this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 59 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I heard a city planner talk about why adding a new lane doesn't help, and the term they use is "induced demand."

Basically, people are going to take the route that they consider the most convenient, and that usually comes down to time and effort. Traffic hurts both by taking more time and being more stressful to deal with. When you add a new lane to a road, people think that the traffic will be easier there, so they take that route instead of their normal one. So you're just adding more cars to the traffic that match or exceed the throughput of your new lane, basically putting you back at square one but a few billion dollars more poor.

You've essentially added a single lane one-way road to help ease traffic across the entire city.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If you make driving easier than transit, more people will drive who previously took transit. The reverse is also true. One of these situations is more desirable for myriad reasons.

As well, additional demand can be created by convenience. People will make trips they otherwise never would have if it's easier to make them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

When you add a new lane to a road, people think that the traffic will be easier there, so they take that route instead of their normal one

so for these people the new lane will create marginal improvement, right?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's the thing: Technically yes. It temporarily improves traffic. But only temporarily. IDK about you but spending billions of dollars to only temporarily improve traffic and then it ending up the same or even worse than before doesn't sound like a good investment to me.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But only temporarily

but is it?

I thought the temporal improvement would be for everyone who already used the high way (because they will get to their destination a little bit faster). And for the few extra people, who start to use the highway but didn't use it before, the improvment will stay.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

That's the thing, the number of new cars using that road ends up being at least one additional lane's worth. So traffic moves at the same speed as it was before the extra lane, just now with one more lane's worth of cars on that road.

If anything, you might see marginally better traffic on other roads because of the cars that started using the new lane, but you'd be talking about a handful of cars per road. Probably not enough for any discernible change in travel time or congestion, and each new lane you add later will have diminishing returns because it will be a smaller fraction of the total number of lanes coming from any specific direction.