I was watching a civil engineer’s video where he mentioned that in some cases where there’s a traffic jam but no space to widen the road or increase lanes, engineers resort to making the road longer and/or decreasing the speed limit. How does that help?
My first thought was that it acts as a buffer but since it’s still the same road technically, the cars entering and exiting is still the same therefore the buffer would eventually be filled up and the bottleneck will pop up again.
Edit: for more context. The road is a 2-lane highway in a game video (cities skylines 2) which has no traffic light and only 1 or 2 exit ramps at the end into the city.
In: Engineering
There are more than one reason depending on the specific situation.
If we are talking about a road with traffic lights then your initial thought was correct. You want more capacity so the traffic can drain properly. If you cant add more lanes, than making the section longer provides capacity.
Decreasing the speed limit makes tis path less desirable, which means that the cars entering and exiting will not be the same. There will be less of them. Again, clearing the jam.
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