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Of course it wasn't worth it. Road improvements for cars incentivize driving, and so the result is more traffic. Frustratingly the California DOT has studied t

Of course it wasn't worth it. Road improvements for cars incentivize driving, and so the result is more traffic. Frustratingly the California DOT has studied this and has acknowledged this fact, so I suppose spending 1.6 billion on road improvements was a political decision and the experts were ignored? http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/11/californias-dot-admits-that-more-roads-mean-more-traffic/415245/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/11/californias-dot-admit... If you want to reduce traffic and get people to their destination faster you need to halt and/or reverse road network expansion and put all your money toward alternatives such as transit and cycling.

JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
Do you have any data showing cycling gets people to their destination faster and more efficiently? That sounds like a nightmare to me if implemented in large scale and will always be hampered by the low top speed of a bicycle.
- Tiktaalik 10y ago
  Cycling is good for short commutes. In the context of a longer commute, consider it as a potential solution to the last mile problem (ie. transit for 30 minutes to move between towns, then take the bike share at the station for 5 minutes). Importantly every person that uses a car alternative for travel is one less car on the road. This frees up space on the existing road network for people who, for whatever reason, must use a car for their trip. With less traffic, their trip may now be faster, and no road expansion was necessary to accomplish this. Personally there is no real difference in my 20 minute commuting time whether I choose rapid transit, cycling or car. Cycling speed is the slowest, but when one factors in the congestion on the road and walking and transfer times of transit, my cycling commute is competitive.
- chockablock 10y ago
  Parent suggested supporting 'transit and cycling'. Mixed-mode commutes can meet a lot of people's needs. BTW asking other commenters for 'data' (especially to support claims they did not make) is not great commenting etiquette.
nashashmi 10y ago
The best alternative to cars is a motorcycle lane. For a place like Los Angeles where the lowest temperature is 55 degrees, year round motorcycling is feasible.
ulkram 10y ago
Transit and cycling would be awesome. I'd also like to see cities build more houses where the jobs are. And conversely, don't allow cities to build office space if there is not enough residential zoning to support those jobs. It seems the root cause of traffic is a mismatch between jobs and housing, leading to sprawl and traffic.
- jjnoakes 10y ago
  > It seems the root cause of traffic is a mismatch between jobs and housing Which I suspect is quite natural, because it is driven by a mismatch between where people want to be when they are working (commercial districts) and where people want to be when they aren't (anything except commercial districts). When you have errands to run, or want a day out exploring, you want all of that in the same place. When you get home at night, you don't want to be next to the noise, parking lots, crowds of people, airports, ...
- Tiktaalik 10y ago
  > I'd also like to see cities build more houses where the jobs are. This is what Vancouver did. The amount of cars entering and exiting the downtown core is the same since the 1960s, but the amount of downtown jobs is dramatically higher. This is possible because they substantially added residential housing into the downtown core so that many could walk and bike to work, and by adding rapid transit. Expansion of road capacity wasn't needed. Additionally instead of a hub and spokes model where everyone would live elsewhere and commute into downtown, Vancouver is organized like a loose federation of towns, each with residential and employment options. In suburbs of Vancouver such as Langley, more people work there or in adjacent suburbs than commute into City of Vancouver proper.
maxsilver 10y ago
> and so the result is more traffic. Sure. Freeways aren't art installations -- the freeway is built to service drivers. A newly expanded freeway can now service even more drivers before getting congested. It would be pretty pointless to build a freeway, just for no one to use it. > If you want to reduce traffic and get people to their destination faster you need to halt and/or reverse road network expansion Those are two different things, one of which is inherently untrue by definition, for the same reason that "If you want faster internet, you need to halt or reverse fiber deployment" is untrue. Traffic is transportation. If your goal is to reduce transportation, then sure, tear down roads and it will be much harder for people to move around. But that's going to suck for most of the people living there. If your goal is to improve transportation, a freeway is one method of doing that. Improvements to public transit and/or bicycling infrastructure is another method of accomplishing that (obviously one you would prefer), but that doesn't make investments in freeways bad too. It's possible to be pro-public-transit without being anti-personal-transit. LA can need a new freeway and more light rail, those two things are not actually in any conflict.
gozur88 10y ago
>Of course it wasn't worth it. Road improvements for cars incentivize driving, and so the result is more traffic. If it takes you 75 minutes to go 15 miles you already have plenty of incentive not to drive. People keep moving to Southern California whether the traffic network can handle them or not. "Let's stop building roads so our home is a famously crappy place to live and people stop coming" isn't really a sound coping strategy.

JohnJamesRambo 10y ago

Do you have any data showing cycling gets people to their destination faster and more efficiently? That sounds like a nightmare to me if implemented in large scale and will always be hampered by the low top speed of a bicycle.

Tiktaalik 10y ago
Cycling is good for short commutes. In the context of a longer commute, consider it as a potential solution to the last mile problem (ie. transit for 30 minutes to move between towns, then take the bike share at the station for 5 minutes). Importantly every person that uses a car alternative for travel is one less car on the road. This frees up space on the existing road network for people who, for whatever reason, must use a car for their trip. With less traffic, their trip may now be faster, and no road expansion was necessary to accomplish this. Personally there is no real difference in my 20 minute commuting time whether I choose rapid transit, cycling or car. Cycling speed is the slowest, but when one factors in the congestion on the road and walking and transfer times of transit, my cycling commute is competitive.
chockablock 10y ago
Parent suggested supporting 'transit and cycling'. Mixed-mode commutes can meet a lot of people's needs. BTW asking other commenters for 'data' (especially to support claims they did not make) is not great commenting etiquette.

nashashmi 10y ago

The best alternative to cars is a motorcycle lane. For a place like Los Angeles where the lowest temperature is 55 degrees, year round motorcycling is feasible.

ulkram 10y ago

Transit and cycling would be awesome. I'd also like to see cities build more houses where the jobs are. And conversely, don't allow cities to build office space if there is not enough residential zoning to support those jobs. It seems the root cause of traffic is a mismatch between jobs and housing, leading to sprawl and traffic.

jjnoakes 10y ago
> It seems the root cause of traffic is a mismatch between jobs and housing Which I suspect is quite natural, because it is driven by a mismatch between where people want to be when they are working (commercial districts) and where people want to be when they aren't (anything except commercial districts). When you have errands to run, or want a day out exploring, you want all of that in the same place. When you get home at night, you don't want to be next to the noise, parking lots, crowds of people, airports, ...
Tiktaalik 10y ago
> I'd also like to see cities build more houses where the jobs are. This is what Vancouver did. The amount of cars entering and exiting the downtown core is the same since the 1960s, but the amount of downtown jobs is dramatically higher. This is possible because they substantially added residential housing into the downtown core so that many could walk and bike to work, and by adding rapid transit. Expansion of road capacity wasn't needed. Additionally instead of a hub and spokes model where everyone would live elsewhere and commute into downtown, Vancouver is organized like a loose federation of towns, each with residential and employment options. In suburbs of Vancouver such as Langley, more people work there or in adjacent suburbs than commute into City of Vancouver proper.

maxsilver 10y ago

> and so the result is more traffic. Sure. Freeways aren't art installations -- the freeway is built to service drivers. A newly expanded freeway can now service even more drivers before getting congested. It would be pretty pointless to build a freeway, just for no one to use it. > If you want to reduce traffic and get people to their destination faster you need to halt and/or reverse road network expansion Those are two different things, one of which is inherently untrue by definition, for the same reason that "If you want faster internet, you need to halt or reverse fiber deployment" is untrue. Traffic is transportation. If your goal is to reduce transportation, then sure, tear down roads and it will be much harder for people to move around. But that's going to suck for most of the people living there. If your goal is to improve transportation, a freeway is one method of doing that. Improvements to public transit and/or bicycling infrastructure is another method of accomplishing that (obviously one you would prefer), but that doesn't make investments in freeways bad too. It's possible to be pro-public-transit without being anti-personal-transit. LA can need a new freeway and more light rail, those two things are not actually in any conflict.

gozur88 10y ago

>Of course it wasn't worth it. Road improvements for cars incentivize driving, and so the result is more traffic. If it takes you 75 minutes to go 15 miles you already have plenty of incentive not to drive. People keep moving to Southern California whether the traffic network can handle them or not. "Let's stop building roads so our home is a famously crappy place to live and people stop coming" isn't really a sound coping strategy.