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Building wider roads in the UK is going to be tricky. A lot of roads have no room to grow without knocking down the houses lining them. Maybe the UK needs less

Building wider roads in the UK is going to be tricky. A lot of roads have no room to grow without knocking down the houses lining them. Maybe the UK needs less roads?

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Of course it's very difficult to impossible to widen existing roads. But nothing prevent building wider new roads... which isn't done because priority is actually to save as much money as possible instead of delivering good, future-proof, infrastructure. You can't have fewer roads in a country whose population grows by hundreds of thousands every year...
- orwin 3y ago
  You can. Paris have less roads (or rather has closed roads to cars) and upped the public transit system frequency in the area despite a small population augmentation. I know one person living in the area, the QOL is now way, way higher.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    Comparing a very dense urban area with a whole country is nonsensical, not least because even in your example road access is still needed and still exists.
    - tstrimple 3y ago
      Having well designed cities and transit isn’t just something that can be done for dense urban areas. Our car centric belief system is more of a cultural artifact than an indication that nothing else is possible. https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg?si=DZ9p1cQgSUpvKWnl https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg?si=DZ9p1cQgSUpvKWnl
- Mordisquitos 3y ago
  Newly built wider roads would be a tiny proportion of the total as compared to the previous "unwidenable" roads, so making new roads wider would have little effect. It would be much more efficient to more strongly regulate/restrict/tax the width of cars so that they are the appropriate size for the vast majority of already existing roads in the UK.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand. Population growth means that we need to get more people using active travel (which would also save the NHS a huge amount of money) and have effective public transport. To get more people using active travel, we need some decent cycle/scooter infrastructure, so we should be narrowing roads for the motor traffic. Cycle infrastructure would increase the throughput of the road as cyclists don't usually suffer from congestion.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    If everyone cycles you need a cycle lane at least the size of a car lane, and then you still need space for the bus, and of course you still need to accomodate vans, taxis, and emergency vehicles... There is no silver bullet. Adding decent cycle lanes means wider roads, and there's nothing wrong with that. > Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand. How do you propose to build new housing estates, new schools, etc. and to link them to the rest of the country?
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      > If everyone cycles you need a cycle lane at least the size of a car lane No you don't - bikes and scooters take up far less room than the same person being sat alone in their car. The increased throughput of people would drastically improve the efficiency of the road. Also, if the people choose active travel instead of driving, then you also remove a large number of cars from the road and also reduce congestion for the people who have to drive. New housing estates will need joining up to the existing road network, but they also need to have good public transport links to avoid the roads being just filled with people stuck in cars in traffic. Also, they should have good walking/cycling options too which is often completely neglected by developers. Obviously new developments will need some road building, but it's a mistake to think that adding roads will reduce congestion. Ultimately, personal cars don't scale beyond a certain population density. If you aim to add more roads, the shops and facilities end up becoming more separated which then leads to more people choosing to drive to get there. The extra people driving then leads to more congestion which leads to more roads which leads to facilities becoming spaced further apart and requiring even more space for parking facilities. It's an exercise in futility.

Building wider roads in the UK is going to be tricky. A lot of roads have no room to grow without knocking down the houses lining them. Maybe the UK needs less roads?

mytailorisrich 3y ago

Of course it's very difficult to impossible to widen existing roads. But nothing prevent building wider new roads... which isn't done because priority is actually to save as much money as possible instead of delivering good, future-proof, infrastructure. You can't have fewer roads in a country whose population grows by hundreds of thousands every year...

orwin 3y ago
You can. Paris have less roads (or rather has closed roads to cars) and upped the public transit system frequency in the area despite a small population augmentation. I know one person living in the area, the QOL is now way, way higher.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Comparing a very dense urban area with a whole country is nonsensical, not least because even in your example road access is still needed and still exists.
  - tstrimple 3y ago
    Having well designed cities and transit isn’t just something that can be done for dense urban areas. Our car centric belief system is more of a cultural artifact than an indication that nothing else is possible. https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg?si=DZ9p1cQgSUpvKWnl https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg?si=DZ9p1cQgSUpvKWnl
Mordisquitos 3y ago
Newly built wider roads would be a tiny proportion of the total as compared to the previous "unwidenable" roads, so making new roads wider would have little effect. It would be much more efficient to more strongly regulate/restrict/tax the width of cars so that they are the appropriate size for the vast majority of already existing roads in the UK.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand. Population growth means that we need to get more people using active travel (which would also save the NHS a huge amount of money) and have effective public transport. To get more people using active travel, we need some decent cycle/scooter infrastructure, so we should be narrowing roads for the motor traffic. Cycle infrastructure would increase the throughput of the road as cyclists don't usually suffer from congestion.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  If everyone cycles you need a cycle lane at least the size of a car lane, and then you still need space for the bus, and of course you still need to accomodate vans, taxis, and emergency vehicles... There is no silver bullet. Adding decent cycle lanes means wider roads, and there's nothing wrong with that. > Building roads just increases congestion through induced demand. How do you propose to build new housing estates, new schools, etc. and to link them to the rest of the country?
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    > If everyone cycles you need a cycle lane at least the size of a car lane No you don't - bikes and scooters take up far less room than the same person being sat alone in their car. The increased throughput of people would drastically improve the efficiency of the road. Also, if the people choose active travel instead of driving, then you also remove a large number of cars from the road and also reduce congestion for the people who have to drive. New housing estates will need joining up to the existing road network, but they also need to have good public transport links to avoid the roads being just filled with people stuck in cars in traffic. Also, they should have good walking/cycling options too which is often completely neglected by developers. Obviously new developments will need some road building, but it's a mistake to think that adding roads will reduce congestion. Ultimately, personal cars don't scale beyond a certain population density. If you aim to add more roads, the shops and facilities end up becoming more separated which then leads to more people choosing to drive to get there. The extra people driving then leads to more congestion which leads to more roads which leads to facilities becoming spaced further apart and requiring even more space for parking facilities. It's an exercise in futility.