May 28, 2006
HIGHWAYS CREATED DRIVERS, NOT VICE VERSA (via Tom Morin)
THE SLOW LANE: Can anyone solve the problem of traffic? (JOHN SEABROOK, 2002-09-02, The New Yorker)
Since September 11th, as anyone who drives in New York knows, traffic patterns have changed. Congestion cleared up when Mayor Giuliani used his special emergency powers to restrict bridge and tunnel crossings into Manhattan below Sixtieth Street. Not since the Second World War had traffic in the city flowed as freely. In April, restrictions were lifted on some crossings, but morning-rush-hour restrictions on lone drivers entering Manhattan remained in effect below Fourteenth Street. Although the cleanup operation at Ground Zero has now ended, Mayor Bloomberg—who, during his campaign, promised to improve the quality of life in New York by making the city less auto-reliant—says that he will keep the restrictions in place while the reconstruction of lower Manhattan continues. Traffic has been getting steadily worse since April, but it's still less crowded in the city now than it was a year ago. [...]Since 1970, the population of the United States has grown by forty per cent, while the number of registered vehicles has increased by nearly a hundred per cent—in other words, cars have proliferated more than twice as fast as people have. During this same period, road capacity increased by six per cent. If these trends continue through 2020, every day will resemble a getaway day, with its mixture of commuters, truckers, and recreational drivers, who take to the road without regard for traditional peak travel times, producing congestion all day long: trucks that can't make deliveries on time, people who can't get to or from work, air quality that continues to deteriorate as commerce suffers and our over-all geopolitical position weakens because we are forced to become ever more dependent on foreign oil. This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a traffic jam. [...]
No major new highways have been built around New York since the nineteen-seventies, partly because there's no room left, and partly because many people believe that building highways makes congestion worse, because drivers who had previously used mass transit to avoid the traffic begin using the new roads. Even if no new drivers take to the new roads, scientists have shown that increased road capacity alone can increase congestion, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as "Braess's paradox," after a German mathematician named Dietrich Braess. In the twenty-three American cities that added the most new roads per person during the nineteen-nineties, traffic congestion rose by more than seventy per cent.
MORE:
The sum of all things in road levy (Seattle Times, 5/28/06)
Mayor Greg Nickels' proposed levy for Seattle roads, bridges and other items is too big and lasts too long. But the central idea is all right. A smaller, shorter levy focused on roads and bridges alone makes sense.
Make it higher and don't waste the money on roads. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 28, 2006 8:43 AM
You can't use an anomaly like New York as the prototype for a general solution. But that's not gonna stop the Utopians and the Social Engineers from trying.
And it would be interesting to compare phones to cars since the number of the former has probably increased in even greater numbers than the latter. Is the explosion of phone use a cause of greater traffic lanes, or because of them? Does adding more phone capacity cause that use to increase?
Thanks to such inventions as HOV/HOT lanes and Intelligent Transportation Systems, the definition of freeway capacity has been altered. Once more toll roads come into service, the definition will be further altered.
Most of DOT's new "High Priority Corridors" are in rural areas, not metros.
Posted by: Brad S at May 28, 2006 11:14 AMThe Utopians built the highways.
Posted by: oj at May 28, 2006 11:26 AMoj. First time I've heard Ike being called a Utopian. Who or what are they anyway?
Posted by: erp at May 28, 2006 12:48 PMPeople who believe that by imposing a completely new way of life they'll improve our lot. Ike wanted a highway system so it would be easier to wage an imaginary WWIII so he did real damage to the America that had grown up organically.
Posted by: oj at May 28, 2006 2:11 PMDon't get me started on the organic growth of Orrin's beloved railroads.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 28, 2006 2:49 PMNothing and nobody could have stopped our love affair with the automobile. Talk about organic. We grew up knowing that when we reached the magic age of 18, we could D-R-I-V-E !!! and when the great day came and the driver's license appeared in the mail, we were F-R-E-E !!!! My first solo was a winter drive in the late afternoon from Queens to Jones Beach in 1952. I don't think Magellan or Chuck Yeager could have felt anymore like an adventurer than I.
My car will be the last thing I give up before they close my eyes for that last time.
Over thirty years ago there was talk about building an outer beltway around Washington to help reduce the traffic on the original, which at that point was only about 10 years old. Had it been built, such a road would have kept thru traffic (i.e., people going up and down I-95) out of the area and almost certainly have alleviated the traffic jams that are routine.
I'd rather not build more roads, but rail isn't the answer unless people change their attitudes.
The fact is most don't want to give up the convenience (as they see it) of having their car with them.
That trend didn't start when Boomers began driving. I have a book on Washington's streetcars, which stopped running in 1962. The book makes clear that the rate of automoblie ownership in Washington was always high and that the streetcar heyday really was before and during the war - the war being World War ONE.
Posted by: George at May 28, 2006 4:36 PMIf they had to pay the true cost of their driving they wouldn't think it convenient anymore.
Posted by: oj at May 28, 2006 4:55 PMI do and Jacob Riis.
Posted by: erp at May 28, 2006 5:53 PMThe fact that people still drive in Manhattan, with the nation's best mass transportation, highest parking prices, relatively high tolls and congested streets tells us everything we need to know about the chances of separating Americans from their cars.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 29, 2006 12:10 AM