4 ms·
In my experience most traffic jams are caused by bad merging, not lack of capacity. A few years ago I regularly drove a stretch of road that went from 2 lanes
by maweaver 16y ago
In my experience most traffic jams are caused by bad merging, not lack of capacity. A few years ago I regularly drove a stretch of road that went from 2 lanes to 3 for a few miles and then back again, without gaining a significant amount of traffic in between (I have no idea why the road was designed that way, maybe one of the side roads feeding into it got a lot of traffic at a different time of day or something). Every day there would be a traffic jam where the third lane ended. Someone waits too long to merge and traffic has to slow to let them in, or is nervous about moving over and has to be given space, or whatever, and it just compounds until traffic literally stops at that point. I see the same thing all the time at on/off ramps, turn lanes, etc.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoI've read several articles pointing out that traffic seems to be an emergent behavior, and can be predicted like the flow of a gas, regardless of the individuals involved.
- jimbokun 16y agoAnd this can vary based on driving culture. I commuted from NYC to NJ for a while (by circumstance, not choice) and traffic wouldn't slow much at all at merge points. Driving back in Pennsylvania, state of my birth, I was gob-smacked when people all tried to merge into one lane a mile before the merge point, bringing traffic to almost a complete halt. Of course, I was probably one of those people before driving in New York, and never thought much of it.