The 45th Highway gets a transfer of $ 13 billion in Houston. The project aims to reduce congestion by adding new corridors-a common story to many expansion on highways that are constantly occurring throughout the United States in Austin, Tex. And near Sacramento, California, the expansion of I-80 for approximately $ 500 million. The project, which includes a large expansion of the New Jersey Turnpike, will cost $ 10.7 billion.
Despite the signs of tremendous prices, these projects are likely not to reduce congestion for a long time. This is due to a phenomenon that the transport researchers in the order of the demand calls: in the areas that have a lot of pent -up demand for driving, any new capacity of the added corridors is filled quickly.
After an expansion project, “crowding improves a little … then we went back to where we were. Susan Handy, a transport engineer at the University of California, Davis, says, then one of them says:” Oh, we must expand again. “So what extent will you go? “
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I have already gone out of 12 highways that refer to many major cities across the United States, but there is another type less expensive than the traffic version valve: congestion pricing. Its implementation can be profitable for both sides of cities and drivers, and money can be free to invest in a future where everyone can spend less traffic time.
Handy says the expansion of roads was the average strategy to reduce congestion for at least a century. This looks logical and intuitive: If you have a limited supply of something in the high demand, such as the ability to drive along a specific extension of the road, the increase in the width by adding new corridors should allow this experience to more people.
But the increase in the supply of something is also its cost – which can encourage more people to benefit from. More offer sometimes urges order, or at least allows more pent -up request. “Adding a capacity makes driving cheaper from the point of view of travel, inconvenience and inconvenience,” says Handy. More people may choose to drive on the road concerned, which may eventually lead to a recovery of congestion.
Whether the crowding returns to its previous levels depends on the amount of the demand that was already present-that is, to what extent people were choosing not to drive this road from the road due to traffic. “Everyone has a copy of adaptation to traffic congestion,” says Kelissy Ralph, a researcher in transportation planning at the University of Rutgers, in the crowded areas.
For Ralph, its gym habits are affected. Instead of driving to the gym that contains a swimming pool, but along the road across the campus, she usually walks to those closest to her office to avoid traffic in the peak hour. Meanwhile, another person may choose to go to the grocery store near his home instead of driving to the entire foods in the next city. The last one may choose to stay at home instead of driving to a nearby city to see a show.
Mark Boris, a civilian engineer at the University of Texas A &M, says that the ghost of the stop and clearance movement can prevent people from making trips completely. But more common, people simply adjust the time of travel, track, or transportation method to avoid traffic. People who move to work may wake up at dawn to overcome the peak hour, or use a garden train, ride or walk in the roundabout to the office. In the same way, when the highway is expanded, crowding decreases, these passengers may choose to drive in the peak hour and thus cause a return to congestion.
But even if the crowding returns, the expanded highway can still accommodate more cars. Boris says the additional corridors increase the volume of traffic that passes through the crowded area every hour, which means that more drivers take their favorite path. “Over time, crowding usually returns – but it returns with a full set of benefits for people traveling there. Ignore these benefits,” he says.
The question then becomes: Do these benefits deserve the costs? This cost can be cash, such as the price of the expansion label and the money needed for continuous maintenance. Then there is a cost of human health and the environment. The gains in the capacity of the highway lead to more inactivity cars, which increases pollution from carbon dioxide, particles and noise. This does not affect incompatible people, whose societies are often encouraged on urban highways due to housing and discriminatory development policies. Exposure to these pollutants can increase lung disease rates, especially childhood asthma, heart disease and delay in learning.
For urban planners such as Ralph and Handy, the breadth is a way to double in an unnecessary way to organize our cities and towns (where most people have an option but to be stuck in traffic) instead of diversifying the available transportation patterns to suit many different needs. The main projects are “closing us in contracts of infrastructure that do not build the future that we want – or does not build the future I Ralph wants. It often says, it is better to spend money on investing in reliable and expanded train networks, great crossing or walking paths and a safe bicycle ride.
Fortunately for people stuck in traffic today, crowding programs are short -term solutions that work like “escape valves” on congestion, and are implemented throughout the country. Unlike the breadth, which reduces the cost of driving and thus leads to a recovery of demand, the pricing of congestion regulates the cost of driving in a specific or hot area to reduce traffic. Some, such as the recently released program in New York City, include fees for a large -sized specific area. London, Stockholm and Oslo also similar programs.
There is another common approach to pricing congestion, which is the use of high -resolution (hot) corridors, faster corridors flowing that drivers can pay for use. The highways near dozens of major cities contain hot corridors, including Houston, Sayattle, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, Utta and Charlott, North Carolina some hot corridors that differ losses that differ throughout the time of the day; Others have dynamic pricing models update every few minutes to keep traffic in the corridor. Either way, drivers can choose whether to be used, and even those who are not pushing can still benefit; At least one lane is often accelerated by the traffic free of traffic.
The congestion pricing programs cost much lower to implement them from the expansion of highways, and they generate revenues that can be invested in other types of transportation, including mass transport. Since drivers suffer from these pricing programs directly, they may sometimes be a difficult sale. But as soon as people note that the pricing programs of congestion begin to work, “always sees the head of approval classification to the top,” says Boris.
“When people see it, they love it – the time again and again,” says Ralph.
Although expanding the highway is not a permanent bad option, Ralph emphasizes the importance of looking at the opportunities we give up with this approach. Widter projects for the public are sold by describing the benefits that will not last, but their uncompromising costs will remain for decades. “I just want to make conscious options that are considered a kind of positives and negatives” based on what we know realisticly will happen, as she says – to stop assuming that adding more corridors will get us out of the networks.