Traffic Will Never Be Fixed Here

The world's largest diverging diamond interchange built to fix traffic in Sarasota, Florida doesn't quite live up to the objective for a few reasons, but they might not be what you think.

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Chapters:
Intro 0:00
Diverging Diamond Explanation 0:26
Traffic Source 2:51
Flaws of the Diverging Diamond 3:29
Can we fix this? 4:40
Walking through the interchange 6:58
The Real Problem 8:36

[jeremyquiros]

Remember, compulsive traffic engineers always quit 1 lane before successfully fixing traffic

[anlumo]

As a European, I've never seen such an interchange in real life, really fascinating. I've built them in Cities Skylines 1&2, but there they seem more like a gameplay concept, because nobody would be so crazy to built a five lane per direction highway. The collector road next to my apartment has two lanes in total, and that's a major traffic hotspot in the area.

[drivers]

There's a book called "The Bottleneck Rules" which talks about how the only place you can improve the throughput of a system is at the bottleneck, but if you do that, the bottleneck just moves somewhere else. This applies to all kinds of processes (it came from the manufacturing field).

[highwaysbyways]

Those bike lanes are perhaps the most ridiculous part of the whole interchange. Yeah, does anyone really want to ride in a painted bicycle gutter with 5 lanes of 45mph traffic whizzing past them?

Great video, I liked and subbed.

[antonkistrup]

We have a diverging diamond here in Denmark 🇩🇰 as well, near Odense. Here pedestrians are completely prohibited from going near it, all sidewalks are removed. The highway itself is sunken into the ground, and there are instead pedestrian and bicycle bridges at ground level nearby that you can use.

[qwerty]

As a non American the wide shot at 3:04 looks something out of a dystopian nightmare

[LedZeppeli]

26 lanes clearly isn’t enough. You need at least 53. Honestly why have anything other than lanes in the city. Make it all lanes. Then traffic shall finally be solved!

[shingshongshamalama]

This will never fix traffic because the only solution to traffic is mass transit.

[mrsokol]

I agree with you Streetcraft. I live in a Europe (Poland) and we don't need so many roads. We usually have shops, coffee places, bakeries, cloths shops like in 1-mile range max (usually 1 minute by foot in real examples). And it's not a BIG city thing - it's like that almost everywhere. Thanks to you and your videos I see the importance of people-designed city. Awesome!

[AceMonkeyIlium]

Keep it up, fact that I didn't realize you were new means you will continue succeeding in keeping people entertained on this platform.

[TrainfanJanathan]

I drive a bus that goes to a mall and one day, I timed how long it takes to get from the entrance to the bus stop. It took 5 minutes. And another 5 minutes to exit.

During the Christmas season, it takes 3 times as long. The parking lot is several times larger than the mall itself.

Personally, I think a better idea would be to place the main entrance to the mall on the sidewalk and place the bus stop there. Make the car drivers go all the way around back to enter the parking lot. It would save a lot of time.

[jakemaranzatto]

In the 4 years I went to New College in Sarasota ('16-'20), I saw traffic get much much worse, even after the diamond was built. Good to see some coverage of this in my feed!

[traffic.engineer]

It is pretty much how Road Guy Rob explains. The interchange is so efficient that the downstream facilities cannot handle it. The backups are because of the other intersections that cannot handle the ability for the interchange to move so much volume.

[jonathan_careless]

This was well explained. It didn't feel like it 'hated' cars, but it just showed what the environment looks like if its built around cars and then just kind of says, "Is this what you want?"

[bobyoung]

I was born and raised in a car-centric environment, a town dominated by General Motors. Cars were more than just transportation; they were "bling, " they were totems.

I'm older now. I moved from that city decades ago. The community that's now my home is still focused on cars, but we also have a dynamic bus system and plans for light rail. The city is adding traffic circles where practical and we have two inverted diamond interchanges like the one featured in this presentation.

I hope the nation can slowly divest itself from its total reluctance on cars, especially in city centers, and I hope we can move far, far away from our dependence on fossil fuels.

[bene]

This interchange is literal hell on earth for cyclists and pedestrians. Just look at the crazy zig-zag for pedestrians, when they want to cross that thing. I-n-s-a-n-e!

[camhux]

We need people to keep realizing that car-dominated infrastructure is *also bad* for people in cars, as mentioned in this video. It's insane that we keep building like this! It doesn't work for anyone!

[emem]

European towns or suburbs have everything (shops, schools, services) always close. Why there are no shops or groceries at American suburbs? You have to drive EVERYWHERE for ANYTHING

[DodoSniffer]

Very interesting video! Surprisingly high quality compared to the sub count, the editing is superb, keep up the great work!

[TeamEXAngus]

I have loved seeing new channels such as this one pop up in the urbanism space recently. I really hope that positive change is on the horizon!