Why Don’t We Open More Lanes to Overcome the Traffic Problem?

With the development of technology of cars We have seen that it has become incredibly widespread since the 90s. In particular, the fact that this technology has made room for new business opportunities has increased the importance of personal transportation vehicles over time. In this context, motor vehicles, which only the rich can ride, can now be found suitable for almost every budget, of course, rather than our country. worldwide i have to say.

Although the accessibility of vehicles over time has made life easier for individuals, it seems that everyone is nervous. traffic introduced the concept into our lives. Especially for this situation, which is the bleeding wound of big cities, in some countries additional strips We see it open. So is this an effective solution?

Let’s proceed with simple logic. What happens if we double the number of seats on congested buses?

Although the load of the entire bus will lighten at first, the vehicle will soon become cramped again. The number of people getting on the bus not fixed. For this reason, the more space you create, the more people will attract and return you to the original state. In other words, there will be crowds of people on the bus again and all the seats will be full. Just You have increased the number of people.

This situation is known as induced demand:

If you give people more resources, they will undoubtedly use it. Do this while two computers with 8GB and 16GB RAM do the same, while the one with 16GB RAM more We can compare it to memory usage. well extra the opportunity offered does not remain as a plus, it is used instead.

This is also the case in traffic:

If you have a congested 3-lane road, fourth lane Adding it will ease the traffic at first, but later on, more people will choose that road and that road will be congested again. Normally, when the road widens, traffic should be opened. But in this scenario, despite the widening of the road traffic jam remained the same. In other words, vehicles that did not exist in the first place have arrived.

They didn’t choose that road in the first place, because it was a cramped road, as we remember:

But now that road has been widened, in addition one more lane The news of his addition spread everywhere. Therefore, people decided to use this road, which they normally do not prefer, thinking that the traffic problem was solved. Therefore, too thousands of vehicles was added to the road and the original congestion was returned again. The only difference is that this time we have more vehicles.

Even if you take this road that you have expanded to 4 lanes and make it 8 lanes, this traffic will come back:

As we said, the burden of giving people too much resources does not alleviateOn the contrary, it causes more use of that resource. Located in Texas and costing billions of dollars in 2008, a total of 26 lanes to Katy highway You can see it better by looking at it.

The concept of artificial demand we talked about can also be used in reverse:

In countries like South Korea and France downsizing on highways had gone. Korea even removed the Cheonggye highway and reinvigorated natural areas in its place. Seoul The city was breathing. From the same perspective, this was supposed to further compress the already existing traffic. But contrary to expectation this has resulted in fewer people choosing the highways and therefore less congested traffic.

This does not mean that we should reduce our wide highways to one lane at once. This will have chaotic consequences. Instead of will ease the traffic there are different alternatives.

The first of these is ‘paid parking spaces’

We could not find any data showing the situation in our country, but worldwide A significant part of the vehicles in crowded city centers have to wander constantly because they cannot find a place to park. So, is it the lack of parking space that causes these vehicles to circulate all the time? No, of course. The main reason is that free parking spaces to be abused and the fact that people leave their cars here for days.

Toll highways and toll roads parking spaces This helps to avoid traffic problem. Because considering the money, people both think about whether there is an alternative way and find a place to park. unforced is happening.

The solutions of the names who do research on this issue seem to be more effective:

Matthew Turner and Gilles Duranton US highways were examined in the research conducted by As a result of the research, it was seen that the more the road capacity of the city is increased, the more the density on it increases. This is another proof that traffic will fill the roads opened with new lanes again.

The researchers’ solution is during rush hour the cost of using congested highways. This means that only those who really need it will use these roads, unhurried it means others will turn to alternative inner-city roads.

What are your thoughts on this?

resources: Vox, Chron, Wired, Condé Nast Traveler