why does adding more traffic lanes doesn’t help to alleviate traffic congestion?
In: 26
A number of reasons but here’s a couple big ones.
1. More lanes DOES lead to less congestion in any given lane, however because of this it leads to more people driving which more or less gets you back in the same neighborhood of where you started
2. Congestion is caused by way more than just “too many cars for a given number of lanes” – driver inefficiency/error (braking too hard/too early, not staying right if not passing, etc), onramps/offramps, conditions, and various other factors contribute. Adding more lanes doesn’t fix any of these problems (and in some cases can make things worse)
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