Highway Robbery

October 12, 2024 8:18 PM

Government highway agencies have enabled the blatant falsification of traffic model results. As a result, the United States wastes billions on road expansions that fail to cure congestion and make it harder to get around without a car.
posted by ursus_comiter (30 comments total)

JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO
JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO
JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO
JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO
I SWEAR BRO
JUST ONE MORE, I SWEAR
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:54 PM on October 12 [39 favorites]

By that reasoning, traffic would get better the more lanes we remove. 0 lanes would be the best of all.

Good thing for the rest of us, the “just one more lane bro!” horseshit falls on deaf ears.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:19 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

That was a lot of words to wade through to finally get to the proposed solution: “…shows the growing support for managing traffic congestion by limiting automobile use instead of making more room for cars.”

Amen!

Has anybody been to Toronto recently? I have, and the traffic congestion was traumatizing. Bikes and transit won’t solve Toronto’s problem, not by a long shot. And neither will the newest crazy proposal of building a 55 kilometre tunnel under the 401
posted by ashbury at 9:24 PM on October 12 [6 favorites]

the point of more lanes isn't to reduce congestion – everyone understands induced demand – but rather to increase throughput . . . I'm happy CA-99 is getting widened to 3 lanes finally since 2 just isn't enough with all the trucks on the road
posted by torokunai at 9:27 PM on October 12 [1 favorite]

Maybe that meme isn't as widely recognized as I thought?

From the Know Your Meme listing for "one more lane bro."

One More Lane Bro also known as One More Lane Will Fix It refers to a catchphrase used to denounce public infrastructure policies that prioritize low-impact highway expansions over public transport expansions.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:30 PM on October 12 [13 favorites]

0 lanes would be the best of all.

No lanes means no traffic, yes, you're getting it.
posted by axiom at 9:36 PM on October 12 [18 favorites]

The article seems to be conflating multiple issues, including cases where new lanes are just a useless boondoggle justified by boosterish growth projections, ones where new lanes won’t really do any good because they’ll just feed most drivers into other bottleneck points, and those where new demand will, as torokunai says, lead to higher throughout at the same speed.

And I think the reactions here show why you can’t just say “don’t build any more lanes” without offering a credible transit alternative at the same time.

Otherwise, the fact that an added lane enables or induces more trips at the same speed isn’t going to be seen as bad, since each of those new trips is presumably improving the life of the trip taker and anyone they’re doing business with or visiting.

The article mentions that people might walk, bike, or carpool otherwise, but in practice how often are those viable alternatives to a major highway or interstate bridge? You really need a train system or at least a bus network to compete with cars.

I do wish the article talked in more detail about simply moving the bottleneck elsewhere, too. It would be interesting to know how many of these projects effectively fail to even draw new traffic because the vast majority of people on a now wider section of road continue into a still-narrow section of road, and that seems like something it would be useful for activists to learn how to predict and raise early on.
posted by smelendez at 10:53 PM on October 12 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I did not read the article yet, but being familiar with the problem the first few reactions make me deeply sad.

I grew up in the states and lived there for over 40 years of my life. I now live in the Netherlands. Trust me -- there IS a better way. When you prioritize the efficient movement of people over the preferences of drivers what you get is more freedom for everyone who needs to get around. You get transit that actually works, streets you actually want to walk on and don't leave you sucking car fumes with every step, fully-connected bike infrastructure that keeps you safe rather than mixing you with cars at high speeds, and, yes this is true: LESS traffic on the road for drivers. Don't you think that some of those people sitting in traffic in front of you would prefer to be biking or relaxing and reading on the train rather than sitting in traffic? Do you know how empty the roads would be if you actually gave those people options? I need to put together some shorts I have of rush hour in the Netherlands and post them -- because I get it, growing up in the US I know it's impossible to picture how much better things can be if you've never seen it with your own eyes. But y'all really need to see, not only for the climate, but also because LIFE is so much better in a place with infrastructure that doesn't prioritize cars (parents don't have to chauffeur their kids everywhere for one, the kids bike themselves, the landscape is more beautiful, built-up areas aren't noisy all the time, those like me who can't drive can still live independently, etc. etc.) and y'all deserve that.
posted by antinomia at 12:39 AM on October 13 [47 favorites]

I recently drove to Toronto from the States. What was supposed to be a 4 hour trip turned into six, both going in and coming out, bumper to bumper all the way from/to Hamilton. I’m not planning to go back any time soon.
posted by waving at 1:57 AM on October 13 [1 favorite]

One thing that tends to explain how traffic management is more complicated than people think is to point out junction capacity. Everyone focuses on "lanes" (hence the meme), but ignores the fact that intersections of two roads of necessity can at best handle some asymptotic approach to 50% of the capacity of the sum of the roads involved.

That is, the lights are only green for half the traffic at any given time, and the other half is waiting. And it takes time to slow to a stop and start from a dead stop, and you need a buffer between them. So an ideal junction of two four-lane roads (8 lanes total) will at best be able to handle a little over three lanes' worth of cars before things get ugly. And that's going to require banning turns.

Once the Krispy Kreme commenter above has accepted this, it's a door into actually understanding why highways expansions almost never work: they funnel more cars into networks of ever-more contested junctions, and the back-pressure is unavoidable.

But what is avoidable is people feeling the need to drive for every journey. The only way to solve motor traffic is to create reliable and practical alternatives to driving. Give people real choices so they can decide how to travel.

But the US in particular has insisted on a Stalinist model for transport planning that sets parking minima and road straightening and widening as the only Accepted Orthodoxy for Increasing Industrial Capacity. It treats motor vehicle numbers the way communist countries used to try and measure tonnes of steel: not actually paying attention to how things are being constructed or used, but as a Number Go Up target on a wide scale. Enjoy your rusting hastily-forged saucepan covered in tin patches: it means someone met their quota! Now go enjoy a pleasant drive on the Katy Freeway!!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:48 AM on October 13 [20 favorites]

Y’all miss the point (as does the article); construction companies make a lot of money building highway expansions. A LOT. The powers that be know they don’t work.
posted by Admiral Viceroy at 4:24 AM on October 13 [10 favorites]

The article mentions that people might walk, bike, or carpool otherwise, but in practice how often are those viable alternatives to a major highway or interstate bridge? You really need a train system or at least a bus network to compete with cars.

Congestion is mostly an urban phenomenon: what’s happening here isn’t long-distance shipping or road trips, but people moving to the suburbs because the house is cheaper but than realizing their trip to work requires 120 personal square feet of road space just like everyone else. Yes, buses need to be on the list but most cities have those – the problem is the cultural messaging that only losers take the bus. Carpooling isn’t a game-changer but it can be quite effective: traffic is made up of cars and halving the number helps a lot.

The problem is the subsidies: as the article notes, you can quite easily reduce congestion by charging people for creating it. Traffic is made up of cars, and tolls directly incentivize not making it worse but then you’re cutting into the massive taxpayer money fountain going to highway projects and all of the contractors have extensive lobbying operations / employment for former DOT employees geared at preventing such a tragedy. There is a simple fix for congestion but the hard part is not getting it Hochul-ed before it gets off the ground.
posted by adamsc at 5:24 AM on October 13 [9 favorites]

My European city is adding a ten-lane junction between the library and the train station - part of a plan that’s been in the works since the 1990s - and the profits for people working on it are through the roof. Don’t forget that roads also need upkeep (more contracts for friendly businessmen)
posted by The River Ivel at 6:00 AM on October 13

But y'all really need to see, not only for the climate, but also because LIFE is so much better in a place with infrastructure that doesn't prioritize cars

I knew and sort of viscerally felt this fact as soon as I spent enough time in cities as a young person. The point was further driven home (so to speak) when I was recently rear-ended by a car while bicycling in an unprotected bike lane.

I don't know why the idea is lost on so many people even here in NYC (where I see for example countless unthinking but presumably well intentioned people driving poorly or idling for a full hour and a half during alternate side parking), but I suspect it's something to do with an outdated idea of "the good life".
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:02 AM on October 13 [4 favorites]

On the point of capacity and intersections, this video by a traffic engineer in the Netherlands makes a similar point, specifically that capacity per se is not something they consider.
posted by idb at 7:17 AM on October 13 [4 favorites]

Following on to the junction capacity comment, we have found that upgrading the junctions themselves can have a dramatic impact on traffic flow without needing to add an entire two lanes across 10km of road.

At the nearest major intersection to my house, we have 4 lanes east west (2 each way) and 4 lanes north south.

But the intersection itself has 9 lanes each in the approach to the intersection, which is more than double the 4 travel lanes. The extra lanes act as buffers.

In a very simplistic way of thinking, if your light is red half the time, but during the green you can push through twice as much traffic as your lanes are feeding you, you break even and the junction can keep up.

The far side of the junction also has extra lanes to receive the burst of traffic during green cycles of course, which eventually narrows to 4 lanes. The buffer on the far side also fills up during a green, and gradually empties during a red cycle before another green occurs.
posted by xdvesper at 8:03 AM on October 13 [2 favorites]

On the suburbanisation front, just adding a commuting means that is separated from car traffic (so tram, rail, buses with dedicated roads that don't have cars waiting to turn blocking bus lanes - Oberhausen in Germany has a system like that for example) has an absolutely dramatic effect on traffic in any suburb in Europe, at least. Those things fill up to capacity the moment you offer a decent timetable, because way over half the people on the road aren't welded to their cars - when they get a traffic-independent means of getting into the city, one where they can play with their phones or read rather than spend all the time concentrating, they take it.

Dirty secret of traffic analysis: like half the benefit from that is to the people who are welded to their cars, whether from temperament or actual need. If half the people in the traffic jam are now on the train, there is no more traffic jam and everyone gets to their work/school/errands quicker.

It's freaking expensive to offer a decent traffic-separated transit system, but it's worth it. Most of Europe tore out its trams after World War II, following the US lead in considering them outdated now that people had cars - and they've been coming back with a vengeance. In France alone, there were 6 operational tram networks in 1984 - now there are 28. And a double tram track doesn't take up much more room than an extra road lane.

(Don't get me started on the various ways you can fiddle with traffic models - just like Excel they're a Garbage In Garbage Out thing, with the added bonus that software to read them is extremely expensive and requires a whole specialised education to read or edit. If you're relying on traffic modelling at all, you need to also have people who can challenge the modellers, but that is very rare expertise.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 8:33 AM on October 13 [7 favorites]

Toronto's highways are hilarious, in a soul-crushing way. 18 lanes of road, trillions of dollars of pavement, a parking lot up to twelve hours per day, and "Ford Motor Speedway" the rest.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:44 AM on October 13 [3 favorites]

I need to put together some shorts I have of rush hour in the Netherlands and post them

The YouTube channel Not Just Bikes (run by a Canadian expat living in the Netherlands) has lots of footage of Dutch roads, helpfully juxtaposed with their North American counterparts.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:48 AM on October 13 [3 favorites]

I live in NYC and recently visited London for the first time and it was crushing. I know London has plenty of problems and is nowhere close to Amsterdam but like. I was able to get to every single place I wanted to go (primarily not major tourist spots) on buses, without ever having to transfer between them, and I experienced what I would describe as typical daily NYC road traffic exactly once, briefly - other than that one time, they were clipping along just fine. It almost never took me over five minutes to walk to a bus stop, the max being 10. And every rush hour I saw hundreds of people on bikes. This is RECENT, and absolutely achievable here, except that when you try to talk to most people about congestion pricing in NYC they just absolutely refuse to engage with it. Meanwhile buses in central Manhattan go five miles an hour. In Midtown hundreds of people will be crammed on the corners of a single intersection waiting for ten cars to pass. It’s such a fucking bummer.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:33 PM on October 13 [14 favorites]

→ And neither will the newest crazy proposal of building a 55 kilometre tunnel under the 401

I've a feeling that scheme — plus DougDad's latest big-mad over bike lanes stemming from a spat in his belovèd Etobicoke — might be something to do with Highway 413. 413 is Doug's personal “one more lane bro” concession to his developer buddies (who conveniently bought land all along it before it as officially announced) and I suspect the province is hitting some real environmental issues with the permitting. I suspect some smokescreen work is going on, especially since Doug's set on a snap election.
posted by scruss at 1:59 PM on October 13 [2 favorites]

I think a lot of what drives the disconnect in this discussion is that we want to generalize rules of thumb that will apply anywhere in the country and distill them into slogans, but reality is far messier.

There are times and places where just one more lane, bro, will actually solve a traffic problem for a substantial period of time. There are times and places where adding lanes does fuck all except ruin the ability for people to get around their city in anything but a car.

Some generalization is still possible, however. In large urban areas, and especially in the center of those areas, adding more lanes does nothing good. We already built shit tons of roads, cut up the cities, and dedicating more space to roads is just adding insult to injury.

In smaller cities, especially those that aren't rapidly growing and between cities, there are times and places where building more or better roads or adding new lanes can dramatically improve the traffic situation.

Problem is, that as others have noted, there is a strong bias toward building unnecessary road projects for various political reasons. What I find most infuriating about that situation is that even when it's a choice between building road infrastructure and rail infrastructure constructed by the very same interests there's still a strong bias toward building roads. State DOTs are a lot more comfortable doing the thing they always do, so roads it is.
posted by wierdo at 5:45 PM on October 13 [3 favorites]

There are times and places where just one more lane, bro, will actually solve a traffic problem for a substantial period of time.

I dunno, it seems to me that framing the problem as "traffic" cooks the books in favor of car dependency. If instead the problem is "people getting around" you get very different answers. Especially once you notice that something like a quarter of people can't/don't drive (closer to a half in urban areas).
posted by daveliepmann at 3:11 AM on October 14 [7 favorites]

In smaller cities, especially those that aren't rapidly growing and between cities, there are times and places where building more or better roads or adding new lanes can dramatically improve the traffic situation.

I’ve seen a few cases where that’s true but it runs into a different problem: if an area has such low economic potential that it doesn’t induce demand which cancels out the benefit, they can’t really afford to maintain that infrastructure. The places which came to mind first were in rural Maryland where Governor Hogan was pretty widely recognized as giving those contracts to reward supporters rather than because even a very highway-focused transportation department couldn’t make a good case from an economic perspective.
posted by adamsc at 5:45 AM on October 14 [5 favorites]

Problem is, that as others have noted, there is a strong bias toward building unnecessary road projects for various political reasons.

For every study I've seen, it's because the consultancy costs (not actual construction costs - those are low in the US) are much higher for road projects than rail, and far more US civil engineering firms have experience, so politically it's far more valuable to spread those costs (generally 50-60% of the project cost is consulting) to more firms, which spreads 'votes'.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:21 AM on October 14 [1 favorite]

Another huge problem with the "traffic" framing is that it assumes that all of the places people want to go are completely fixed - but they're responsive to how long it takes to get there. If you stop building for ever more throughput, people in the suburbs might have to relax their zoning and actually, like, build some shit, rather than insisting that other people elsewhere knock down their houses and businesses to accommodate more cars.
posted by McBearclaw at 10:13 AM on October 14 [3 favorites]

Er, "traffic" is "people getting around". Do you really think that all traffic is motor traffic? Do you never talk of foot traffic or cycle traffic?

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth, with their death, bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents' rage —
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove —
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

(Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Prologue, emphasis mine)
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:21 PM on October 14 [1 favorite]

All roads should be shrunk to one lane per direction, after which we reserve the space required for busses, medical uses, food transport, etc, and finally we auction off the remaining road space. You hop into your care, search your route in some online map, it displays a recommended bid, you press "pay", and then it tells you if the payment succeeded. If those one lane roads feel overcroded, then you know you sniped a deal on the price today, and likely they'll be less crowded later.

Above, idb linked this video which shows that all semi-urban roads should be shrunk to one lane each way, because intersections need six incoming lanes before they handle the car capacity of one moving lane.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:53 PM on October 14 [2 favorites]

Er, "traffic" is "people getting around". Do you really think that all traffic is motor traffic? Do you never talk of foot traffic or cycle traffic?

I love pedantry, but I gotta live in the actual world, where in North American political contexts "traffic" really does mean moving cars and trucks. I wish it weren't so, because holding that word hostage is one of the blinders car culture forces onto us. Just envision how apoplectic it makes a suburbanite to tell them "traffic" will improve if we convert a car lane to a bus or bike lane. Even though it does, and it will often even improve throughput of cars by cutting down jockeying for lane position, it doesn't improve "traffic" in the sense of "more car per unit area at higher peak speeds", their perverted hellish self-destructive goal.
posted by daveliepmann at 2:41 AM on October 15 [5 favorites]

I experienced this first hand during Toronto's shitstorm of a Gardiner Expressway 'removal' debate. I attended a nominally 'information session' organized for the Professional Engineers of Ontario which was effectively a sales pitch led by Denzil Minnan-Wong. It didn't take much convincing that audience since of course the engineering profession is motivated for the most expensive construction project option and aside from the 'tunnel' proposal (also presented at that meeting), the cost of maintaining most of it will feed construction dollars for almost a decade.

Looking at the traffic 'study' I noticed that the "remove" option had assumed one extra lane closure on Richmond St (a one-way parallel road), while the "maintain" didn't. Exactly the kind of study juicing this article describes.
posted by anthill at 5:18 PM on October 17 [2 favorites]