‘Science Friday’ discusses this with the author of a recent book: Why Do We Keep Widening Highways If It Doesn’t Reduce Traffic?
This isn’t news. I suspect everyone here would rather see the whole world paved so I adjure you to think about not-widening highways as a benefit to yourselves: losers will take mass transit, freeing the highways for yourselves, getting the amateurs off your roads.
My take, just from experience, by the time a widening project is completed, it is already obsolete. Plus, there will always be people that drive slow in the left lane or other drivers that choose to match speed with a driver in an adjacent lane slowing all traffic.
In my city, a surface street just added more traffic lights&crosswalks. Where do pedestrians and bike riders cross the street? Twenty feet from the crosswalk rather than wait for a light to change.
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IMO problems arise when roads aren’t uniformly widened. For instance, US29 north of the Patuxent River is 3 lanes each way until it gets south of Columbia, MD where it narrows to 2 lanes each way. Shortly after that it is widened to 3 lanes again until it gets to the main exit for Columbia. Then it widens again north of MD108 ( a few miles) and stays that way until I-70 where it narrows to 2 lanes for the last 1000 feet or so of U29. Every time it narrows traffic is snarled during rush hour. If the road was uniformly 3 lanes in each direction, I doubt that traffic would be entangled.
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I agree… but people will be people…
A section of I-75 between Fort Myers and Naples is 3 lanes each way all along that section far south and far north. The southbound lanes towards Bonita Springs clogs up every morning at exit 123 - Corkscrew Road. For no reason at all. Fairly often there is an accident but every commuting day it slows to a crawl past that exit no matter if that exit is backed up or free.
I’ve been driving that section for 8 years volunteering at the car museum and do not understand why this happens.
Just for the record, I think the traffic increases are causation and not correlation. This is just another excuse to stop building highways to force people into mass transit or city living. Neither of which is going to happen.
When I-696 north of Detroit opened it was immediately filled with traffic. The parallel streets freed up by quite a bit so clearly there was a demand for another 6 lane highway.
People will choose their homes based on commute times they will tolerate. Historically that was 20-25 minutes. If a highway is widened, those choices change. If the highways are always a mess, people will negotiate with their bosses a flexible work time to minimize their commute times.
Employers will choose their work times based on traffic patterns. When I worked at GM, the plants started at 7:00 am and ran until 3 pm. Second shift was 3 pm to 11pm and 3rd 11pm to 7 am. The office folks arrived at 8 am and worked until 5. This spread incoming and outgoing traffic out. Retail jobs started at 10 to 11 am and closed at 8 pm in the old days when the downtown was the retail center.
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But, then we have the phenomenon of narrowing a road to slow the traffic. A few years ago, they reduced a secondary highway near me from 2 lanes to one lane. I don’t know if it slowed the traffic, but it definitely resulted in traffic jams.
Let’s be real. The vast majority of commuters have no mass transit options. I drive 37 miles one-way. I live in a typical suburban neighborhood in a large population area on the west coast. I would love to take a bus or train but it’s simply not an option. The infrastructure and services aren’t there.
It’s a 30 minute walk to the closest bus stop. From there a 20 min ride to the transit center. Hour forty-five ride to the transit center nearest my office, followed by 15 min bus and 10 min walk to work.
Who would or can spend 3 hours every morning on a trip that can be done by car in a little over an hour?
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The more lanes, the more confused people get, Nashville has 3 interstates going through the middle and around it all connecting to each other… I just went to a wedding back in September and I had not been in that area for years, WITH GPS and my daughter giving me turn by turn instructions, it was still crazy, all the way to the left lane, now back to the right lane, wait back to the middle lane now far left… gezzz I was lost af for a while and the traffic was stupid slow on a Saturday afternoon, never saw a wreck… it was wayyy easier to navigate before they redesigned all the roads with the on/off ramps and widening the interstates…
I HATE going anywhere near Nashville for years now, I worked downtown for almost 8 years until December 2018…
They should never be allowed to overbuild a city that can not support the extra traffic, or anywhere… and it is only gonna get worse…
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When I was working it was much faster to drive than take public transportation. My commute was 25 minutes in and 35 minutes home on good days. If I used public transportation, I would have driven 15 minutes to the commuter train station, taken the train to DC (7 stops, about 20 minutes) then taken the bus (about 35 minutes) then walked 10 minutes to my office building. That’s 80 minutes, almost tripling the commute time and probably more with down time waiting for connections.
A neighbor takes the train route I would have taken, but he would continue to Union Station then get the subway to the federal district in downtown DC. It’s a quick walk from there to his office and he doesn’t have to pay for parking.
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Not having to pay for Parking was the big driver for me when I was stationed in downtown DC. $10/ day MARC tickets and a walk vs $25/day parking and a shorter walk….
We just recently widened I-93 from Salem NH to Manchester NH from 2 lanes to 4. Drastic reduction of traffic. Easily 5-fold.
I think adding lanes is only one part of the picture. You need to do it right. Not only did NH go from 2 lanes to 4 - they also drastically increased the length of on-ramps. Went from a couple hundred yards to over a mile. Gives people more time to merge safely.
Over 20 years ago MA and NH widened Rt-3 from 2 lanes to 3 (4 in some spots). Again, it drastically decreased traffic. Now they’re going to expand that from where they left off in Nashua all the way up to Manchester and widen I-93 from Manchester to Concord NH.
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One of the reasons why I despise having to drive on NY’s Belt Parkway (in order to get to JFK airport) is that the merging lanes are so incredibly short. Some of the merging lanes have been lengthened a bit over the years from their original length of just a few hundred feet, but even the lengthened lanes are still so short that they present a major safety hazard.
Of course, in the short term having more lanes reduces overall congestion. The issue is that it encourages more people to move into that area and use the road since it is a nice commute. It doesn’t take long for it to go back to the same issue but with even more traffic due to the increased capacity. Then, if the feeder roads are not improved, it is actually much worse than it was before.
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I remember when I-287 first opened (circa 1964), and when we rode on that expressway on Sundays, it was virtually empty. Because that interstate went through a section of Central NJ that had previously been served only by antiquated narrow roads, it led to a building boom (both residential and commercial) that continues to this day.
The interstate highway that was virtually empty in the mid '60s became more crowded as the years passed, and at this point it can come almost to a standstill during commuting hours.
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Without reading the article I’ll just ad a few of my experiences. I used to drive I 35 every day until i5 became impossible. We had a bus driver strike and there was far less congestion than usual. No slow buses rambling into the driving lanes slowing everyone down. I could drive the 60 miles to work just as fast as those that lived in town and took the bus.
So one day the finished adding a third lane to 35 and all was great again. A week later they turned it into a HOV lane and we were back to congestion again. They said it was a federal requirement. The old idea of those causing the problem arriving on the scene again to solve the problem they created comes to mind.
I’m with @asemaster on this . . . my commute is about 20 minutes at this time
Were I to use public transportation, my commute time would be intolerable
I’ve found that surface roads are much faster than highways in LA. Do you find that too? I stayed in El Segundo and worked there too. Most of my driving was also in the beach communities.
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Many years ago, a friend (who lived in NYC and did not own a car) insisted that I should be able to commute to work via public transport. Yes, I could have, but it would have meant an ordeal that would take more than twice the time because of having to take two buses (whose schedules were not coordinated), and then walking the last mile or so on a road with no shoulders and no sidewalk. Ummm… no, thank you!
“Could” and “should” are two very different propositions.
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Just out of college a friend took an accounting job at mars in Chicago. I don’t remember all the details but something like bike to the train station, walk after that to the office and a few more changes. Took over an hour each way. Moved to louisiannna.