I think the downsides to the 100 lane highway you mention are acceptable. Those problems already exist. In the 1900s, a 14-lane highway would have probably been seen as an excessive solution. Today, that capacity is normal. Why can't a 30 lane+ capacity highway be normalized? It's a matter of accessible resources and efficient engineering. Both of which in theory are in near infinite supply. 2 layers 3?
As a lifelong 2nd generation trucker i can tell you what is wrong with traffic and what can be done to fix it.the largest issue i see is thru traffic should be on left lanes,speed limits should be the same for trucks and cars, and people need to leave a reasonable amount space to use brakes as little as possible to prevent a chain reaction of stop and go traffic. citations need to be givin to people driving recklessly or impeding the flow of traffic not for speeding a few miles above the posted alone. Local traffic should stay out of thru traffic lanes so they dont slow everyone down trying to get their exit and trying to get to the fast lane/thru traffic lane and 3 or 4 lanes is enough to to get traffic working smoothly with these rules its not always about how many lanes you got its about how theyre used
The Japanese seem to have solved congestion by investing in bullet trains that are frequent AND punctual while arresting car drivers that fail to protect cyclists. Singapore by awesome public transport and virtually banning private car ownership. The Dutch by introducing one way roads for cars, investing in their fully integrated public transport network, protected bike lanes and bike parking fit for their queen (who does use it) and sidewalks that continued across T junctions to make it clear the pedestrians do not have to yield. The Scandinavians clear snow off footpaths and cycle lanes before roads which allows their little children to cycle to school AND saves a lot of money (a sprained wrist or broken hip lowers GDP more than a broken light).
@@robertparkinson2102 Japan has horrible traffic in many areas. I was in Matsumoto in October and horrified how a city of 200000 or so people could have such bad traffic, even with busses and trains. It had to do with all of the stoplights in the city and the farmers and tourists packing the city.
@@jap_m maybe it could be good for really high traffic interstate high-speed highways but that's about it and by that I mean an extremely high traffic highway between California and New York
2100: Mankind has finally discovered the new solution to high traffic by reducing the need of cars after implementing public transit. This is a historic moment!
1970: Just one more lane. 1980: Just one more lane. 1990: Just one more lane. 2000: Just one more lane. 2010: Just one more lane. 2020: Maybe we have a traffic problem. %99 of city planners quit just before adding one more lane that will fix everything, trust me bro.
@@whathm9077and remove the non-car infrastructure, just gets in the way of car infrastructure, trust me bro, building everything around cars is the way to go
I have a way better idea: promote remote jobs. You don't have to go to the office and back, it will significantly reduce the pollution. The virus actually helped us introduce online tools for work. Some professions cant do that, but if we move all IT departments back to the home it will significantly reduce traffic, pollution, energy consumption and stress
@@thomaspriewasser6660 more like think of the restaurants that no longer exist, think of the clothing places out of business, the construction firms out of business, banks no longer moving money, positions eliminated such as building security and maintenance, and on and on. Entire segments of the economy will be wiped out just so people can be unproductive in their pajamas.
@@Freyia935 public transport is for the EU, not America. EU countries are small, and buses/bikes are excellent there. In the US a car is a necessity, not a luxury.
@@stevecooper7883 How about we have some more rail infrastructure? It's a lot more energy efficient, a lot more space efficient, a lot less polluting, a lot safer, usually faster and usually cheaper (although you can spend some more to make it a lot faster).
@@stevecooper7883 Induced demand in this context is pretty straightforward and doesn’t deal with economic growth, however. Instead it deals with everything re: policy decisions on how we decide to move people. Aka why we it makes way more sense in pretty much every objective factor to build transit oriented infrastructure since the capacity is simply much larger with less land usage.
Yes but how about we dont force people to use public transport? Having a healthy mix of both a massive road network and having inner cities be designed aroundthe 10 minute concept and large scale rail network connected yo important points in cities with bus networks attached to the rail station would keep people being free to move yet on their own choice. Just how the Netherlands does it.@@Davdaphone
alternative 1: motorbike alternative 2: cycle, skate, etc alternative 3: rob a police car/ambulance and make noise alternative 4: D e s t r o y h u m a n i t y alternative 5: walk
@Windowsfan100 1: public transport brings you from a place you are not at to a place you don't want to be 2: Public transport is so unhygienic and crowded that most people rather sit in a traffic jam. Also you can't regulate temperature in public transport. 3: it's incredibly expensive and too unprofitable for the private sector to do something with it, which leaves the government to do it, which means it will suck considering the government can't do anything right. (If you disagree please name something the government didn't screw up in the last 30 years)
@asronome Most people have a parking spot close to their home while bus stops or metro stations are usually further away. The largest reason people drive is to go to their work, and it turns out most offices and factories have their own parking spots for employees. For groceries, cars are better because you can load your car at the store. The only reason for public transport is if you live in NYC or Tokyo or something, But my other 2 arguments still stand anyway.
They know, but it's a quick "fix" that wins votes, employs people to build and maintain the road, and increases GDP. They don't care that it won't solve the problem, it's a convenient way to buy votes and thanks to induced demand, you can repeat the process every election.
Yeah, Americans use cars way too much. Their cities aren't good for walking and train connections around the country aren't good and you can literally fly cheaper than to go by train. Their solution to traffic: "Just one more lane"
In europe 1 lane actually solved the problems i had everywhere there were problems before , but texas population is increasing faster than they can adapt
But that would mean cars would have less utility and if the automotive industry slows down the oil industry slows down and the if the oil industry slows down well that means we dissappear into a vacuum cause the oil industry must always live on💯💯💯
In the Netherlands we've been reducing the amount of lanes wherever possible and guess what it works. Not always, but usually it does... Until they close a tunnel for maintenance and now a 2 lane highway has nearly double the amount of traffic on it than normal.
@@buenogoodlivethats exactly why you should compare the US to the netherlands! Its showing there is a different wsy to do something. You cant just compare one thing to other things that are identical....
The other issue is traffic Shockwave. In other words, if one person panic slams on their brakes on a 5 lane highway, that can cause everyone else to slam on their breaks and it just keeps going.
@@iamjimgrothUntil the reason they slam their brakes is because a semi flipped over and is blocking most of them horizontally. Because everyone slows down when the see the flipped over semi. Really, they do that for all accidents.
@@xCOBRAx28nah, they make them a little more complicated, dividers separating a dedicated right or straight, 5 or 6 exits with different entrance/exits rules in one roundabout. They can't make a standard design, a lot of engineers have a solution to a problem that isn't there.
“Wrong era in history, the highway boom was in the 1950s, the slow, gradual genocide of First Nation peoples happened over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. It would make more sense to write the quote as America to the Blacks” - 🤓
@@vschmerz Removal of lands from First Nations peoples also happened in the 1950s, it was a major influence behind the rise of the American Indian Movement of the 60s and 70s. One example would be the Tuscarora Reservation
There would still be traffic jams because the entry and exit point would still be attached to normal 2-lane roads. The bottleneck from such a ridiculously massive highway structure would be even worse than they are today.
@@aronasmundurjonasson3175 an actual solution would be good public transport.. a bus will regularly hold 60 people ... and because almost everyone drives alone .. that translates directly to 50 less cars on the road per bus ... and if you make proper connections via bus then there is less reason to even have a car ..
Think of all the beat up altimas with paper plates crossing every lane to make their exit, those poor people on the road with them would never stand a chance
Another thing is that there would be a ton of backup when the road ends because all of the traffic needs to funnel onto other roads not to mention getting to your exit from the left lanes
Lanes don't fix traffic - removing cars from the road does. Invest in public transportation, walkable cities, and alternative methods of travel that arent cars.
Yeah, cz making more roads benefits the contractors pal. The policians give those contracts to their mates who pay them for those favours. Win- win. Tragic loss for u, but hey, at least u r in a CAPITALIST country right?
I did yeah. It’s like anything in life, if everyone knows about a method of doing something, before you know it everyone is doing it and it doesn’t work anymore. That’s why the rich keep their social circle and business strategies private for example from the rest of the leeches. Saturation ruins everything it touches. The lazy stupid masses never realize that if everyone gets a slice of the pie, before long nobody is getting a slice.
The buffet problem here is that you'd need to get over 50 lanes to hit your exit, mention that while your inside lane would be heavily unused and fast as hell, they'd also be basically unusable for stretches shorter than 5 miles.
@@hannanah8036 oh no, whatever will we do without projects! Smile, laugh, enjoy our time outside? I hate people enjoying their lives, surround that neighborhood with crack dens immediately!
"Sounds like communism to me!" -Texan probably Oh wait, no -- this one is better: "I'll give you my truck when you pry it from my cold dead hands!" -Texan probably
Induced demand isn't real. They have made subways, passenger rail and bike lanes and all are widely unused. The real problem is there is little incentive to use these alternatives over a car due to the poor quality. Imagine being locked in a room with Americans for 30 minutes. That is why public transit sucks in the US and why we should deport all imm
@@NarwahlGamingbro the unions are not the problem here maybe part ig but if u think unions are the biggest reason our infrastructure and transportation are fucked then you are a bit simple minded
@@NarwahlGaming I won’t discount your experiences but imo it’s cutting corners to save money or making appliances cheaply so the customer has to buy a new one sooner. Not to mention the fact that they just stopped doing inspections in parts of the country to save money and potential repair costs. Like ur probably right I just don’t think it’s the biggest problem in that area
3 lanes of slow moving traffic is still a 50% higher throughput than 2 lanes of slow moving traffic. I'm not sure why roadfans always neglect to mention this.
Trains and subways are fine, they do increase mobility, and allow more people to access the city, but as a traffic reduction tool, they really don't achieve that. Because the traffic usually comes from people who live outside of where the line is, So many cities in Asia have excellent metros, and still have horrible traffic.
@@linuxman7777 not if you stop building stupid "traffic reduction" freeways. Only provide fast cheap public transport, and leave the existing roads to get more congestion
@@linuxman7777They work if America wouldn't have been destroyed and rebuilt by car lobbyists. They used to have fantastic tram and bus systems, and the whole country was built by trains back in the day. People wouldn't have to go into the city every day if zoning laws didn't prohibit commercial buildings (and thus job opportunities) to be built in suburban neighborhoods. Instead everyone has to take the crappy 6 lane highway to get to their job everyday. America has the funds to build both roads and public transport opportunities that are way more efficient and higher quality than india's too, if proper leaders would be in charge for once then they could be leaps ahead of where it is now.
American architects and city planners literally will come up with this shit and then have the audacity to say that expanding public transport is “too expensive”
The video is wrong. Cars don't appear out of nowhere. Problem is adding lanes does not solve the underlying issue of adding more lanes on all roads, not just the highway: exit ramps are still bottlenecks
That is a function of your home big your suburban homes and land plots are. The moment you accept smaller homes like NY, public transport enters the conversation.
This has been long proven. 100 lanes are simply hypothetical so this is not an argument. Look into Europe and figure out public transportation. Europe has it's faults as well having gone the "car way" too long but we have stopped and pop up bike lanes and new public transportation, adding pedestrian zones in inner cities, park and ride spots and giving new life and value to towns. Cities begin to be more livable, air is cleaner and people have lower stress levels. I think we are on the right path 🇪🇺
@@martingerlitz1162 you forgot to add that Europe is no longer the factory of the world. There is very little regimented movement of people that comes with 9-5 or three shift work patterns.(Which is why you need multi lane roads in the first place. Large volumes of entries and exits.)
@@Starioshka No, You are very wrong. Cities built around public transit are the only places where you don't have this problem. They are hundreds time cheaper and easier to maintain. It's a statistical fact not an opinion. What you are describing is cities that are built around cars trying to implement public transit. Which makes the initial cost much higher than it needs to be.
@@pixeltochi4961 I think you meant "soviet planned cities". Those are the only ones with good access to everything on foot, car and good public transport.
@pixeltochi4961 Japan, Britain, France, Switzerland, New York, China… Do I need to name more or show you why your argument falls flat while also talking about carbon emissions?
In Germany you can pay 49€ per month to use unlimited trams, buses, subway and regional trains. If I take a 4h trip once a month it's already cheaper than driving. Also, what do you take into account for trip cost? Just fuel or also cost of maintenance, insurance, ownership, taxes? And even if some trips might be slower than driving, you can do whatever during that time, read, work, walk around...
Oh fuck I hate that... This happens in Ontario with Trucks passing each other, all trucks are limited to 105km/h... but you get trucks that can do 106 and some doing 104... so they pass each other... slowly...
Im from Texas. What do you mean? Traffic isn't slow. They all drive 95, passing on shoulders and jumping curbs. Intersections are a breeze, no one stops for red lights, and stop signs are only a suggestion. Other Texans know what im talking about.
@@tonybrown5425 they aren't Sol, they're just not even trying to fix it. Got "better" things to spend the money on, like new development and prosecuting homeless people.
@azraellie_ so there are other advantages for adding an extra lane. The streets are less congested. Before all those other people who avoided the lane would use the streets but now go on the freeway. Roadways are more likly to wear and less capable of handling slow moving or stalled traffic. Thus they would be damaged quicker.
In Europe, you're able to ignore it. As well as having a better public Transportation system because Europe is substantially smaller than the United States. Just driving across Texas is like driving from Normandy to Warsaw.
In Katy, Texas, (West Houston) there's a section of I-10 with 17 lanes. It's the worst traffic in town. You can never build your way out of traffic congestion. Ever.
I end up having to take it pretty frequently, so I don’t really have to imagine. It’s a nightmare every time. You’d think the civil engineers around here would’ve learned a thing or two, but Houston’s freeways are still under continual construction. When you combine this with the fact that alternative methods of transportation are unviable (infrastructure for passenger rail, biking and foot travel are virtually nonexistent and beyond unreliable or sometimes even unsafe), it’s not a mystery why traffic never improves around here. In addition, Houston’s level of urban sprawl is unrivaled across the country. As the saying goes, Houston is an hour away from Houston. Our car-reliant transportation infrastructure only exacerbates this problem.
@@cpwl27those 17 lanes include the feeder roads and both directions of traffic. It’s really only 5-6 lanes not including the 1-2 lane toll road. This person is being dramatic. No roads are 17 lanes wide on one side
Fun fact, majority of traffic is caused by people not understanding that you should always be in the rightmost lane you can be in while only moving over to the left for passing but should immediately join back to the right.
I come from a small village in Ireland on a busy main commuter route into Dublin within 50 miles of Dublin - they opened a bypass that bypassed our village totally, but because they put a toll on the bypass, people did not want to pay the toll, so our village is even more congested than ever, meaning that even public transport (buses) into Dublin is highly inefficient at peak times - the Irish government was supposed to build a rail line despite the immediate need, but it has been constantly delayed and where Dublin City Centre has no end of inner city multi storey car parks
imagine cities such as Filthadelphia, NYC managing to keep the hobos, panhandlers, junkies and drug dealers off the trains,platforms and stations. yea I aint taking SEPTA when I can get bumrushed by pan handlers, hobos outside 7-Eleven, Wawa
When they make a train which can pick me up on my schedule and drop me off exactly where i need to be i will agree with you. Seeing as such a thing is impossible looks like i wont ever agree with you.
@@Abstract_zx How most European countries fix that is by having train stations for moving between cities and then local buses, trams and metro’s to get exactly where you need to be
@@appelmoes3433 Yeah but the problem is most European countries are smaller than individual US states, with very different population distribution due to the land available and the amount of time they've been there. Hell, most European countries are smaller than my province(Ontario, Canada) They've had thousands of years of infrastructure to keep rebuilding over top of, with limited space to spread out and grow. We're over here on a much much larger, still fresh continent we started from scratch less than 500 years ago with technology constantly changing before we can even plan for it. give us a break.
My state fixed one of the biggest points of congestion just by changing an exit so that it went into its own lane instead of merging immediately, which gives people time to switch lanes ahead of some highway splits. Almost entirely cleared any congestion. And I’d rather have multiple paths to get into work because the worst problem is one route essentially shutting down due to accidents.
A trolly or train would be far better than a new lane as well, since they hold far more people in the same amount of space. The problem near where I live is that the regional train goes city to city with dirty local busses that people don't like to use that get caught in the same slow traffic. I'm really close to the train station (a mile as the crow flies, a mile and a half if I walk along the roads) but I'd have to cross 2 major roads that have no sidewalks that are so congested people are turning right on red constantly (two lanes, so someone goes right while others are turning left.) How do most people use that train? Driving over and parking... and boy do the tow companies love yanking cars out of the apartment lots around there! There's nowhere near enough parking, but if they just put sidewalks in...
@@sofiadragon6520 roads give far better access to different places so it would be far more expensive to create the required number of trams or trains.
No you see according to the geniuses in the replies we can’t do anything other than a car based society because we should think about the 150 people in bumfuck nowhere who might not even use it, so everyone in Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso must suffer unto them.
It would not increase traffic pollution ding dong. The same amount of cars will still be moving around the area in other locations and different times. But you’re still have the same amount of exhaust being emitted.
Unless people used alternate means to cars, like walking, cycling public transit. And the switched to the car after the road was built. Then you have more cars more polution.
There's a giant layered highway junction like that near my house that everyone in my family has dubbed "The Spaghetti Bowl" because of how it looks. I would infinitely prefer having more options for public transportation in my city, but I do at least appreciate that one specific highway clusterfuck has a funny name.
Does everyone call their local disaster interchange “The Spaghetti Bowl?” Because I don’t live in any of the above mentioned cities, and everyone in my area calls it that too.
One thing I’ve noticed about this scenario is that it never takes into account why the traffic backs up. It’s often the result of bottle necking at interchanges or when lanes are otherwise lost. Traffic behaves as a fluid in a pipe. Narrow the pipeline and you increase the pressure.
Traffic is also caused by extensive lane switching with cumulative effects, phantom effects from bad drivers, as well as with these simulations the effect that having a large network like this has. It encourages more spread out infrastructure that requires driving to get around which encourages more spread out infrastructure and so on. It's not just when the lanes turn into less lanes
A well designed interchange helps reduce traffic for sure. Next to my work the roads are badly designed for where people want to go. You end up with about 8 lanes worth of car (different roads all leading to the same place) trying to merge into an highway entrance/exit that leads to another highway. Needless to say, during rush hour you can easily get stuck for half an hour moving less than half a mile.
That would require the willingness of the citizens to use that infrastructure. I just don’t see the usage increasing. Where I live, road capacity was reduced to build infrastructure for our bus service. Nobody started using the damn buses. That has made the traffic congestion in those areas so much worse
The one thing that fascinates me that in England, there was a road that had bad traffic with the large road. But instead of expanding the road, they reduced the road for it. And later, somehow the car traffic was solved. Maybe it was because other drivers drive to other roads instead of that specific road.
A proposal simply install a train Station at a convenient location to significantly cut down on the commuters Oh, wait, this nation's too cheap for that.
It's not too cheap. It's actually too expensive. The government will spend $5000 on a rubber eraser. It will cost way too much, take way too long to build, and cost too much to maintain, so it will get filthy and dangerous within a year or two.
A better proposal would be reduce the cost of living so that people don't have to work 40+ hours a week to survive. Technology has exponentially increased output as to where work isn't as necessary as it was several hundred years ago. But the billionaire class will never allow that to happen.
It wont reduce traffic though... You have to understand that Pubic transportation as well as building highways are just ways to increase people's mobility which is a good thing. But they are not effective tools for reducing traffic, as if some people choose to use the train instead of the highway, other people from further out will use the highway who formerly did not.
Plan your trip better… start working your way over earlier. But people don’t want to do this… which is a big part of the reason we have traffic in the first place.
@@bobinthewest8559 Is this a joke? If most people leave early, we just get bottleneck early. So its a rat race people leaving early. The cycle repeats
@@GippyHappyhe isn’t wrong though. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen someone dart across the lanes one hundred or less feet from their turn, I could buy Amazon.
@@Checkpoint_King I won't deny people are bad drivers, but the solution "Just drive better then having 100 lanes wouldn't be a bad idea" is like saying "Just don't do murder and then we won't need to lock our doors at night" like yeah wow I wonder why no one ever thought of that before. Also there's like 10,000 other reasons why having that many lanes sucks, as outlined in this very video, that aren't even related to driving ability. So no I still think he's definitely wrong. I don't actually care either way I was just making a joke.
Not only this but depression. A 100 lane highway would cast major shadows and areas won’t get proper sunlight. This will affect the environment and the people living there.
Traffic jams are a phenomenon, a consequence of safe acceleration after a series of cars have to use their breaks for more than a fraction of a second. I guarantee you you also don't have the reaction time necessary to be a part of the non-traffic causing space on the road.
People like to tailgate and hit their brakes every 5 seconds instead of letting off the gas and coasting, thus causing the car behind to brake and so on and so forth.
@@coastaku1954 “Everyone” driving is, yes, but people have good reasons to drive and it’s better if they don’t have to wait in stop-and-go. The quote seems to suggest that roads should be crowded and unpleasant to force people not to drive.
@@coastaku1954 More lanes does fix the issue, that’s what the video shows. It’s just that often the cost is too high, as it shows in the ridiculous 100-lanes example. They’ve added more lanes to the freeways around my city and it’s helped a lot. The roads eventually get clogged again but that’s because more people are moving in all the time, not because the lanes were a waste of money. Anticipating demand is not the same as inducing demand. We also have good public transportation (by US standards), so you can do both.
Or stack them 5 stories high (10 lanes), 5 entrances and exits. At the beginning of the tunnel, there are lights indicating which of the 5 tunnels are experiencing moderate traffic for the drivers to choose from.
There is also always a point where you have to transition from those 100 lanes back to fewer lanes, and that is where the traffic jam will start. You can build a 100 lame high way between cities, but inside of the city that would have to become smaller. (Unless you live in the US, then you just keep the 100 lanes and call it a flourishing down town) and when it becomes smaller you get a bottleneck.
You can mitigate some of the problem by "stacking" tunnels, surface streets, highways, and rail lines on top of each other like they do in a lot of places where space is limited, like in parts of Europe and Asia, but some of their solutions don't really apply in other areas because a lot of stuff is just too spread out in North America. Another part of the problem is there's so much bullshit corruption and grift and lawfare/ownership nonsense going on here that it simply can't get better without significant changes and pains. My city for example, there's a core freight rail line that feeds most of my province from the US, it runs at surface level right through the middle of the city, and cuts across several arterial roads. This rail line is a core part of half the country's economy, any significant downtime on that line would collapse Canada in a couple weeks kind of important, and it's privately owned the entire way through. It's taken the better part of 60 years and several hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on planning and meetings and hearings and bullshit between 3 layers of government and the company that owns the rail line to finally start building an underpass 5 years ago, that is still isn't done yet.
@@superhobo666 The issue they're talking about wouldn't be solved by "stacking" though, cuz they're talking about when you're reducing the number of lanes. That would still happen when you're going from surface level highway to tunnel expressway, or otherwise trying to divert the flow of traffic to the alternate route.
This basically exists in most cities already. Between any two grid points, there are dozens of parallel paths of travel and likely 100 lanes on which to travel.
All traffic comes from stopping. Traffic lights, merging, or accidents. That’s it. More lanes fixes merging, it cannot fix accidents or traffic lights. It also doesn’t fully fix merging because people will always want to switch lanes (to exit or move to the faster lane), but it does help with that. Adding more lanes that just merge later are 100% pointless and add more traffic
Once cars per road area exceeds a certain amount, people will slow because they don't want to go 70mph 10 feet behind the person in front of them. More lanes means more road area, so higher capacity
@@mikeymullins5305 Don't strawman, he didn't say 'never stop'. By pointing out all traffic is stopping, you can properly determine the cause and address it.
In my city they announced they'd widen a road, and I was excited since I thought the frequent 2-to-1 mergers on the 2 mile strip of road would then become 2 lanes all the way down greatly increasing throughput and reducing mergers. The mergers are just wider and prettier now. I lost faith in urban planning after that.
It's not just about adding lanes, it's about what happens at the end; like traffic lights or round abouts, that cause the traffic to slow or come to a stop
there's a term for this... I can't remember. Basically when someone slows down or causes a vehicle to slow down, all the vehicles behind are forced to do so and traffic start accumulates at the area which causes traffic jam... and the most annoying part is that most of the time you can't see the causes. The road in front is clear but everyone just decided to slow down bcs previously the passerby did the same thing.
No matter how many lanes you build, you will always find that numbers of drivers who will drive side-by-side-by-side at a snail's pace and still cause a traffic jam.
