why does adding more traffic lanes doesn’t help to alleviate traffic congestion?
In: 26
A lot of people have mentioned induced demand, and that’s a huge part of it, but there’s another interesting part I don’t see people talking about: intersections.
If traffic is stopped, more road space is just more parking spaces and that doesn’t move anything through any faster. (It doesn’t even hold they many cars since they each take so much space). A road can technically handle a lot of traffic. Backups are caused by how many cars can get through the intersection at a time. More lanes can let more cars though the intersection, and it can also make intersections more complicated in ways that offset that.
This is why public transit can help so much with traffic. If you need to get 30 people though an intersection, you can send them through in 20 cars, or one bus. One of those clears much faster. Trains and trams can be set up to not have to negotiate intersections at all. Bike and pedestrian infrastructure gets way more throughout per land area since each person takes so much less space in the intersection and people can slip past each other easily.
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