How To Fix Traffic Forever

If you ever wondered why adding more lanes never fixes congestion, here's your answer. Educational video you can share with your elected representatives!

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[sirsplintfastthepungent]

No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.

[permafrostyx]

90% of lane addicts stop one lane before they fix traffic

[TheRobRok]

I'm from Barcelona and we have a very extended bike lane and public transport system.
But when I visited Amsterdam I was blown away. Everyone moves around with bikes, trams or trains, the train stations have giant bike parkings, the highways are just 2 or 4 lanes (almost without traffic) and all of them have adjacent bike lanes.
What a beautiful sight it was 😢.

[dinodumbo]

Actually, Texas was just one lane away from solving traffic FOREVER.

[mothirl]

But have you thought of adding ANOTHER lane instead? Trust me bro it will work this time I swear

[shpoafphy]

The Texas highway took 10 years to construct and when it started it had 40k registered vehicles driving on it, when it was finished it had well over a million.

[MofoMan]

As Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes likes to say: The only solution to traffic congestion is providing VIABLE ALTERNATIVES TO DRIVING. That does not mean repossessing cars, it does not mean revoking driver's licenses, it does not mean forcing everyone to ride a bike or hop on a bus. It means more freedom, not less. It means the freedom to not have to drive, if something else makes more sense for the trip you're taking.

[schnelma]

1:46 Building a 26-lane highway, but no money for:
- trains and rails
- buses and bus lanes
- bicycle lanes or
- pedestrian infrastructure

[_juliakp_]

I always wondered "if adding more lanes makes traffic worse, does removing them make it better?"
thanks for the answer! im surprised its true

[BigPapaMitchell]

important info missing: Induced demand exists for all forms of traffic. The reason its not an issue for trains but it is an issue for cars is because while you can widen arterial roads and highways, you cannot widen all the streets, you will always be limited by the amount of cars that can be offloaded. If you offload trains of people into areas where they proceed to walk, the amount of traffic you can offload at once is only limited by the amount of trains you can get off at a station (until you get to extreme numbers of people), so doubling train capacity or adding a second rail line actually does double your throughput. Induced demand is good for public transport, but induced demand is bad for cars because you cannot effectively increase the amount of cars you can offload.

[TheDapperLynx]

Improving access to public transportation provides an alternative for people who don't want to drive, but, in reducing the number of cars on the road, also reduces traffic for people who DO still want to drive. It's a win-win.

[eges]

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation. ― Gustavo Petro

[IBeforeAExceptAfterK]

The worst part about the Katy Freeway is that it was named after the Katy railway, which had some tracks along the same corridor. Eventually they stopped running trains on those tracks (drivers complained that the freight trains blocked traffic), and now most of the tracks have been torn up to make room for more lanes.

[Ash_Wen-li]

The thing about adding more lanes is that cars have to get off the road eventually. So they're going to bottleneck at some point anyway

[mygetawayart]

i love this new editing style, very snappy and entertaining. Keep this up.

[DanielBrotherston]

The question of "why can't we just outbuild traffic" is a valid one. One might thing, eventually we'll build enough lanes. But the problem is that building wider roads ends up moving things further apart, an making alternatives to driving even less feasible. This means that more people must drive, and those people must drive farther, so more lanes actually creates the traffic to fill them.

Even if you do create enough roads to eliminate traffic jams (as a few places in Texas have managed to do), you can only do so by spreading things out so much that it still takes a very long time to get between them. So yes, you aren't sitting in traffic for 2 hours, instead you're driving at 70mph for 2 hours...congrats, your commute now takes more fuel in addition to continuing to be an utter nightmare of a time suck.

[spookyghostwriter]

I find this video amusingly timely.

My province just rolled out a ad campaign promising to reduce traffic… by building more roads at the cost of a couple billion dollars.

Pain.

[jerrykreutzer]

Politicians: "Maybe one more lane will help"
Adam: "Maybe making one more video with the exact same content will help"

[Victor_Gvne]

It's exactly what is happening here in Paris. The mayor is completely reshapping the place of the cars inside the city, and its wonderfull even if there is still lots of work to do.
If Paris can do it, every capital can.

[timesnewlogan]

Texas is doing its best to pave over the whole state. Dallas is practically a parking lot with buildings.