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There's a certain amount of irony here that people are complaining about cars clogging up their streets but think nothing of what they do when they're driving t

There's a certain amount of irony here that people are complaining about cars clogging up their streets but think nothing of what they do when they're driving through other neighbourhoods, especially more urban ones. Suddenly they get a taste of why people living downtown are not too enthused about highways bringing in more people. A lot of this mess stems from the absurd designs of modern American subdivisions with their pointlessly twisty roads. A grid-based layout might mean more through traffic, but the traffic can filter through many, many different cross-routes rather than funnelling through the singular optimal route.

pjlegato 10y ago
Grids don't help much. Take a look at Google Maps' traffic report of Los Angeles' perfect grid layout during rush hour: the entire grid is usually solid red, almost every day. Like most other plans for ameliorating heavy traffic, it is somewhat effective for a short time, but it soon just causes that many more cars to try to drive through the area.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  This is called "Induced Demand"
- gjolund 10y ago
  LA traffic defies reason. I've hit gridlock at 3am on the 101 before. The whole city feels like it was designed to be some elaborate torture device for commuters.
  - HillaryBriss 10y ago
    It was designed for a smaller number of single car drivers than it has today. And it was not designed for quick/cheap expansion. I guess any system of transportation would feel like torture for commuters if that system is overloaded and operating beyond its reasonable capacity.
    - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
      So every major city in the US and Europe?
      - HillaryBriss 10y ago
        Don't know. Haven't visited every major city in the US and Europe. One data point: As bad as it can be at times, especially on/near The Strip, Las Vegas still seems less congested than LA.
        shivsta 10y ago
        Great thing about Vegas is that there's not really any rush hour during the day. Only party-rush-hour at night.
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    it actually works great with less people. the problem is hitting that threshold requires regulation, which is a political impossibility except for special events. http://articles.latimes.com/1985-06-07/local/me-16088_1_traffic-management http://articles.latimes.com/1985-06-07/local/me-16088_1_traf... as for the 3am traffic, that was probably night time caltrans work, or a drunk driving accident :(
    - gjolund 10y ago
      So less people driving leads to less traffic, what a surprise. I think that LA takes pride in its traffic, like some kind of shared struggle. It is the only city I have lived in that has an implied 30 minute allowance for traffic delays. Everyone understands and you can use the excuse anytime or day of the week.
- arebop 10y ago
  You think it would be better if it were a dendritic system? It's hard to believe that e.g., randomly walling off half of those grid links would make traffic better.
  - pjlegato 10y ago
    I doubt it. It won't fix the fundamental problem of moving lots of people to where they want to go in the city. You can only do that by making the area undesirable to go to for whatever reason (probably not a good option), or by providing some alternate means of getting places. Unfortunately, due to the sprawling way LA is laid out, all of the other options are even worse than driving there. In a dense area like Manhattan, transport is not so bad because walking, cabs, or the subway are all viable alternatives in many cases. In a lower density sprawl area like Los Angeles, cabs are prohibitively expensive for most trips, the subway usually doesn't go anywhere near where you are or where you want to go, the buses are stuck in traffic like any other vehicle, and walking is dangerous (due to the lack of pedestrian-friendly sidewalks in many areas) and would take many hours for each trip. I think the best way to fix LA traffic would be to greatly increase the density and start building upwards so that walking and public transport become viable options for many more cases, but that seems very unlikely to happen anytime soon. It'd take decades to do anyway. So for now, it looks like LA is just stuck with its insane traffic status quo.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      The best way to fix it would be to build SkyTran. It's even being developed not that far away at the NASA Ames Research Center.
mikeash 10y ago
I don't think there's much irony here. It's a matter of what came first. If you move to a busy downtown then you should know full well that dealing with heavy traffic on your streets is going to be a fact of life. If you move to a quiet suburban street which then years later transforms into a busy artery, that's a completely different situation. I also completely disagree with your evaluation of pointlessly twisty roads. I dislike them too, but they work really well at keeping through traffic out of the neighborhoods. Many of those pointlessly twisty roads are useless for going anywhere besides the houses they serve, and even when they are useful, they're usually less useful than the main roads. Cut-through traffic is usually a problem in areas with grid layouts, because that makes the side streets nearly as good at getting places as the main road, which can easily transform into "better than" if the main road is congested. For example, the first story in the article is about Takoma Park, which is pretty griddy.
- pc86 10y ago
  > If you move to a quiet suburban street which then years later transforms into a busy artery, that's a completely different situation. I say this as someone who bought a house because of most of the reasons mentioned here. That being said, buying property does not somehow imbue you with the right to keep things exactly as they are for three decades while you pay it off. Cities expand, people move in, population increases. If your quiet, picturesque residential street turns into a rush hour parking lot six years later, that's nobody's fault but it doesn't mean the right thing to do is put up speed humps (the oversized, usually movable plastic speed bumps) or whatever other nonsense you can think of to stick it to people because you were unlucky in your choice of property. If it's not obvious I am using the royal you, not you specifically mikeash :)
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I agree that you don't get to claim sovereignty over your local streets. At the same time, there's an expectation that the character of a neighborhood won't change radically and I don't think that expectation is entirely unreasonable. It's a matter of balancing competing interests. The answer is definitely not to let the local homeowners determine everything about how their street is used, but at the same time the answer is also not to destroy the quality of life of residents for the convenience of through drivers.
djrogers 10y ago
> A grid-based layout might mean more through traffic, but the traffic can filter through many, many different cross-routes rather than funnelling through the singular optimal route. That singular optimal route funnels traffic away from my kids riding bikes, playing street hockey, drawing chalk cities, or anything else their little minds can come up with. It's why houses on a 'quiet street' are coveted, and sell for more than the same house on a busy street. To call a design like that 'absurd' you'd have to completely ignore all of the reasons people want to pay more for it...
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  About a year ago, a traffic accident caused Waze to route me through a residential area. I actually respected the speed limit as I went through, and at one point saw kids playing in the street just as I was making a turn, so I slowed further. That didn't stop some busybody dad from flagging me down. I opened my window and he told me I'd better slow down (I had) because there were kids playing. My response to him was that he oughtn't let his kids play in the street. He started ranting, so I pulled away, and he shouted after me "SLOW DOWN YOU ASSHOLE!!". When I got home, upset by this, I went back and looked at my logs. I also use an app called Torque that logs all the data from my car's OBDII port, and GPS data as well. So I was able to verify that at no point was I going more that 5mph below the posted limit, and from the point where those kids were visible, I was going far slower than that. My conclusion from just one datapoint is that people are irrational about what they allow their kids to do (play in the road) while expecting other people to accept and mitigate the potential risk; and also that people have little ability to estimate vehicle speed accurately.
  - street 10y ago
    Why can't kids play on a street designed only for traffic to houses on that street? I played on the street all the time as a child. Of course, my streets weren't flooded with drivers trying to save a few minutes by driving through residential areas.
    - CWuestefeld 10y ago

pjlegato 10y ago

Grids don't help much. Take a look at Google Maps' traffic report of Los Angeles' perfect grid layout during rush hour: the entire grid is usually solid red, almost every day. Like most other plans for ameliorating heavy traffic, it is somewhat effective for a short time, but it soon just causes that many more cars to try to drive through the area.

JBReefer 10y ago
This is called "Induced Demand"
gjolund 10y ago
LA traffic defies reason. I've hit gridlock at 3am on the 101 before. The whole city feels like it was designed to be some elaborate torture device for commuters.
- HillaryBriss 10y ago
  It was designed for a smaller number of single car drivers than it has today. And it was not designed for quick/cheap expansion. I guess any system of transportation would feel like torture for commuters if that system is overloaded and operating beyond its reasonable capacity.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    So every major city in the US and Europe?
    - HillaryBriss 10y ago
      Don't know. Haven't visited every major city in the US and Europe. One data point: As bad as it can be at times, especially on/near The Strip, Las Vegas still seems less congested than LA.
      - shivsta 10y ago
        Great thing about Vegas is that there's not really any rush hour during the day. Only party-rush-hour at night.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  it actually works great with less people. the problem is hitting that threshold requires regulation, which is a political impossibility except for special events. http://articles.latimes.com/1985-06-07/local/me-16088_1_traffic-management http://articles.latimes.com/1985-06-07/local/me-16088_1_traf... as for the 3am traffic, that was probably night time caltrans work, or a drunk driving accident :(
  - gjolund 10y ago
    So less people driving leads to less traffic, what a surprise. I think that LA takes pride in its traffic, like some kind of shared struggle. It is the only city I have lived in that has an implied 30 minute allowance for traffic delays. Everyone understands and you can use the excuse anytime or day of the week.
arebop 10y ago
You think it would be better if it were a dendritic system? It's hard to believe that e.g., randomly walling off half of those grid links would make traffic better.
- pjlegato 10y ago
  I doubt it. It won't fix the fundamental problem of moving lots of people to where they want to go in the city. You can only do that by making the area undesirable to go to for whatever reason (probably not a good option), or by providing some alternate means of getting places. Unfortunately, due to the sprawling way LA is laid out, all of the other options are even worse than driving there. In a dense area like Manhattan, transport is not so bad because walking, cabs, or the subway are all viable alternatives in many cases. In a lower density sprawl area like Los Angeles, cabs are prohibitively expensive for most trips, the subway usually doesn't go anywhere near where you are or where you want to go, the buses are stuck in traffic like any other vehicle, and walking is dangerous (due to the lack of pedestrian-friendly sidewalks in many areas) and would take many hours for each trip. I think the best way to fix LA traffic would be to greatly increase the density and start building upwards so that walking and public transport become viable options for many more cases, but that seems very unlikely to happen anytime soon. It'd take decades to do anyway. So for now, it looks like LA is just stuck with its insane traffic status quo.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    The best way to fix it would be to build SkyTran. It's even being developed not that far away at the NASA Ames Research Center.

mikeash 10y ago

I don't think there's much irony here. It's a matter of what came first. If you move to a busy downtown then you should know full well that dealing with heavy traffic on your streets is going to be a fact of life. If you move to a quiet suburban street which then years later transforms into a busy artery, that's a completely different situation. I also completely disagree with your evaluation of pointlessly twisty roads. I dislike them too, but they work really well at keeping through traffic out of the neighborhoods. Many of those pointlessly twisty roads are useless for going anywhere besides the houses they serve, and even when they are useful, they're usually less useful than the main roads. Cut-through traffic is usually a problem in areas with grid layouts, because that makes the side streets nearly as good at getting places as the main road, which can easily transform into "better than" if the main road is congested. For example, the first story in the article is about Takoma Park, which is pretty griddy.

pc86 10y ago
> If you move to a quiet suburban street which then years later transforms into a busy artery, that's a completely different situation. I say this as someone who bought a house because of most of the reasons mentioned here. That being said, buying property does not somehow imbue you with the right to keep things exactly as they are for three decades while you pay it off. Cities expand, people move in, population increases. If your quiet, picturesque residential street turns into a rush hour parking lot six years later, that's nobody's fault but it doesn't mean the right thing to do is put up speed humps (the oversized, usually movable plastic speed bumps) or whatever other nonsense you can think of to stick it to people because you were unlucky in your choice of property. If it's not obvious I am using the royal you, not you specifically mikeash :)
- mikeash 10y ago
  I agree that you don't get to claim sovereignty over your local streets. At the same time, there's an expectation that the character of a neighborhood won't change radically and I don't think that expectation is entirely unreasonable. It's a matter of balancing competing interests. The answer is definitely not to let the local homeowners determine everything about how their street is used, but at the same time the answer is also not to destroy the quality of life of residents for the convenience of through drivers.

djrogers 10y ago

> A grid-based layout might mean more through traffic, but the traffic can filter through many, many different cross-routes rather than funnelling through the singular optimal route. That singular optimal route funnels traffic away from my kids riding bikes, playing street hockey, drawing chalk cities, or anything else their little minds can come up with. It's why houses on a 'quiet street' are coveted, and sell for more than the same house on a busy street. To call a design like that 'absurd' you'd have to completely ignore all of the reasons people want to pay more for it...

CWuestefeld 10y ago
About a year ago, a traffic accident caused Waze to route me through a residential area. I actually respected the speed limit as I went through, and at one point saw kids playing in the street just as I was making a turn, so I slowed further. That didn't stop some busybody dad from flagging me down. I opened my window and he told me I'd better slow down (I had) because there were kids playing. My response to him was that he oughtn't let his kids play in the street. He started ranting, so I pulled away, and he shouted after me "SLOW DOWN YOU ASSHOLE!!". When I got home, upset by this, I went back and looked at my logs. I also use an app called Torque that logs all the data from my car's OBDII port, and GPS data as well. So I was able to verify that at no point was I going more that 5mph below the posted limit, and from the point where those kids were visible, I was going far slower than that. My conclusion from just one datapoint is that people are irrational about what they allow their kids to do (play in the road) while expecting other people to accept and mitigate the potential risk; and also that people have little ability to estimate vehicle speed accurately.
- street 10y ago
  Why can't kids play on a street designed only for traffic to houses on that street? I played on the street all the time as a child. Of course, my streets weren't flooded with drivers trying to save a few minutes by driving through residential areas.
  - CWuestefeld 10y ago