street between Third and Lexington Avenues to one lane on the south side of the street for half the block, and the north side of the street for the other half?

Is there some mad genius planning, or political correctness at work? Are they creating the "congestion" to allow for the "congestion pricing"? It is applied to every "crisis", whether environment, "equity" or public health. I think that's what at work with modern "engineering."

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I don't know man, 100 years ago did people even want cars and highways jamming up their relaxed walking areas, or was this foist upon them by some kind of tech teleology anyway? Ever hear of the 'third place?' Wouldn't you rather have more 'third place' areas rather than have more road? How about the idea that nature itself is holy, and is the thing that sustains us, and that we can sin against it with dense city planning? Does the modern city use more of nature's energy than it produces. If so, what justifies it?

 

[idea]

Freeways, or subways? NYers get around. Public transportation is a valid solution.

The Embarcadero Freeway revolts,
The Freeway Revolt - FoundSF

There's a cement octopus sits in Sacramento, I think.
Gets red tape to eat, gasoline taxes to drink.
And it grows by day and it grows by night,
And it rolls over ev'rything in sight.
Oh, stand by me and protect that tree
From the freeway misery...

 

[Stevicus]

Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?

Link to article is in headline. A few excerpts:


This view, that building highways causes congestion, is nonsense. What the critics of highway building are really aiming at is the ability of people to use cars at all. A part of the move to EV's is part of the same move, to cut mobility and living standards.

They don't like natural gas, a cleaner-burning fuel as a solution either. The problem with natural gas is that it makes carbon reduction too easy and doesn't accomplish their goals, i.e. control and self-abnegation (I'll leave to other posts whether there is hypocrisy involved. The solution, i.e. restricting mobility, lifestyles and choices, preceded identifying the problem, said to be "climate change." There is a school of thought, going back to the 1960's at least, that the West is too affluent. That affluence must, by this school of thought, be punished. These people feel virtuous by making a subliminal effort to punish the population of the West for the sin of affluence and waste, to wear the hairshirt if you will. See the Club of Rome report, written over a period between 1968 and 1972, affiliated with MIT (link). This punitive ideology has been kicking around for a while.

This is reflected in the move to prevent highway widening. It is also behind the move to deliberately "gel up" traffic. These ingenious steps designed to deliberately create traffic jams and make motorists' lives miserable include:

1. Shrinking five-lane avenues, such as 9th Avenue in NYC (with happens to lead to a major tunnel) to effectively two lanes when the bike lane and the bus lane aren't counted;
2. Traffic lights which restrict left turns from and to one-way streets;
3. Two bus lanes, 24/7, on Madison Avenue, creating middle-of-the-night traffic jams;
4. Blanket 25 mph speed limits;
5. Massive Citibike racks taking up a lane of traffic for almost the length of a block;
6. Traffic flow constriction on Third Avenue leading north to Queensboro Bridge;
7. Traffic flow constriction on Second Avenue leading to Queens Midtown Tunnel; and
8. The worst, concrete blocks reducing 43rd Street between Third and Lexington Avenues to one lane on the south side of the street for half the block, and the north side of the street for the other half?

Is there some mad genius planning, or political correctness at work? Are they creating the "congestion" to allow for the "congestion pricing"? It is applied to every "crisis", whether environment, "equity" or public health. I think that's what at work with modern "engineering."

Well, I'm not sure what to think about this, although I'm not surprised if traffic increases on freeways or roads where the capacity is increased. The whole reason for widening roads is to accommodate an increased amount of traffic which may have been caused by many other factors. I would question the logic behind a presumption that wider roads, in and of themselves, are a direct cause of increased traffic.

And if there are actually government officials out there who believe that narrower roads will lead to reduced traffic, that doesn't seem realistic either.

It seems the primary reason for widening roads is to accommodate a pre-existing condition in order to facilitate safer travel. Why would they think that widening roads would reduce traffic anyway? The whole idea is safety. I agree with reducing greenhouse emissions however we can, but maybe we should think about reducing the number of cars on the roads before reducing the roads.

Urban sprawl and population growth seem to the main factors. As automobiles made transportation more convenient for people, along with public streets, roads, and highways, more people could move out of the cities and into the suburbs. Entire metropolitan areas surround the major cities, all linked to the city center like spokes on a wheel.

Some of it is also economic. With gentrification being a thing in recent decades, many working people can't afford the luxury of living in some of these revamped urban areas, so they move out to areas where housing is more affordable yet not in some high-crime area. The more affordable housing and better living situation makes up for whatever extra time and gas one expends on a longer commute to work, at least for a lot of people. When my grandfather lived in Riverside, California, I saw some of his neighbors leaving at 6a to go to work in downtown LA. A minimum two-hour commute one way.

The same phenomenon seems to be repeated all over the country in every major urban area. Now, it's no longer suburbs, but ex-urbs - further out than the suburbs - and they also demand more roads to accommodate the increased traffic.

The thing is, a lot of people don't seem to want to live in the cities, yet they still want to enjoy the benefits and opportunities of living near a large city. Some people want to live in some semi-rural, country-like setting, but close enough to the city - and with superhighways to get them back and forth.

So that's what we're dealing with in terms of traffic and greenhouse emissions. It's a cultural phenomenon. It's not going to change just by reducing the number of lanes on the highway. That would only lead to more accidents.

 

[Revoltingest]

Urban sprawl and population growth seem to the main factors.

Even worse than urban sprawl, are suburban sprawl,
& rural housing sprawl. These require more land per
housing unit, more road surface area, & more total
car person miles. Mass transit won't work in such
spread out building.

 

[idea]

Mass transit won't work in such
spread out building.

They're called park-n-rides, and work just fine

 

[Stevicus]

Even worse than urban sprawl, are suburban sprawl,
& rural housing sprawl. These require more land per
housing unit, more road surface area, & more total
car person miles. Mass transit won't work in such
spread out building.

I've known quite a few people who moved out to outlying areas where housing was much cheaper. For what they were saving, it more than made up for the extra costs in gas and mileage.

 

[Revoltingest]

They're called park-n-rides, and work just fine

Better to have than not.

 

[Revoltingest]

I've known quite a few people who moved out to outlying areas where housing was much cheaper. For what they were saving, it more than made up for the extra costs in gas and mileage.

People often fail to consider the time spent
commuting, & vehicle depreciation. Gasoline
is a regular expense, so they tend to focus upon
it to the exclusion of other costs.
This also raises the issue of population increase,
ie, that the consequent density increase causes
housing costs to raise.

 

[idea]

Better to have than not.

Read a book on the way to work, sleep, chat, so much better than driving.

I was chatting with a NYer on subways (I'm not from NY), their comnent when finding where I'm from was - Oh, people drive cars there, right? Haha, they had never owned a car.

 

[Revoltingest]

Read a book on the way to work, sleep, chat, so much better than driving.

Read in a car?
Ugh...a recipe for nausea.
Still, I favor carpooling, & have done much.

 

[Shaul]

Read a book on the way to work, sleep, chat, so much better than driving.

I was chatting with a NYer on subways (I'm not from NY), their comnent when finding where I'm from was - Oh, people drive cars there, right? Haha, they had never owned a car.

Then there are the subway attacks, limited schedules and locations and service outages....

 

[Revoltingest]

Then there are the subway attacks, limited schedules and locations and service outages....

Even in NYC (@Wu Wei's stomping grounds),
I've used subways with no trouble.
And there were no road rage incidents.

 

[Stevicus]

People often fail to consider the time spent
commuting, & vehicle depreciation. Gasoline
is a regular expense, so they tend to focus upon
it to the exclusion of other costs.
This also raises the issue of population increase,
ie, that the consequent density increase causes
housing costs to raise.

Well, sure, there are downsides with any option, but I can see where some people might also consider it healthier to live in a semi-rural setting as opposed a more urban setting which might have more crime and other social ills that tend to affect quality of life.

My only point was that this phenomenon is likely to continue. I've seen my own city double in size over the years, and areas which had very little settlement become populated. Then roads which were previously hardly traveled suddenly become choked with traffic - and then people demand more, wider roads. My observation is that the housing projects and subdivisions go up first - and then the roads come later - at least as a general rule. It seems they can never build the roads fast enough to accommodate the growth.

The OP article seemed to suggest the opposite (although I couldn't read all of it due to the paywall). It was saying that traffic increased because they widened the roads, which doesn't seem logical.

 

[Shaul]

Even in NYC (@Wu Wei's stomping grounds),
I've used subways with no trouble.
And there were no road rage incidents.

And I'm glad it went well for you. But those things do happen even if they didn't happen to you.

 

[Stevicus]

Even in NYC (@Wu Wei's stomping grounds),
I've used subways with no trouble.
And there were no road rage incidents.

I've heard that it's been getting worse in NYC the past couple of years, as if they're reverting back to the bad old days of yore - the kind of NYC as depicted in Taxi Driver and The Warriors.

 

[idea]

Then there are the subway attacks, limited schedules and locations and service outages....

"taking public transit, such as trains and buses, decreases the chances of an individual being in an accident by more than 90 percent when compared to driving" New Study Confirms Public Transit is Safer Than Driving; Progressive Railroading Highlights Summer by Rail; Amtrak to Keep Late Night Hiawatha Service | Rail Passengers Association | Washington, DC

 

[idea]

I've heard that it's been getting worse in NYC the past couple of years, as if they're reverting back to the bad old days of yore - the kind of NYC as depicted in Taxi Driver and The Warriors.

I was there before 9-11, and after. People were more polite after 9-11. Last summer experienced predatory towing, one small confrontation in a doorway, but overall it was fine. Just know where you're going, don't hold anyone up, avoid talking to the crazies haha.

 

[Viker]

The same old story from through out the ages, people complaining about the coming changes. We should have never left behind horse drawn buggies, or forgotten arsenic was good in our tummies.

 

[Stevicus]

Read a book on the way to work, sleep, chat, so much better than driving.

I was chatting with a NYer on subways (I'm not from NY), their comnent when finding where I'm from was - Oh, people drive cars there, right? Haha, they had never owned a car.

Yes, I've known New Yorkers who don't have cars or driver's licenses. I knew a guy from NY who moved to southern Arizona and rode a bicycle everywhere. He didn't have a license and didn't know how to drive a car. He seemed to be making enough money that he could have gotten a car and a license if he wanted to, but he just didn't want to.

In my visits to NYC, I didn't really have a problem with the traffic (at least not any more than in any other city), but it's the parking that's the real problem there.