SjmarfJust one more lane
Modern_medicine_isntPeople will talk about induced demand and all that. But those people really just want to be able to get around. The fact that they just don’t because the traffic is so bad doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add more lanes. It means you should add a lot more. Same with the one lane at a time approach. The fact that it didn’t work does mean you are doing something wrong, but it maybe that you need to add 5 lanes at a time, not one.
Now I’m not saying they should actually do that, just that the arguments against are BS.
A comprehensive public transit system, well maintained and well patrolled is what LA really needs. I am talking Paris metro on steroids. And it is going to cost in the trillions. But it isn’t getting any cheaper by waiting.
A comprehensive public transit system, well maintained and well patrolled is what LA really needs. I am talking Paris metro on steroids. And it is going to cost in the trillions. But it isn’t getting any cheaper by waiting.
People on here love to shit on Houston’s massive expansion of I-10 as a failure.
It worked great for years, but the population continued to grow. Having 5 fewer lanes on each side would just make things worse or increase sprawl by pushing people further out to thin the traffic. They ain’t gonna mass-adopt bicycles in a city where the heat index is 115° + for months at a time
And the widest parts of I-10 are not the everyday choke points. Other parts of the system are the worst offenders on traffic.
But that’s the thing about induced demand. Of course widening a road temporarily improves traffic. But only temporary. That temporary improved leads to more people deciding to drive a car when they didn’t in the past or even having different moving options in mind now which they didn’t because if traffic. In the end traffic ends up the same if not worse than before.
That’s not something the Internet came up with. It’s been studied and researched for years.
It works on the simple principle of: If you make something more convenient to use, more people will use it.
Cars just don’t scale. They can’t do mass transport and aren’t meant for that.
You need to make a city walkable and have a proper public transport system otherwise you will only ever lose even more money on car infrastructure while continuing to worsen traffic, heating up the city because of the sealed surfaces, making the city less desirable to actually exist in and worsening it’s economy.
Build the city properly and people will actually choose a different option. No matter the climate in that city. Especially because heat is only worse with massive amounts of car infrastructure because they usually result in less green spaces and trees which provide shade and a cooling effect in the city.
Major cities that were largely developed after the invention of the car are almost impossible to convert to public transit. It’s even worse in hot climates where the city was largely developed after air conditioning.
Houston spends bonkers money on its light rail that nobody uses between May and October because last-mile transit is a problem in a city where you’ll sweat through your clothes waiting 10 minutes at a bus stop. The office would smell like a gym if people used it.
I work in municipal development, and it’s a rite of passage for planners to come in from out of state all excited to kill parking standards and shut down roads to make downtown pedestrian-only. Then they spend their first summer here and realize that when you have months of uninterrupted 100°+ days that you can’t just wish away the necessity of door to door transportation.