I mean theoretically adding a lane or two should allow more cars to flow through, or would bad drivers still cause bottlenecks/gridlock despite the added capacity?
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I imagined a world that had small automous Smart Buses that would arrive at door fronts on demand, and work the neighborhoods picking up passengers and then travel to and swoop into the back of larger Road Chains that form on major thoroughfares where the small buses would exchange riders and peal back off into neighborhoods while the Road Chains split apart and sent some buses onto the freeway to hook up with and feed and off load the fast moving FreeWay Chains and
(let me catch my breath)
while other Thoroughfare Chains worked the innercirty routes.
The whole assembly of moving segments would be full of bench seats and walk ways and the passengers would have to scamper from bus to bus which joined in and then split off the Main Chains.
Smartphones would make this all possible and the passengers would get live data showing which compartment to move to next.
It’d be a never ending conveyor of people moving, modeled on our veins and arteries which are branching off, exchanging fresh blood, returning old blood back the to heart and lungs… over and over.
I imagined a world that had small automous Smart Buses that would arrive at door fronts on demand, and work the neighborhoods picking up passengers and then travel to and swoop into the back of larger Road Chains that form on major thoroughfares where the small buses would exchange riders and peal back off into neighborhoods while the Road Chains split apart and sent some buses onto the freeway to hook up with and feed and off load the fast moving FreeWay Chains and
(let me catch my breath)
while other Thoroughfare Chains worked the innercirty routes.
The whole assembly of moving segments would be full of bench seats and walk ways and the passengers would have to scamper from bus to bus which joined in and then split off the Main Chains.
Smartphones would make this all possible and the passengers would get live data showing which compartment to move to next.
It’d be a never ending conveyor of people moving, modeled on our veins and arteries which are branching off, exchanging fresh blood, returning old blood back the to heart and lungs… over and over.
It’s a really good question and I’m going to answer it in two parts.
1. Induced demand. Someone is going to bring this up. But I don’t think it is quite in the direction of your question. Induced demand is basically that as you add more lanes, you make driving faster, then more people drive, and you get traffic again. I don’t think that is actually in line with your question. But I put in there regardless as someone is going to mention it.
2. I think you should only have a maximum of 3 lanes (+exit/onramps) on road/highway. Theoretically more lanes give you more throughput. However, people changing lanes, bad drivers… tend to slow down traffic. Not to mention if there is an accident on the highway, it’s not the case that only 1 or two lanes are impacted and the other lanes all flow smoothly. The whole highway grinds to a halt as people try and change lanes… This is why I say a highway should have a MAXIMUM of 3 lanes. I’d rather see two 3-lane highways than one 6-lane highway. YOU KNOW accidents are going to happen. YOU KNOW people don’t drive smoothly and change lanes imperfectly. YOU KNOW construction is going to happen. Better to have the redundancy of another highway.
It’s a really good question and I’m going to answer it in two parts.
1. Induced demand. Someone is going to bring this up. But I don’t think it is quite in the direction of your question. Induced demand is basically that as you add more lanes, you make driving faster, then more people drive, and you get traffic again. I don’t think that is actually in line with your question. But I put in there regardless as someone is going to mention it.
2. I think you should only have a maximum of 3 lanes (+exit/onramps) on road/highway. Theoretically more lanes give you more throughput. However, people changing lanes, bad drivers… tend to slow down traffic. Not to mention if there is an accident on the highway, it’s not the case that only 1 or two lanes are impacted and the other lanes all flow smoothly. The whole highway grinds to a halt as people try and change lanes… This is why I say a highway should have a MAXIMUM of 3 lanes. I’d rather see two 3-lane highways than one 6-lane highway. YOU KNOW accidents are going to happen. YOU KNOW people don’t drive smoothly and change lanes imperfectly. YOU KNOW construction is going to happen. Better to have the redundancy of another highway.
Besides what everyone else have explained about induced demand, I remember reading in a book that after 3 lanes per side, lane changes becomes one of the big bottlenecks slowing down traffic. We humans are not good at driving; some people tend to do many unnecessary lane changes causing disruption that gets propagated trough the whole freeway, having extra lanes increases the amount of lane changes people perform exponentially, causing more disruption that eats away any gains from the extra lanes.
Besides what everyone else have explained about induced demand, I remember reading in a book that after 3 lanes per side, lane changes becomes one of the big bottlenecks slowing down traffic. We humans are not good at driving; some people tend to do many unnecessary lane changes causing disruption that gets propagated trough the whole freeway, having extra lanes increases the amount of lane changes people perform exponentially, causing more disruption that eats away any gains from the extra lanes.
The problem isn’t the whole “more lanes means more people will drive” because we already have a bunch of people who drive and we DESPERATELY need more lanes and roadways, but traffic is a complex issue.
There’s a YouTube video about ghost signals that is a great way to look at traffic.. and most of it boils down to we are stupid monkey drivers and if we paid more attention to driving than to other things we would have significantly less traffic.
but in terms of bottlenecks? You’d still get them at the end of where the more lanes stop.
If you suddenly go from 4 lanes for example to 2 lanes (which is the case for an interchange near me where it’s 4 lanes going southbound but then it splits into east or west bound traffic 2 lanes each)
It creates a natural bottle neck.
The real solution to traffic is motorcycles and generally smaller cars.
I ain’t against cars by any means, but unless you NEED the bigger car, why bother having it
The problem isn’t the whole “more lanes means more people will drive” because we already have a bunch of people who drive and we DESPERATELY need more lanes and roadways, but traffic is a complex issue.
There’s a YouTube video about ghost signals that is a great way to look at traffic.. and most of it boils down to we are stupid monkey drivers and if we paid more attention to driving than to other things we would have significantly less traffic.
but in terms of bottlenecks? You’d still get them at the end of where the more lanes stop.
If you suddenly go from 4 lanes for example to 2 lanes (which is the case for an interchange near me where it’s 4 lanes going southbound but then it splits into east or west bound traffic 2 lanes each)
It creates a natural bottle neck.
The real solution to traffic is motorcycles and generally smaller cars.
I ain’t against cars by any means, but unless you NEED the bigger car, why bother having it
Adding a 6th lane to a 5 lane street may have limited usefulness.
Adding a 3rd to 2 lanes is going to be great.
Adding a 6th lane to a 5 lane street may have limited usefulness.
Adding a 3rd to 2 lanes is going to be great.
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