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Did you know some experts say traffic jams are actually good?

Princess AlicePrincess Alice
in General
Admittedly, this is a bit of a clickbait thread title.

What I'm referring to, of course, is the phenomenon of induced demand. If your road is congested, so you add more lanes, it'll just get congested again because the higher capacity encourages people to use it more.

So some engineers will argue that some amount of traffic congestion is, in fact, desirable, because attempting to get rid of every last bit of congestion will lead to this endless cycle of adding capacity only to see additional demand and thus further congestion.

Most people don't think about this, but if you've ever played a city simulation game, this is probably something you've noticed.
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Comments

  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    Hey. Don't make unwarranted assumptions. I am not nearly good enough at city simulation games to notice anything of the sort
  • Princess AlicePrincess Alice
    edited 2018-02-23 00:12:23
    You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    You mean to tell me that, in all the time you played SimCity 4, you never widened a congested street only to find that the improved street was also congested, and wondered why that might be?
  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    yeah dude i sucked ass at sim city. i'd get help from cousin vinny and still end up with a city that wished it was detroit.
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    So is there a good solution to traffic congestion?

    I say this as somebody who has to battle a metric fuckton of traffic getting to work almost every day.
  • AnonusAnonus
    I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
    Klinotaxis said:

    yeah dude i sucked ass at sim city. i'd get help from cousin vinny and still end up with a city that wished it was detroit.

    did i ever tell you about the crumbling houses centie and i saw in detroit
  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    no but i live in urban decay world anyway
  • AnonusAnonus
    I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
    oh
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    urban decay is fascinating to look at but not fun to live in
  • Princess AlicePrincess Alice
    You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Imipolex G said:

    So is there a good solution to traffic congestion?

    I say this as somebody who has to battle a metric fuckton of traffic getting to work almost every day.

    I assume you don't consider "convince a majority of people, yourself included, to take public transit" to be an acceptable answer. :P


    Anonus said:

    Klinotaxis said:

    yeah dude i sucked ass at sim city. i'd get help from cousin vinny and still end up with a city that wished it was detroit.

    did i ever tell you about the crumbling houses centie and i saw in detroit
    That entire day was surreal, man. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
  • TatterhoodTatterhood
    Paying attention to Toronto politics it was hard not to learn about this kind of thing.
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    i've lived in NoVA and southeast FL and i've seen this first-hand

    also i knew what you were talking about before i clicked on this lol
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    Central Avenue said:

    Imipolex G said:

    So is there a good solution to traffic congestion?

    I say this as somebody who has to battle a metric fuckton of traffic getting to work almost every day.

    I assume you don't consider "convince a majority of people, yourself included, to take public transit" to be an acceptable answer. :P

    No, dammit, I'm an American!

    serious answers only pls
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    Imipolex G said:

    Central Avenue said:

    Imipolex G said:

    So is there a good solution to traffic congestion?

    I say this as somebody who has to battle a metric fuckton of traffic getting to work almost every day.

    I assume you don't consider "convince a majority of people, yourself included, to take public transit" to be an acceptable answer. :P

    No, dammit, I'm an American!

    serious answers only pls
    *forces Imipolex G to stand at the right side of the escalator unless he's walking in which case he must be at the left side*



    y'know it's sorta unfortunate that no one outside of the washington DC metro area follows this
  • vtkvtk
    embrace the confusion
    Induced demand is definitely a thing, but I think it would be more correct to call it relief of demand suppression. Anyway, if you think induced demand is a reason to oppose any and every added-capacity road project, you overestimate the magnitude of the effect.
  • AlduinAlduin
    http://politics.com.ph/mar-thinks-traffic-jams-aint-a-bad-thing-heres-why/ Our politicians actually believe the clickbait title
  • Princess AlicePrincess Alice
    You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    vtk said:

    Induced demand is definitely a thing, but I think it would be more correct to call it relief of demand suppression. Anyway, if you think induced demand is a reason to oppose any and every added-capacity road project, you overestimate the magnitude of the effect.

    This is definitely true. I just felt like being intentionally provocative with my thread title to get people thinking about it. :P
  • AlirozAliroz
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    According to my grandma, the basic premise of this thread is obvious to anybody who's had to lose part of a yard or backyard to accommodate a road-widening project.  Wider roads just bring more noise, and more traffic, and higher speed limits.
  • BeeBee
    Imipolex G said:

    So is there a good solution to traffic congestion?

    I say this as somebody who has to battle a metric fuckton of traffic getting to work almost every day.

    Public transit, provided they don't stop every fucking block downtown.

    There are a lot of things I like about Portland's train.  This is not one of them.
  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    every other block's the way to go
  • Princess AlicePrincess Alice
    You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Imipolex G said:

    Central Avenue said:

    Imipolex G said:

    So is there a good solution to traffic congestion?

    I say this as somebody who has to battle a metric fuckton of traffic getting to work almost every day.

    I assume you don't consider "convince a majority of people, yourself included, to take public transit" to be an acceptable answer. :P

    No, dammit, I'm an American!

    serious answers only pls
    This raises the question—and I swear I'm not trying to be a smartass here—but it raises the question of "are you interested in reducing the travel time for everyone, or just for yourself?"

    Like, you could say "everyone but Imi use public transit" but I doubt you'd get many to agree to that.

    It's one of the weird contradictions of transportation engineering: you have to focus on what's best for travelers collectively, even if it means inconveniencing individual travelers. You may not like waiting at an onramp meter to get on the freeway, but forcing drivers to do so has a huge positive impact on overall traffic flow for that highway.

    And, as vtk pointed out, this isn't a reason to reject any and all projects that would add capacity to a highway, but it is important to know that just throwing more lanes at a congested roadway won't automatically fix all the problems.


    vtk said:

    Induced demand is definitely a thing, but I think it would be more correct to call it relief of demand suppression. 

    It depends on how you look at it, I suppose. What's really happening is that, as you add more capacity, the initial congestion starts to ease...and people start taking more discretionary trips. You go from "315 is a nightmare this time of day, I'm only going straight home after work!" to "315's not so bad anymore, I guess I could go to the mall!"

    (And yes, I know there are no malls near 315.)
  • Princess AlicePrincess Alice
    You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    image
  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    Civil Engineer Laffs
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    > more discretionary trips

    Along with more residential development.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-02-24 01:43:31
    Klinotaxis said:

    every other block's the way to go

    Fucking...no.

    YOU CAN WALK A FEW BLOCKS

    This train (not a bus, not even a streetcar, but a TRAIN) shouldn't take two goddamn hours to go between Hillsboro and Gresham because people are too lazy to fucking WALK in one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities in the country!  It's completely reasonable spacing outside downtown, but everything from Goose Hollow to Gateway is the most wasteful ass thing.
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    everyone should take the bus except me
  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    every three blocks that's my final offer
  • AlirozAliroz
    ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    I propose Teleportation, because it solves almost as many problems as it causes, and doesn't have the paradoxes of time travel.

    Failing that, we could useunderground trains, moving by magnets and, um, the heat of the earth or something, I didn't think this through.

    Ah, just forget it, everybody can just stay home all day.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-02-24 03:20:24
    Good rule of thumb for pubic transit.  If you can walk between stops considerably faster than the time between the arrivals, they're too close.  Buses I'm willing to slide a bit, and school buses moreso as they run once with known passenger load.  Streetcar, only if it has a dedicated lane and doesn't share a lane with regular traffic (ours shares a lane and is infamously slower than walking -- it's foremost on survey responses of why people don't use the damn thing).  You really shouldn't be placing stops closer than a solid half mile.  If you only want to go a couple blocks, you don't really want a bus, you want a fucking conveyor belt.

    Train, no.  Extra NO.  It's there for distance.  If I can dismount the train downtown, walk to the next stop, and beat it there, it's too fucking close.
  • Princess AlicePrincess Alice
    edited 2018-02-24 03:27:30
    You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    This was literally one of the topics covered in my transportation engineering course.

    The key is that you don't just consider the time a random passenger would spend on the train, but their total travel time, including walking from the stop to their final destination.

    Without getting too technical, here's the trend you see: As you start to add more closely-spaced stops, the expected total travel time decreases...because they're getting off closer to their destination and don't have to walk as far.

    But there comes a point where, if you space your stops too closely, the expected total travel time actually begins to increase again, because the time spent slowing and dwelling for each stop exceeds the walking time saved by stopping closer to your destination.

    So...it's a balance.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2018-02-24 07:03:27
    And that makes a lot of sense for a bus.  The buses around here have stops every 2-3 blocks, but they just pass it if nobody's there and nobody requests a stop, so it's not as much of a problem.  But when you're talking about a major arterial train line that stretches 15-20 miles through downtown and three major outlying 'burbs on each side of it, trying to treat it AS a bus while downtown is pretty dumb.

    Like, I remember the subways in Boston and DC.  They didn't do this shit.  They stopped at key hubs and let you take a bus wherever else.  By the same logic, the MAX should have like, five stops at the most downtown.  Say, Goose Hollow, Providence, Pioneer Square, Skidmore, Lloyd Center.  Done.  And taking a bus from there isn't a cost problem because the ticket is shared.
  • CalicaCalica
    Sup bitches, witches, Haters, and trolls.
    Klinotaxis said:

    every other block's the way to go

    have a bus that stops every other block, a rapid bus that stops every four blocks, and a train that stops every eight blocks
  • vtkvtk
    embrace the confusion
    Aliroz said:

    Wider roads just bring more noise, and more traffic, and higher speed limits.

    In my experience, road widenings are usually coincident with a decrease in speed limit. What had been a two-lane road with a 50MPH speed limit (which perhaps should have been lowered years prior) becomes a five-lane road with a 35MPH limit (to which nobody adheres).

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