why does adding more traffic lanes doesn’t help to alleviate traffic congestion?
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People are comparing traffic demand to things like blood flow etc, but it’s important to understand scope, demand, inconsistency and how many lanes mean an improvement.
First: Demand. In a highly populated area there is a higher need for a larger amount of people to do something at one time. A seven lane highway will likely be pretty clear at 3am when most people are asleep, but in our human society we like to do things at the same time and have set schedules. That means that there are many magnitudes larger traffic demands at different times. The real question is how well the system can sustain strain.
What happens it that they will take a 4 lane highway make it 8 lanes. But, if the traffic at 5pm is 10 times larger than what it is at normal, then they have only helped to give twice as much area for the same amount of cars to take up. This might lead to traffic moving at a crawl for half the amount of time over all, but that effect isn’t going to make that large of a difference because the fact that the traffic is there is what is causing the stand still. Which means that it’s also unlikely that the traffic clearing in half the amount of time makes much of a practical difference.
This is part of the reason why transit systems that can handle large volumes of people without needing to take up tons of space (having an 8 lane highway is a lot of land to be taken up to get someone from point A to point B) are critical is highly dense populated areas like a city. It’s basically impossible for roads to keep up with volume because no matter what it’s a period of time where the infrastructure is unable to accommodate the demands and then grinds to a halt.
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