4 ms·

The title of the submission is deeply misleading, though it follows some rather ridiculous claims in the article- Instead, they come from a few outlying neighb

The title of the submission is deeply misleading, though it follows some rather ridiculous claims in the article- Instead, they come from a few outlying neighborhoods and travel long distances together in the same direction like schools of fish -- clogging up not only the roads they drive on, but also everyone else's. The notion that they are to blame is asinine. A highway is being utilized beyond capacity, but picking out any group on the highway adds dramatic narrative yet little insight. The suggestion that you remove "just 1%" is surprisingly naive as well, reminding me a bit of this Onion piece - http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-98-percent-of-us-commuters-favor-public-tra,1434/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-98-percent-of-us-com... If the highway had less utilization, it would cause many who use mass transit (like light rail) to choose the highway. Rinse repeat. It is how highways in virtually every metropolitan area eventually reach a point of saturation, that new point becoming the natural balance.

thrownaway2424 14y ago
Right. Which is why the only sane way to deal with traffic is to ramp up the tolls until the utilization falls below 90% or whatever the threshold is. I don't care if the rush hour toll on the Bay Bridge is $50. It will cost less, overall, than having thousands of people stuck in traffic for hours.
- MereInterest 14y ago
  Or, you know, investing in infrastructure where it is needed.
- hnriot 14y ago
  I think you're exaggerating somewhat disingenuously. I commute over the bay bridge and it generally flows well, "stuck for hours" just isn't realistic. It's already $5-$7 which seems quite enough given that I already pay local taxes which are supposed to be for infrastructure.
- Nitramp 14y ago
  As there's no alternative in public transport (that I'm aware of), if you charge $50 to cross the bridge, you will make it impossible to work in SF for people living North and earning below a certain threshold. So these people will either have to move, or find a different job. That seems like a somewhat extreme outcome. Offering attractive alternatives to commuting by car might be a better way to reduce congestion on the roads.
  - thrownaway2424 14y ago
    Public transport (BART + AC Transit) already carries the majority of transbay traffic, so I don't understand your claim that there is no alternative to driving.
46Bit 14y ago
You've not refuted the article but merely described it as naive, ridiculous, etc. Whilst it's true that a quiet highway attracts drivers, that doesn't mean that reducing the drivers this article discusses won't deliver benefits.
- corresation 14y ago
  >You've not refuted the article I clearly indicated the issue with the article. If there are 50,001 people at a 50,000 person stadium, you can't point to one guy and say he is the reason it is over capacity. Further, there is no one who doesn't understand that less drivers on the highway = a faster commute. But therein lies the classic unintended consequence: Whatever you do to improve the commute leads to more traffic. Twin that highway and you'll see a massive boom in suburban building, for instance. Or we can select 1% of the drivers on the highway, call them the problem, and call it a day.
  - alexqgb 14y ago
    You're missing the point, which is that the the maximum carrying capacity of a road is a function of the skill exercised by the drivers. The issue revealed here is that even a small number of unskilled drivers can do terrible things to the flow of traffic on busy roads. In other words, crowded roads have a very low tolerance for bad drivers. Since the number of disruptively bad drivers is so remarkably low, and their negative effect is so stratospherically high, a program designed to improve their skills could save astonishing sums of time and money. So it's not about "calling them the problem and calling it a day." It's about actually fixing the problem. And you don't need to single people out to do this. Rather, you set the bar for licensing at a level that they'll need to do additional work to cross. Given how few of them there are, this can be done with no disruption to 99% of the drivers on the road, and major benefit to 100% of them.
    - anthonyb 14y ago
      The article specifically mentions that it's not driver skill which is the issue: These commuters aren't necessarily slow or bad drivers. Instead, they come from a few outlying neighborhoods and travel long distances together in the same direction like schools of fish -- clogging up not only the roads they drive on, but also everyone else's.
anthonyb 14y ago
Not necessarily. When a highway is close to capacity, it only needs to be blocked for a short period of time for it to back up traffic for miles. So if there's a rush from a particular suburb, it could very well cause traffic problems at a specific time.
- corresation 14y ago
  When a highway is close to capacity, it only needs to be blocked for a short period of time for it to back up traffic for miles. So if there's a rush from a particular suburb, it could very well cause traffic problems at a specific time. No traffic is more natural, per se, than any other traffic. Again you've repeated the claim that you can single out users and attribute, essentially, blame. This study is most certainly bunk. Someone thought it would be novel to try the sort of traffic analysis that every single traffic department in the world does, and of course they're going to try to discern some profound finding, like "lots of people come from lots of people to hit the city core at 8:30am".
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    > Again you've repeated the claim that you can single out users and attribute, essentially, blame. Where did I claim that? You seem to be missing something, somewhere. The gist of the article is that large bunches/waves/schools of traffic travel in from outlying suburbs. I imagine that where that pack travels, jams ensue, and anything that you can do to smooth out that peak will help traffic flow more smoothly. And they're using cell phone signals/GPS to track drivers down to the individual level. Pretty sure not many traffic departments do that sort of analysis, even if you type it in italics. Mostly it's just pressure sensors to measure average flow of particular roads.

thrownaway2424 14y ago

Right. Which is why the only sane way to deal with traffic is to ramp up the tolls until the utilization falls below 90% or whatever the threshold is. I don't care if the rush hour toll on the Bay Bridge is $50. It will cost less, overall, than having thousands of people stuck in traffic for hours.

MereInterest 14y ago
Or, you know, investing in infrastructure where it is needed.
hnriot 14y ago
I think you're exaggerating somewhat disingenuously. I commute over the bay bridge and it generally flows well, "stuck for hours" just isn't realistic. It's already $5-$7 which seems quite enough given that I already pay local taxes which are supposed to be for infrastructure.
Nitramp 14y ago
As there's no alternative in public transport (that I'm aware of), if you charge $50 to cross the bridge, you will make it impossible to work in SF for people living North and earning below a certain threshold. So these people will either have to move, or find a different job. That seems like a somewhat extreme outcome. Offering attractive alternatives to commuting by car might be a better way to reduce congestion on the roads.
- thrownaway2424 14y ago
  Public transport (BART + AC Transit) already carries the majority of transbay traffic, so I don't understand your claim that there is no alternative to driving.

46Bit 14y ago

You've not refuted the article but merely described it as naive, ridiculous, etc. Whilst it's true that a quiet highway attracts drivers, that doesn't mean that reducing the drivers this article discusses won't deliver benefits.

corresation 14y ago
>You've not refuted the article I clearly indicated the issue with the article. If there are 50,001 people at a 50,000 person stadium, you can't point to one guy and say he is the reason it is over capacity. Further, there is no one who doesn't understand that less drivers on the highway = a faster commute. But therein lies the classic unintended consequence: Whatever you do to improve the commute leads to more traffic. Twin that highway and you'll see a massive boom in suburban building, for instance. Or we can select 1% of the drivers on the highway, call them the problem, and call it a day.
- alexqgb 14y ago
  You're missing the point, which is that the the maximum carrying capacity of a road is a function of the skill exercised by the drivers. The issue revealed here is that even a small number of unskilled drivers can do terrible things to the flow of traffic on busy roads. In other words, crowded roads have a very low tolerance for bad drivers. Since the number of disruptively bad drivers is so remarkably low, and their negative effect is so stratospherically high, a program designed to improve their skills could save astonishing sums of time and money. So it's not about "calling them the problem and calling it a day." It's about actually fixing the problem. And you don't need to single people out to do this. Rather, you set the bar for licensing at a level that they'll need to do additional work to cross. Given how few of them there are, this can be done with no disruption to 99% of the drivers on the road, and major benefit to 100% of them.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    The article specifically mentions that it's not driver skill which is the issue: These commuters aren't necessarily slow or bad drivers. Instead, they come from a few outlying neighborhoods and travel long distances together in the same direction like schools of fish -- clogging up not only the roads they drive on, but also everyone else's.

anthonyb 14y ago

Not necessarily. When a highway is close to capacity, it only needs to be blocked for a short period of time for it to back up traffic for miles. So if there's a rush from a particular suburb, it could very well cause traffic problems at a specific time.

corresation 14y ago
When a highway is close to capacity, it only needs to be blocked for a short period of time for it to back up traffic for miles. So if there's a rush from a particular suburb, it could very well cause traffic problems at a specific time. No traffic is more natural, per se, than any other traffic. Again you've repeated the claim that you can single out users and attribute, essentially, blame. This study is most certainly bunk. Someone thought it would be novel to try the sort of traffic analysis that every single traffic department in the world does, and of course they're going to try to discern some profound finding, like "lots of people come from lots of people to hit the city core at 8:30am".
- anthonyb 14y ago
  > Again you've repeated the claim that you can single out users and attribute, essentially, blame. Where did I claim that? You seem to be missing something, somewhere. The gist of the article is that large bunches/waves/schools of traffic travel in from outlying suburbs. I imagine that where that pack travels, jams ensue, and anything that you can do to smooth out that peak will help traffic flow more smoothly. And they're using cell phone signals/GPS to track drivers down to the individual level. Pretty sure not many traffic departments do that sort of analysis, even if you type it in italics. Mostly it's just pressure sensors to measure average flow of particular roads.