Today I Learned

But think of the alternative. In Japan the trains arrive every 10 minutes are publicity subsidized so cost is minimal and because of this there exists an entire generation of train nerds that just want to go out and photograph trains. Are you gonna let the nerds win?

Yup. Been plenty of studies to show that increasing lanes only alleviates traffic in the short term and long term only makes it worse. Better to spend money on trains and busses that actually work and get people where they need to go with minimal hassle and a reasonable cost than to do this crap.

This is because the extra lane allows demand to change. It is not congested so people feel ok building and moving to further out suburbs. This continues until demand has increased to cause delays.

Note that Houston and Paris have about the same population. Paris is 1/3 the size. They are actually removing a lane from their loop highway and planting trees, and turning another lane into busses only. Only considering transportation, I would much rather live in Paris.

Simply make it a single flat wide open surface, drive where you're trying to go in a straight line.

If you die, you die.

Why, oh why didn't they build 27 lanes?!?

For anyone wondering what that looks like-

Absolute insanity.

The fools, if they had made in 27 lanes they would have been fine!

I live in Katy. Driving through this from 4-7 pm is an absolute nightmare. Horrible traffic jams, erratic drivers and multi-car accidents daily. Mornings aren’t fun either.

Who knew that adding complexity to a system entirely reliant on millions of autonomous drivers who only communicate with each other through lights, horns, and middle fingers would slow things down.

Houston is commonly used as an example for what NOT to do, when it comes to civil planning and development.

Literally play 2 minutes of cities skylines and you will discover how bad of an idea this is lmao

If you've got more lanes then you've got more lanes for idiots to cross right before the exit they need to take because they weren't paying attention and they MUST take this particular exit or their life is over or something.

Whoops should have used this gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html?unlocked_article_code=Si7TexwYggpvmSXOYHececNLy0PwyxLKVvINkua9n0Bn17aAT86gZS5-iomiLv4TLAa4846kpv-dEg9NaSmyPitsohN5-1B2S5c8aKBs6Ia8TsJbF4WRjQYzBQgRV_DOa1nDfAI_5xo8GTpwQdQfX4s8pO6O_T4LbccN4D2uaKrOKAKMB-CIxdi-ZXkHy2UoHLUNf5HUHMdP8WmS7bRW0KMuxfUPJROF6wWvtsxqvEKddU5pJsbSxAnOvr-ujBc2le7srKRE7WGaLJkNarvQfbx_pq34IPVvjzaN2-95rvhqMwEfa8ozPQAKvjzRSGVQebno0S1KlhnlTyMC&smid=url-share

Just one more lane bro. I promise. It'll fix everything, I swear. Just one more lane bro.

My only time in the Houston area, and visiting friends staying in Katy TX, and I learned how quickly I hated the traffic there. This makes sense

The purpose of widening the highway isn’t to make individuals move faster or to solve congestion. It’s to move more individuals, and therefore more money.

I N D U C E D D E M A N D

Great for sidewalks, bike paths, and trains, but terrible for cars.

At least it look really cool.

It worked great at the start, but the Houston area population just kept exploding at unprecedented rates.

The Greater Houston area grew by 70% between 2000 and 2020 - largely on the West side. Of course a 30% capacity improvement couldn't keep up.

If they had just built it with 52 lanes!

/s

They missed it by one lane. They only needed one more. Lol

Anti-car people use this to try to explain that adding more lanes doesn't help traffic congestion. Except that every highway system is different and the vast majority of them don't have anywhere near those number of lanes. Adding 1 lane to a 2 lane road would dramatically help traffic situations.