why does adding more traffic lanes doesn’t help to alleviate traffic congestion?
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I think it is also partially due to the fact that the systems are saturated with drivers or potential drivers.
If the road system is handling 150% of design capacity, adding 20% more does not make much of a dent as you are still running at 130%. It might even get worse as now more of the potential drivers take to the road (potential drivers being people that used to avoid driving or took alternate transport.)
Look at a freeway system like the 405, even at 3 am it can be bumper to bumper, and you would think a significant number of people would be asleep or at least in for the night.
You just can not build enough roadway with that density of humanity. Add to the fact that we still cram as many workers into the city center from the suburbs every day from 6am to 6 pm and you will always get gridlock.
I moved to the DC area (a huge metro with lots of suburbs) as Covid was ramping up. My commute should have been about 20 min, even with Covid ramping up, my commute was about 45 min. Once all the lockdowns went into effect, my commute was back down to 20 min and I only had any backups on poorly designed suburban roads.
Once people started to commute to work again, the times are back up till now that same commute is close to 60 min on a good day. The suburban routs that still had issues during Covid are almost undrivable.
Mass transit can only help so much, our cities are huge sprawles compared to cities with fewer issues and our population is dispersed. To get timely transit to enough people is very expensive (more per person then that person owning a car) and much of that infrastructure will sit idle or low volume for 12 – 16 hours a day. In addition, you will create traffic disruptions to the existing grid, displace people and businesses to build the new infrastructure, elevated costs to build, and doing all that while telling commuters they will need to give up their cars.
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