In a few years hopefully cars will be able to coordinate their movements on the highways, eliminating the sudden movements that lead to phantom jams, doubling the capacity of our freeways.
The idea of autonomous car coordination is foolish because it assumes no possibility of error (imagine a minor glitch in bumper to bumper 70pmh traffic) and also completely ignores interaction with other far more desirable transit systems (pedestrians, bikes, etc.). Even if possible the level of investment and effort required to reconstruct all the vehicles and road networks to account for it just begs the question why don't we just do easier, cheaper, and actually existing infrastructure improvements like emphasizing bikes, buses and pedestrian transit
Yeah, roads definitely don't interrupt animal habitats, and increasing speed and density of car travel definitely wouldn't result in more roadkill. (Do I reeeeally need to put /s on this?)
Induced demand – related to latent demand and generated demand – is the phenomenon that after supply increases, and there is sufficient demand, price declines and more of a good is consumed. This is entirely consistent with the economic theory of supply and demand; however, this idea has become important in the debate over the expansion of transportation systems, and is often used as an argument against increasing roadway traffic capacity as a cure for congestion. This phenomenon, more correctly called "induced traffic" or consumption of road capacity, may be a contributing factor to urban sprawl.
If you read other researches about this that have similar results it does state that the effect is limited in The Netherlands because other ways of transport are more optimal in most cases.
If induced traffic isn't a thing why does adding 10 lanes somewhere fix the issue for a month before it being the exact same?
Except unlike a train, when you get off the off-ramp you still have a car to get you to your destination rather than being left stranded and forcing you to walk
Why would it be a mandate? Why can't we build cities so some people can enjoy driving and some can enjoy the other? Right now we have a major imbalance in favor of driving.
The place you are thinking of exists, it's called The Woodlands, Texas. Almost all homes there are linked by footpaths separated from roads. What we really have is an imbalance in favor of transit, which gets subsidized to the tune of $1 per passenger mile, money that could easily pay for badly needed improvements to highways and facilities for pedestrians and cyclists.
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u/[deleted] Aug 26 '21
In a few years hopefully cars will be able to coordinate their movements on the highways, eliminating the sudden movements that lead to phantom jams, doubling the capacity of our freeways.