Braess Paradox | Deleting Roads May Improve Traffic Flow
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- čas přidán 14. 06. 2022
- In a recent interview with Financial Times, Elon Musk dismissed the concept of induced demand and sarcastically suggested to delete roads to improve traffic flow. This is actually a real-world phenomenon called Braess Paradox. This video explores how removing roads changes the behavior of commuters and how they are distributed along the traffic network.
Sources:
Elon Musk Dismisses Induced Demand, A Phenomenon First Witnessed In 1866
www.forbes.com/sites/carltonr...
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Braess Paradox Explanation
brilliant.org/wiki/braess-par...
Transportation for America - The Congestion Con
t4america.org/maps-tools/cong...
Beware the "Period of Maximum Constraint":
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You made it to the bottom of the description. The final link leads to my Twitter:
/ yurbanist
![Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]](/img/n.gif)
Of course a car salesman denies induced demand.
It's smug confidence that he says it that really gets to me.
"Imagine everything I'll do. Teslas, tunnels, tunnels squared! Digging... and how much money I'm gonna be guaranteed to fleece from you in the process!"
I feel bad for all the futurist kids falling for his shit. It used to speak to me, too, but then I realized all of the 'genius' of what Elon is doing is from the people he hires, not himself. At best; he gives actual competent people some marching orders that let them do what they wanted to do. At worst, he makes yatch 2.0 (mars, cybertruck, hyperloop etc) just playthings for the rich.
If Elon disappeared but his money kept doing work, Spacex would probably keep reducing launch costs.
@@crassirus Elon has publicly stated traffic congestion is a density problem and that self driving won’t solve that. So has the CEO of Uber actually who’s on the record saying the solution to our cities is better transit and neighbourhoods. I think Elon’s efforts in tunnelling are more about the automation part of it and probably have an end goal involving mars exploration. But if it keeps investors investing I’m not surprised he hypes it up.
Exactly. Doing Space X Elon just figured out how much the US gov't can really pay. And I like Space X. I really do. But Elon....SMH....just wow.
@@ANTSEMUT1yet gotta admit smug people are self loathing mass coral problems more then anyone could imagine and doing worse then better
Nailed it. The last point about making more direct routes for cyclists and pedestrians and forcing more circuitous routes for drivers is exactly how streets and roads are designed in the Netherlands, and it works very well.
New Jersey recently translated Netherlands road planning into English, and made that the new standard. Cars take longer routes, and local roads get designed around all modes of travel.
Realistically, climate change won't be fixed until there's no more oil, coal, and natural gas left in existence to find and use on earth... And with emissions still increasing rapidly every year, and 1200 metric tons of co2 being emitted every single second, focus should be on noise and air pollution instead, cause we will never fix climate change...
I'm honestly surprised Not Just Bikes or Alan Fisher hasn't found your channel yet and promoted it, you deserve it.
I know Oh The Urbanity has seen my videos, but growth takes time.
I have seen my videos shared on NJB's subreddit, so there is a nonzero chance that he has seen my content.
@@YetAnotherUrbanist well you are yet another urbanist and its starting to get to many
@@Humulator and hopefully that's gonna change people's minds about cars and urbanism!
I agree, this channel is great! Shame that he's getting sub-10k views.
@@Humulator apparently there aren't enough because this trashbag nation hasn't gotten with the program yet lol
Love the quote near the end 'cars should be expected to wait in the traffic they are producing' 😂❤️
Yeah, it’s very satisfying, it’s also what’s wrong with about every urbanist video. Nothing helps get political support like letting everyone who isn’t in your club know you think they are inferior and should suffer. He was doing so well up to that.
We really need to get these platforms to kill the like button. It’s not helping.
@@nunyabidness3075 I see your point. it's not about them being in a different club though, it's that they make noise and pollution and make me feel less safe, actively making my life worse, every single day
@@mojojojoe100 I suspect you are misunderstanding me on purpose. The club I’m referring to is the urbanist club. If you want less traffic with more density and walkability, we need to get the drivers to join that club. Constantly making them the butt of jokes and complaints is not helping.
On the other hand, it sounds like you may have issues that require different choices. You might want to look into a rural area with less noise rather than trying to live in an area full of cars and trying to change it.
@@nunyabidness3075 yeah that's exactly it. many people rely on driving and don't do it by choice, so we shouldn't punish drivers for not being able to walk on a certain trip. we definitely overuse cars, but they are necessary in some cases
@@the.abhiram.r 100% agree and as an extension the Seattle "experiment" does not cover "lost trips" - you know the people that STAYED HOME and DID NOT go out at all OR went AWAY from the downtown to a suburban MALL and being a 2 week run
we NEED better NON CAR options NOT JUST making driving "worse" as that "drives" the war on cars narrative AND political movement to build MORE car and LESS transit/bike infrastructure as a "pushback" vote by CAR DRIVERS being "harmed" by the so called "war on cars"
some areas HAVE built TRANSIT and BIKE infrastructure and NOT made the reduced CAR infrastructure known OR "hid" the traffic calming - stuff like "street scape and "destination / entertainment" districts having extra zebra crossings and extended kerbs and angle parking to NARROW driving lanes and urban trees
Thanks, Elon, for the great idea to remove roads!
he actually had a good idea for once
however his "build vertically" is true for parking - where you can waste much less space with a parking garage than with surface parking.
Crazy to think that the country who once built legendary cities like NYC is now responsable for these dystopian suburbs
Sad that people literally don't understand the point of a suburb. NYC is a shithole and the city stinks like piss, wouldn't call it legendary.
@@samharris246 Do you even live in NYC?
Yes
Blame the decades old ads campaigns by big auto. Spewing propaganda to make more parking lots and more highways. Big auto has fleeced is many times including having us bail them out. It's disgusting, just like other industries like big pharma and big medical
Skill issue in modern Americans. They simply can't anymore.
I first heard about this paradox in 1988 after the San Francisco earthquake that destroyed one of their bridges. Planners were surprised that nothing happened to traffic as drivers simply found alternate routes or methods to get to their destination.
And in Toronto, a few years ago the city decided to restrict King Street from car traffic allowing cars to drive along it long enough to get out the next block.
Merchants and critics predicted traffic chaos in surrounding streets and loss of business on King Street. But none of that happened. In fact, sales receipts increased reported by merchants.
I love when people are like "NNNooOOOo pls don't take away road/tons of free parking! You are stealing 99.999999% of my customers!!!!1" and then, lo and behold, their business increases because it turns out people walking by a shop are much, much more likely to spontaneously stop in.
yet another reason why business owners and economists shouldn't be taken seriously about anything that is outside their lane (and even some stuff in them)
@@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClub "shouldn't"?
@@georgeemil3618 yeap sorry!
Same happend in Vienna (Mariahilfer Straße). Every Business Man said that this would hur business. Now businesses demand that additional roads should be pedestrianized.
Similar thing happened in London a few years back. One of the bridges needed to be closed because of structural problems. In the end, they only re-opened the bridge to pedestrian and cycle traffic. Congestion decreased in the whole area.
Not only do roads incentivize driving it actually requires more people to drive since the new environment makes it inhospitable to other modes of transportation.
I wish you could read Dutch. You'd have such a blast pouring over studies of their transport networks, and we'd have a blast watching that. I feel like studying American transportation is sapping your will to live.
His and mine both. On one hand; I now know there is a better way. On the other; I've realized that my isolation as a disabled person who can't drive in the US is almost inevitable and, even if I somehow agitate for change, it will probably be so glacial because of how many loud, annoying NIMBY assholes whose last decades of life seem to be composed entirely of interfering with literally anything good.
If not for the fact that I've got people who would miss me and a new job (complete with 1.5 hour bus commute when I could make it a 20 minute drive if I hadn't been born all fucked up) I would have no reason to keep fighting.
This nation is fucked up beyond all repair in every single way but whenever I point that out I mostly just catch shit from people who are somehow more insecure than me who can't deal with criticism.
NOT JUST BIKES did a VIDEO on driving and how it is SO GOOD due to master design AND everybody HAVING alternatives that often are "better" making those that "have" to drive the few on the road and little in the way of CONGESTION
and IMHO it looked like a paradise for MOBILITY with OR without a car VS a "MUST DRIVE" hellscape" we have here in America
I traveled through Houston Texas recently from west to east and I forgot how many lanes I counted on the highway it was either five or six lanes each way so I bet Houston went through this process of adding new lanes and then there was more suburbs built with more people with more cars, with more lanes at it, with more land taken, with more parking built and STILL the lanes are crowded. !!!
The Katy Freeway (I-10 on the west side) is a common case in point for this.
Also, I grew up in a small town east of Houston with more cows than people, and with the addition of 99 (the "Grand Parkway", Houston's third ring highway), it's now firmly a part of the metro area and a hellscape of exurban greenfield upper-middle-class-only residential sprawl. My hometown now even has a required minimum lot size of half an acre, with no allowance for multifamily housing.
I hated that place then, but now I hate it even more for different reasons.
Houston is a highway with a bit of city on either side.
@@cmmartti reportedly the busiest hiway in the world
I'm glad Omaha continues to reject and go the opposite direction of texan cities
We’re debating a downtown highway removal in my city. Unfortunately I think they are just going to double down on it according to the state DOT. Many are open to the idea of it, but are afraid that there won’t be enough transit to replace their perceived trips. The transit agency is inadequate in their view. Even the council members who represent the lower income communities say it’ll negatively effect them because they need to get to their jobs which are on the wealthy side of town. Never mind the fact that this can bring jobs closer to them, eventually. Unfortunately the state DOT has forced their hand and convinced the city council to double down on the highway. They are not even going to increase the lanes. Just from a overpass to a depressed roadway costing a billion dollars and years of construction.
Do you live in Austin? That sounds like exactly what we have here (edit: except for removal being on the table at all, nvm :-/).
Check out Rethink 35 - they're an organization fighting against the expansion, with a plan that (among other things) suggests expanding 130 instead to make a free bypass for inter-regional traffic.
@@River-zo6ve The Texas autobahn was supposed to be a bypass, but it somehow got designed to suit someone corrupt (I’m assuming because it obviously did not get truckers to use it).
Induced demand is actually a thing, but actual demand is a bigger thing, and you can blame 70’s and 80’s Austin Leaders for creating the suburbs and traffic that exists now. You cannot add density without tearing down anything, and while induced demand is a thing, actual demand is a bigger thing. You attract all the shiny, big company jobs then people have to get to them. And don’t get me started on all the additional state jobs.
It's so sad to see that in the few circumstances where cities decide they don't want a the highway the dot acts in defiance and does whatever they want. My city protested I-40 through town so in response the dot planned new route through the most developed part of town and a massive Turbine Interchange that leveled more than 20 blocks of our cities best neighborhood.
Improving a city is not just about removing roads that don’t need to be there, but also improving the alternatives. What we see in a number of cases are piecemeal changes, that are then deemed a failure, because it wasn’t done with adjusting the other elements. For example, trying to marginalise cars, while failing to improve public transportation. Sometimes that failure includes putting transit stops at places you still need a car to get to.
Improving a city is complicated, but there are enough case studies elsewhere, that things don’t need to be done from scratch.
One other thing is that cities and businesses need to look at why their staff are reluctant to return to the office. I highly suspect long and inconvenient transit times are a factor, which take away from the work/life balance which are considered the best way to make happy and productive employees.
Seattle is suffering serious growing pains in this area. The car drivers are up in arms about being marginalized by all the anti-car changes, and all the people who now have cars they do, actually, want to get rid of can't do so because everything is still too spread out and public transit too sparse and inconsistent to justify not having a car. So the roads are packed with parked cars going nowhere because they are a huge pain to drive but are still necessary to reach any significant distance. All the backlash keeps causing the city to abandon transit improvements for car improvements, which leaves the transit improvements half baked, sporadically placed, and constantly reinvented, which just makes them incohesive and useless.
If a transit station is accessible only by car, it's not a transit station -- it's a mistake.
I think the way we phrase and word things scares a lot of people, I don't want roads closed I want them limited to vehicular traffic.
One other problem with expanding roads is that there is more surface to maintain, likely resulting in lower maintenance levels. This means eliminating excess roads should provide the funding necessary for better quality roads, assuming we aren’t dealing with short sighted investment.
True. Looking at videos from the US I'm often surprised by how the surfaces of the roads look like something you'd barely find in backwoods villages here in Eastern Europe. In the US they paved everything, but it doesn't seem like anyone's interested in maintaining it.
8:24 Just imagine all of the grass and trees and animals and beauty that was once in this very spot. Now it's just a literal dessert of concrete and streel that from this shot, looks barely even used. Nothing can live there. Nothing will ever grow. The ultimate tragedy.
I remember when I was staying in the youth hostel some years ago in Seattle part way up the hill and I saw through the glass windows when I was eating breakfast the beautiful bay but it was partly marred by the fact that the Alaskan viaduct was blocking part of it, good bit of it.
So glad it is now changed for the better. I remember as a tourist crossing the roads toward the Seattle ferries that it was so hard to cross the roads toward the bay as a walker.
the king is back
Part of the problem is also the growth in car size. This is most obvious in pickups, but all cars have gotten larger.
Yes completely agree, I’ve seen the number of SUVs increase greatly.
Yeah those things are scary if you're in human sized transportation... I also think road safety tests should test both for the safety of the people ín the car and for those outside of it.
0:09
"Time after time this has been proven to be counterintuitive"
↓
"Time after time this has been proven to be counterproductive"
The issue is that it _is_ an intuitive solution for a lot of people...
Anyways funny bloopers are funny, great video!
City officials should be legally required to watch this channel to improve cities
Elon: “induced demand is a ridiculous idea. People want a fixed amount of any good or service, and making it easier to access something couldn’t possibly increase people’s use of that something.”
Also Musk:
Also Elon: I remain a master strategist
Twitter profits plummet due to advertisers ditching what is becoming a Nazi/White supremecist breeding ground
Yet another great video! Thanks for expanding on exactly why induced demand works the why it does, and exactly how to help fix it! I've been sharing your videos and it really helps to explain these concepts to family and friends
I drive that Seattle route everyday. The 2 years or so of Waterfront construction where they were tearing down the viaduct and shifting the road over were great. It was clear that the vast majority of people thought it would be a nightmare to drive on the waterfront so avoided it. As a result around 5-8 minutes were cut off my travel time. The road is now mostly complete so there has been a noticeable increase in the number of cars.
Side note I despise that they kept street parking on the waterfront. Its primarily used by Taxi and Uber drivers which slows down traffic from their at times sudden & dangerous entry/exit from the road. As well as frequently makes it a one lane road when they decide to not fully exit the road or fully open their doors making it unsafe for cars in the adjacent lane to pass them. There was ZERO reason to keep street parking. There are 5 parking structures on the waterfront.
Induced demand works with all forms of infrastructure, so if you want people to use the bus / subway system, you should move to expand the system. Doing so will reduce congestion on roads just as well as taking roads offline will.
would say BETTER then pure ROAD DIET IF you do NOT "replace" those trips you are trying to "kill" people will DRIVE LONGER to get where they are going OR shift the TIME they leave causing rush "hour" to grow LONGER
build TOP SHELF transit that is quick and easy to use and SHED a number of CAR trips while MAINTAINING the TRIP itself
Nice video. You do not have to call them free bus lanes but just bus lanes. Because bus lanes are only for busses. Regards from the Netherlands were we already have all of this. Keep promoting.
"If... if if You know, if adding roads just increases traffic, why don't we delete them and decrease traffic? And I think you'd have an uproar if you did that."
-Elon Musk
The answer is yes, on both counts. We CAN delete roads and it can decrease traffic. And it DOES make an uproar when we do that. I tell people yes, very smart people can be dumb about things. Attitudes are very strong and affect the strongest of intellects. He says he wants to work towards a sustainable planet but I never hear about him supporting bicycles, which is instant zero emissions travel, healthy, and fun. Maybe one day he will come around. But he's got this car making company, which can bias his judgement.
It's not a bias in his judgement, it's a conflict of interest. As you said: he is selling cars. If he would promote a system that makes people use fewer cars, he would be working against his own busyness investment. So his solution is to make people buy more of his cars, that can travel in his tunnels, which may only be built by his company.
@@0Defensor0 Please correct me (again) but my understanding of a conflict of interest is something that clouds my judgement, where my personal gain will influence how I make a decision. It will bias my decision making. In this case having a car company and a tunnel company will affect his public views on what people call induced demand.
I want to suggest car culture is strong in America. People will give up their homes and live in their car before they give up a car. So much revolves around this culture and in America the more extreme version of car culture is pickup truck culture where it's far more than what these do for you, it wraps around people's sense of identity, from seeing getting a driver's licence as a rite of passage, the driver's licence card is the most popular domestic form of id, and people who don't drive often get driven around by a parent, friend, your boss to job sites, etc. When the attitudes are so imbedded in a society, it should come as no surprise that someone like Mr. Musk would thoroughly embrace them before he started a car company. He prides himself in first principles thinking. That means, if he ever figured cars were not such a good idea, he might shut down or sell the car portion of Tesla. But there's more. With such a strong culture where people depend on cars, it can be much easier and much faster to convert cars to sustainable power than convert people to bicycles and buses instead of cars. The egg came before the chicken. The car centric attitudes affected Elon's decision to build cars. The other oft quoted thing is... cars create so many jobs. It seems they also help create billion/trillionaires. Creating jobs and wealthy company owners with bicycle building companies is not as common. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. So many of these companies are in China, Taiwan and India. And they are big companies. Someday Mr. Musk may figure that out. If and when he does privately, it might change his actions.
This thing about induced demand was explained in someone else's video more clearly, that the demand is there. As more access to using cars is created (more car lanes on a highway), more of that demand can be met. I want to make the point that the demand for cars is far larger than the capacity to satisfy that demand. The demand for bicycles and bicycling has all its demands met. Empty and nearly empty bike lanes indicate that. But demand really is something that can be "induced" or, to put it in a more acceptable wording, it can be influenced. People don't ride bikes because it's too dangerous and you get honked and yelled at by drivers. Remove that by installing bike lanes and how many bike can and will go up. Marketing and selling cars as well as bikes plus having many advocacy groups will promote use of one over the other. Want more people to bike? Try selling the concept to the public better and you increase actual demand.
Can you come and present to my state transport minister and Mayor? One of the best summaries of Induced traffic and Braess Paradox I've heard. Well Done.
This is another argument for streetcars or center running bus rapid transit that's given red light priority; it's just a smaller version of bulldozing the road because you're de-prioritizing cars on it, something a good deal of drivers will realize and, either move their rout or, if they are just going up the road anyway, hop on the new, speedy (and smooth riding if its a streetcar) mass transit.
This is must be one of the most wholesome and self reaffirming Urbanist video I have ever seen, why is this the first time Ive heard of this Paradox?😭😭
Beautiful video. Thank you
I remember the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. They had traffic limitations and everybody thought it would be chaos. Nope! Traffic went down and it was a success
there is also the "FEAR" of gridlock traffic scaring people away
I was in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics and they NON stop told everybody to take the train down town to see the events - I knew a back way there through the port and DROVE DOWNTOWN with almost ZERO delays and back home afterwords and the NEWS showed multi hour long lines to GET ON the skytrain
Very very well done video thank you
Thinking about linking these videos to to my city council rep.
If you want to defeat traffic there are only 2 things that are proven to do it 100% of the time, and Transit although a helpful tool, all too often becomes an expensive waste, and doesn't work for the purpose of reducing traffic, although Public Transit does increase mobility.
The 2 ways to reduce traffic are 1. Allow for Mixed Use Development. Put stores closer to houses so people can walk or drive less to get to what they need. and 2. Increase Street Network connectivity, This keeps local traffic off main roads, as well as allows for multiple paths between destinations so not everyone has to crowd the same collector road.
I am living in Germany. Compared to North America, it's a urban paradise. In reality tough, it's WAY to car centric.
I'm almost 100% certain, that the O N L Y thing, that makes Germany even remotely liveable (north america flat out isn't, sorry folks) are the mixed use zones.
Most RESIDENTS here will walk or bike to where they need to go, as most destinations are nearby. For a 2km Trip adding a Car into the equation makes the trip SO MUCH more inconvenient, that most wouldn't choose the car (even if they loved being traped inside those metal cages).
Take away the mixed use and we still have semi working public transit INSIDE the city, but it's inconvenient enough again, that many would take the car again.
Also, because we do love our cars so god damn much, there is little insentive to leave your car on the outskirts on a P+R or whatever. We subsidise parking SO MUCH, that it is often literally (!) cheaper to drive your car inside the city and pay for a garage, then it is to leave it for free at the P+R and pay 2$ for the ticket to the city center.
For number 1 see Chuck Marohn’s (Strong Towns) watershed analogy.
I’m not a big fan of number 2. People making local trips should just walk or bike. The arterials are better suited for large volumes of car traffic (if it ever needs to happen in the first place).
I agree with your take on transit. Public transit is fundamentally different from car travel; it is not a “traffic band-aid”. The induced demand argument applies when you add transit lanes just as well as car lanes.
There was a newspaper article in the late 1980s that described how people tended to walk if all their amenities were 500m or less.
I live in the suburb of Toronto. My closest shopping is less than 500m in a plaza where I usually walk to get groceries. The next closest is 2km away which is a 30 minute walk crossing two highway ramps.
mixed use development should be coupled _with_ transit. It is having just transit without building places to go to around transit stops which leads to it being a waste
@@georgeemil3618 I live in a place where the closest amenities are about 1000m or a bit more than 1/2mi away, and I walk for most of my journeys. but I live in a town that isn't very dense, but the sidewalks are well protected and the downtown is heavily mixed use.
This video is mindblowing
Elon is right. New or widened roads don't magically get congested. Rather, new homes, apartments and businesses open on or by them. The US population continues to grow and we all need places to live, shop, and work. And, no, people don't flock to crowded streets and not notice quicker, less crowded alternatives.
Knoxville is a counter example. It's doesn't have many highways (I40/I75 which run together, I640, and I140) and the section where I75 and I40 run together is absolutely dreadful because you have no choice but to take it unless you want to deal with slow stroads with tons of traffic lights
so 2 CHOICES Build RAPID transit down town and divert some of those trips OR TRY and build MORE road -> and get MORE traffic for your MONEY
It's far better to make zones smaller and compact together, so that homes, services/shops and jobs are close together.
Your example here with the Seattle viaduct hits differently after watching your most recent video on ST3. It further solidifies the fact that choosing to move the voter approved stations to avoid "4 years of car traffic congestion" is completely backwards reasoning.
I live in a rural area and commute over an hour each way to my job in the city. I must use a car. No, I will not move to the city. I have a job that pays well and has management that is respectful of its workforce. I highly doubt I'd find anything similar that's closer. I do carpool with two others who work at the same location, so there's that at least.
I like cars and driving, so I'm selfishly all for solutions that encourage other commuters to not drive.
I think it's important to focus on fixing zoning laws to allow and encourage the development of walkable urban areas first, while simultaneously improving public transit to be better time competitive with cars. Busses every 15 minutes and transit hubs that link busses and trains should be the expectation, not the exception.
Once city dwellers aren't as dependent on cars for survival, then you can start strategically removing some of the roads and freeways. I feel that will be much more palatable to low information voters than doing it the other way around.
Fundamentally, any plan to address this needs to survive multiple city council election cycles to be implemented, so optics is everything.
Also, this will probably get me some hate, but the people promoting these changes cannot be vocal far leftists, at least not in the U.S. It's stupid, but the voting base in this country can and will oppose an otherwise good idea just for being associated with the far left.
If you want to reduce car use, make driving the worst transportation option. That's not paradoxical at all.
The issue I always see with dedicated bus lanes, especially in downtown areas where there are intersections on every block, is that while the bus might always go to the front of the line, it has to stop at every intersection anyway just like everyone else in cars. Bus lanes need to have their own signaling cycle, which allows them to have green lights all the way through their routes while cars are stopped in every direction as they pass through in order to make them more appealing than a car. Same for trains and trams. They should never have to stop unless they are at one of their dedicated stops, or else they'll never be a better alternative to cars, because they will essentially be nothing but high-capacity cars stuck in the same congestion.
The problem of induced demand isn't one of engineering but one of psychology. People will take whichever form of transportation which they perceive will get them to their destinations quickest and with the least amount of effort.
There are also many people who don’t like living in cities. I’ve lived in cities and rural, and I can see the pros and cons to both
Vancouver's Port Mann Bridge and Seattle's Tacoma Narrows Bridge may be counter-examples to this though. Both have been expanded to 'solve traffic', but to this day they are still flowing freely and no longer bottlenecks.
I'm not denying the Braess Paradox and I support removing urban freeways and road diets, but it is important to notice that it doesn't always apply. Another important aspect is that the 'disappeared' traffic may also mean 'disappeared' customers for businesses.
Cough, Tacoma's not Seattle's Narrows Bridge added Fees and... Drumroll... All the original traffic models failed which messed up revenue projections. I live ~1km from the bridge and have used it as a car driver once in 12 years.
both of those bridges WERE and ARE CHOKEPOINTS and there was so much GREATER capacity on both sides and ALSO BOTH THOSE bridges are TOLL bridges now
I will add the Port MANN is part of the trans canada highway and is the ONLY route through / "around" Vancouver to whistler / Vancouver ISLAND for COMMERCIAL transport
and the same time they built a HUGE BYPASS south of the city EAST of the port mann to divert US bound and PORT bound traffic + car traffic to VANCOUVER ISLAND
@@jasonriddell Thanks for adding the B.C. side of the Equation. TOLLS are a huge changer of habits. No longer do I frequent the old time burger joint or Discount Movie Theater on the other side of the Narrows.
Answer is to provide more (free) schools and training to enhance alt-forms of transport, such as e-bikes, e-scooters, and ultra small vehicle lanes.
I see this firsthand, most people i drive with don't even know where they're going and just head to the highway to decide from there. Even if they know where they want to go they drive to the highway first and then try to figure out a route from there without realizing that mentality usually makes thier routes longer more dangerous and stressful. They feel like they're getting places quickly because you're constantly moving at 75 mph but they spend so long in traffic and get routed so far out of the way it completely negates the time "saved" by going fast. I usually beat my friends and family to places when we leave at the same time. I always take the direct routes and old arterial roads that most people have forgotten about and abandoned for the highway. No traffic and I get around faster but its kind of sad and desolate driving on old disused downtown streets that used to be lively and full of people. If you don't think induced demand is real notice how almost every highway is just 2 lanes either direction in rural areas and don't need to be bigger until they reach urban areas, this added traffic and lanes is soley due to local traffic that should be traveling on local roads and not congesting the highway.
I once got stuck in stop and go traffic on a VERY rural road for 2 hours, during the big solar eclipse back in 2019, due to one single stop sign. So when it comes to traffic nothing surprises me anymore. Also if anybody isn't convinced by the video just play City Skylines. It's amazing how more roads doesn't automatically make things better.
Elon said the quiet part out loud. If you just delete the roads you will eliminate traffic. The thing about that is that it's true. Imagine a world where we took every interstate in our country and got rid of one lane each direction, we install divided rail lines in that new vacant space. It's actually that simple and he knows it, that's why it scares him. Electric cars suck, his cars suck, we have no need for them.
But also traffic is good. It's a powerful encouragement to get them out of cars.
Hey what do you think about the new Reno micromobility project that was announced?
It's a great start, and it compliments the rental scooter program well (although, I am a bit surprised that they didn't do it between the Lime Bike program and this one, but better late than never). I might do a video on it, since city council needs public input before expanding it further. Hopefully, these projects gain enough traction to expand the protected lanes further midtown.
As a seattlite, I can assure you that we ride in the rain because it's the way of life here . It's going to rain at some point and we're going to have to ride in it
I think it’s important to state that this must be done carefully though! I’ve seen examples where towns or routes crippled to a halt due to the closure or narrowing of roads. Last summer as I went to Germany they closed a portion of highway for repairs and this caused a nearby town and country roads to have the entire highway traffic dumped into it crippling them to a complete standstill with multiple hours of delay caused.
Another example is unfortunately Montpellier, where they have decided to go through road diet programs but unfortunately they didn’t invest into the alternative modes of transport or put them in the wrong place (i.e. put the bike lane on a steep inclined road 🤦♂️) (although I heard they’ll finish works on that in a couple of years). Back then the traffic also crippled to a halt during rush hour. Idk if it’s still like that.
The important point is this only works if there are already viable alternatives, otherwise it might impede the entire area’s traffic until there is a viable alternative.
This is especially important, as diverting driving through cities to outer ring roads or high ways is preferred. Also the problem is that induced demand could be wanted to stimulate economic growth, however this must be balanced with negative externalities. Since capacity is often neglected when talking about roads and people rather focus on speed it, it can lead to an unbalanced perspective. However when hitting above 100% capacity cars might pile up and speeds reduce, therefore reduced average speed might be seen as an indicator of undercapacity of a road compared to actual traffic. My preferred solution is as mentioned before a combination of fast efficient roads and slow streets, combined to divert cars from the streets if that isn't their destination.
Sometimes, a government has to do the unpopular thing to get the popular result.
But with democracies, thats rather hard.
Especially in ones where this much money, power and prestige is at stake.
any meaningful change that WILL improve anything will take FAR LONGER then 4 years so you end up with a replacement government once the construction starts and traffic DOES GET WORSE as it will during construction and they likely will campaign on the "insert previous console here" is wasting tax dollars and making TRAFFIC WORSE "
that is why MOST transit programs do everything to NOT "impact" car usage
Elon Musk is just painful to listen to
The problem with the figure is the option to cut across in 2 minutes is eliminated. The top to bottom routes are fixed and congest the traffic going from A to B. I agree increasing a Highway to 4 lanes or larger doesn’t necessarily eliminate traffic, but did it occur to you that once beyond the point of traffic, the traffic is much faster beyond city limits. Maybe cities should consider changing their zoning for housing to encourage more people to work where they live, encourage remote work, increase policing for safe neighborhoods, and remove homelessness.
One aspect that should also be looked at: Road use is basically free (or paid for with a flat yearly sum), so people only pay for it with their time. If you build more capacity, it essentially becomes cheaper for people to drive, so they do it more. Besides reducing capacity, a road tax based on distance travelled would also work. Second best option is congestion tax in cities, so at least driving into city centers is discouraged.
I wonder if EVERYONE on the road started using google/apple/whatever maps driving directions for every trip they took, regardless of distance or knowledge of the area, it would fix the induced demand with zero infrastructure cost.
Some cities are also trying to actively make driving more expensive while actively improving their public transport systems as they are trying to encourage more people to rely on public transport and to avoid driving! :)
and how is that working POLITICALLY? often a city counsel get the "boot" from Suburban voters that do NOT have a transit option DUE to LOW density housing THEY BOUGHT INTO and "need" there car
Travel times aren't the only meaningful criterion. If people make fewer trips, all else equal, that means they didn't get where they wanted to go. If that happens, it means the road system is less useful. That's not a good thing. Enabling people to live closer to their destinations means that more people can get where they want to go, and get there faster themselves while not slowing other people down as much. That is a good thing.
Braess paradox isn't something you can just straightforwardly apply: it says that removing capacity in specific locations sometimes shifts load to underutilized routes that can function in parallel, thereby increasing effective capacity. Even if you have all the data, figuring out what the effects will be is computationally hard. To be thorough about it, you would have to examine the interactions for all subsets of a network, which increases exponentially with the size of the network. And it's impossible to get all the data about where people would decide to go under hypothetical conditions. People don't know what they would do.
the Seattle example IMHO is a "failure" due to being a 2 week event and zero recording of trips NOT MADE or the number of trips NOW LONGER as people bypass that "shortcut" and the advance warning including its end a LOT of trips could be postponed till later due to "fear" of gridlock
I wonder what would happen if the downtown section of Virginia Street were turned into a pedestrian Plaza where only Transit vehicles and delivery vehicles were allowed. Bikes and scooters would be allowed of course.
Like my dad used to say, you can't fix stupid.
Having many lanes in very specific arteries IS good.
But more thdn that is realy realy bad very fast.
Though agree with premise, example of outcomes based on publicized week-long closure of street is invalid. Commuted to a major city for many years. Often the least traffic days were those when there was a planned major disruption. Many workers could and would adjust schedule/habit for a day or a week to avoid issue, but long term, they need to be there commuting on a daily basis.
I don't think an earthquakes are publicized.
Would 3-week long closures be « long-term » or are they more middle-term »?
@@peskypigeonx short term
LONG TERM is something that you MAY MOVE to deal with
if you did NOT drive / OWN a car would a 2 week transit strike get you to BUY A CAR? not likely you will adapt but only so far depending on how long and how "bad" the alternatives are
This is so solid as an analysis. I was going to comment halfway through, but it just got better. Really good shit, well explained. Keep this up.
Speed causes congestion. Drivers get to red lights too soon and speeding blocks people trying to turn left or right. Imagine someone traveling at the speed of light. They would be everywhere at the same time. You could never enter the road.
the few cars on the road, the easier it is to drive
Erika*
Induced demand also can be explained by "bottleneck situation" highways and American A road can be widened and increase flow rate, but city streets and smallest city block streets or suburb Cul-de-sacs can not be widened and that is a dead-end situation, people need to reach final destination nobody wants live near a railroad line and nobody wants live near stroad (wide lane car artery line of the city) or near the insanely noisy and polluting highway.
The Dutch railway construction company Prorail is experimenting with sound proving and vibration dampening of houses who are close to railway lines.
If everyone used Waze or Google Maps when driving, you could theoretically have everyone taking the most efficient routes. The thing is, that’s what I always do when I drive in NYC, and I invariably find that things are jammed up no matter what way you decide to go.
Oh this is the time period of peak cars.
The more I see empty bike lanes being built, empty buses travelling around and people not walking on new sidewalks I think the solution is not going to be what we think it is.
I have an issue with "induced demand is bad" traffic unchecked is BAD but induced demand is NEW trips being MADE and we as a society WANT AS MANY trips to be made as posable the key being is how to "afford" those trips and MORE stroads for cars is NOT it and we should be LOOKING AT TRANSIT or economic leavers to encourage higher density and mixed use communities and a public WANT for these changes NOT "punish" people for taking there car when that is the "only" choice given to them
Change FUELS ASAP. !!!
Having all of the houses away from commercial forces everyone to drive. I love track homes but why do they have to be so far away from commercial.
They pushed the same as an excuse for widened sidewalks/curbs/bus areas.
That hurt business in relevant areas.
I moved.
2:00 that would help
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."
~Miller
Elon: Why don't we delete roads and decrease traffic (LOL)
Cheonggyecheon: Am I a joke to you?
10:50 clearly all selfishness is a major factor of bad traffic overall in the first place
pog new urban channel comment for engagement points
The model at 4:00 is ridiculous.
Less is more 😀!
Like and comment for the almighty algorithm :)
These traffic academics push these sorts of ideas because they lack real world understanding. Closing roads may improve traffic, but it does that by limiting people's mobility and forcing them to move to undesirable places to shorten their commutes. You reduce overall well being to moderately improve one isolated problem. The same thing goes for their hand wringing about public transit - using public transit is a lifestyle downgrade, people aren't being stubborn or ignorant, they are refusing to downgrade their lifestyles. Cars provide freedom, comfort, and flexibility in a way public transit never could.
In short:
The best way to fix traffic is more traffic.
Cause then it fixes itsself.
Just put in bus lanes
And less people mean less poor people. Who woulda thought Stalin was such a good guy?
rocket "scientist"
It's safe to say that whenever Elon has an opinion on what to do, the opposite is usually correct
8:07 average truck driver
How does yt know what I talked about yesterday. oO
New York seems like a good place to tear down Highway
Easy fix to cars. Just start nickel and diming then everywhere and anyhow.
I can't believe someone who sells cars would be against anything that reduces car usage
If traffic flow is improving it has to mean you have less vehicles at the same time since you've decreased capacity. If the argument for induced demand claims that the amount of traffic on the road increases if you expand the road, then by definition if you compress the road then those vehicles need to either a) not make the trip, b) make the trip at a different time, c) consolidate passengers/carpool, d) travel on other roadways or e) use an alternate mode of transit. So for commuters this is almost always a worse choice. Not like they are going to vastly improve transit at the same time they shrink your road.
Except paradoxically transit improves as traffic decreases
@@edwardmiessner6502 ONLY "lowest order" BUS transit
a BUS LANE that bypasses traffic OR better a metro system fully separate does NOT care one bit about traffic
@The Stammering Dunce as a "voting" car driving suburbanite that bought into the "american dream" and was forced to "drive till you qualify" NONE of those options makes MY *_my _* drive to work ANY better and that is the common opinion of the voters
I heard people that lie often say if and um too many times.
Dumb observation.
7:49 exactly so does zoning laws 8:10 it's q self fulfilling prophecy
My thing is, who cares if induced demand is real or not? Why care about how bad traffic is if safely and quickly walking or taking transit to your destination is a viable option? Also saves a lot of money at both the personal and city level.
8:08 Rolling Coal. so gross i could smell it through my screen.
If Elon says it's a bad idea, then it's a good idea.
Cars obey Parkinson's Law - the more roadways built, soon be filled to capacity with cars.
2:07 why isn't Elon promoting flying cars? they would travel in 3 dimensions without needing matching infrastructure.