4 ms·

Stop punishing people by widening roads! It hasn't been shown to decrease transit times, but it has been shown to harm local standards of living.

HDThoreaun 2y ago
The point of widening roads is to let more people use them, not to decrease transit time.
- seadan83 2y ago
  Roads are widened all the time with the goal to increase average speeds. I can think of counter-example where it's more clear that travel time is not an independent variable to road width: - lanes on highways are extra wide so you drive faster. (The wider the lane, the faster people will drive, the margin of error is greatly reduced allowing a faster travel speed). If what you were saying is true, then there would be first a lot of projects to narrow lanes to the minimum in order to increase the number of travel lanes. IIRC, US highways have as a standard a 13 foot width (I might have that somewhat wrong), IIRC as well, the absolute minimum width is more like 9 feet. There could be almost 50% more lanes by narrowing, but that would reduce traffic speeds.
- itishappy 2y ago
  People are already complaining about traffic! Drivers taking I70 between Denver and Loveland on weekends aren't doing so because of their love of the road. Why would we want to increase the number of people experiencing traffic? To assume my prior hyperbolic tone: Widening roads is punishing people for driving! I'd argue the true goal of the exercise is to increase the capacity of the transit system, and that includes the proposal to not widen the roads. This isn't being done to punish drivers, regardless of how someguydave wants to frame it. The money (to the tune of a cool billion dollars) is being reinvested elsewhere in the network with the intent of increasing the number of people the city can move. The naive proposal of widening roads does work! It increases capacity, but it also makes everybody's experience worse via traffic and pollution. Let's see if there's something better!
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    People complain about everything. Certainly the bus is a common complaint here in Chicago even though it’s difficult for me to imagine it getting much better. Even if they add BRT people will complain about that. Of course the goal is increasing capacity of the transit system the question is how to do it. I think the US has a big problem where SFHs are the epitome of what it means to be successful for a huge number of people. These people will always vote for policies that enable living in a single family home, even if they don’t live in on themselves and will never be able to afford to because the freedom to do so is so deeply ingrained. Highway expansion is a policy that enables single family home living as it enables people to live farther and farther from the city center so I suspect it will always see a large amount of political support.

HDThoreaun 2y ago

The point of widening roads is to let more people use them, not to decrease transit time.

seadan83 2y ago
Roads are widened all the time with the goal to increase average speeds. I can think of counter-example where it's more clear that travel time is not an independent variable to road width: - lanes on highways are extra wide so you drive faster. (The wider the lane, the faster people will drive, the margin of error is greatly reduced allowing a faster travel speed). If what you were saying is true, then there would be first a lot of projects to narrow lanes to the minimum in order to increase the number of travel lanes. IIRC, US highways have as a standard a 13 foot width (I might have that somewhat wrong), IIRC as well, the absolute minimum width is more like 9 feet. There could be almost 50% more lanes by narrowing, but that would reduce traffic speeds.
itishappy 2y ago
People are already complaining about traffic! Drivers taking I70 between Denver and Loveland on weekends aren't doing so because of their love of the road. Why would we want to increase the number of people experiencing traffic? To assume my prior hyperbolic tone: Widening roads is punishing people for driving! I'd argue the true goal of the exercise is to increase the capacity of the transit system, and that includes the proposal to not widen the roads. This isn't being done to punish drivers, regardless of how someguydave wants to frame it. The money (to the tune of a cool billion dollars) is being reinvested elsewhere in the network with the intent of increasing the number of people the city can move. The naive proposal of widening roads does work! It increases capacity, but it also makes everybody's experience worse via traffic and pollution. Let's see if there's something better!
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  People complain about everything. Certainly the bus is a common complaint here in Chicago even though it’s difficult for me to imagine it getting much better. Even if they add BRT people will complain about that. Of course the goal is increasing capacity of the transit system the question is how to do it. I think the US has a big problem where SFHs are the epitome of what it means to be successful for a huge number of people. These people will always vote for policies that enable living in a single family home, even if they don’t live in on themselves and will never be able to afford to because the freedom to do so is so deeply ingrained. Highway expansion is a policy that enables single family home living as it enables people to live farther and farther from the city center so I suspect it will always see a large amount of political support.