Posted on 09/20/2007 7:47:01 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
FReep This Poll!
What is the best way to reduce traffic congestion?
* Widen and/or build more freeways.
* Add more carpool only lanes.
* Improve mass transit options.
* Encourage working from home.
* Limit new housing development.
Go to the North County Times/The Californian link provided. Scroll down a bit and look for the poll on the right hand side.
Vote your choice.
Poll should remain active until Thursday (09/20/07) evening.
(Excerpt) Read more at nctimes.com ...
This is where the relationship between highway capacity and the two-second rule of safe driving (i.e., always drive at a distance behind the car in front of you that coincides with the distance your vehicles cover when they pass a point on the side of the road two seconds apart) comes into play.
There are 3600 seconds in an hour, so if cars pass at a rate of one every two seconds (regardless of their speed!) then a roadway can safely accommodate 1800 vehicles per hour per lane at free-flow speeds. Figures of 2000 to 2200 vehicles per hour per lane are often used in calculating roadway capacity, but this is only because over the years motorists have grown accustomed to driving at following distances that would technically be considered unsafe under traditional driving practices.
Where is “ride a bike to work”??
Open up the HOV lane to all motorists. Stupid idea to begin with. Now all it does is clog interstates as the revenuers are busy cracking down on violators and effectively closing 2 lanes of traffic every morning.
Why not promote 3 or 4 wheel motorcycle style engined vehicles for commuting.
Especially since most commuters drive to work alone, a smaller vehicle is all that is necessary for commuting, grocery getting, or just FUN.
There are already very strong vehicles built for off road use, why not adapt them, and approve them for highway use. Special lanes, from existing multilane highway splits, would make them even more acceptable.
Most small cheap vehicles promoted in years past were ugly and slow. Motorcycle type vehicles can be quick, agile and
fun to drive.
Think about it.
I have this option available to me, and I use it on occasion. Now that I think about it other guys on my team use it much more than I do. Perhaps I should use it more often.
That said, my commute is about 15 minutes using surface streets that parallel an outer belt freeway system.
A few years ago one of my buddies was working at Xerox PARC and he told me of some work strategies that were being explored to reduce commute times, increase productivity. Here's how it fleshed out:
Instead of workers commuting from different parts of the community to one central location, the workers would commute to an office community near their home. The office community would be a place for an individual to work, but it wouldn't be a homogeneous location - i.e. all offices are used by Company A.
The company would lease an office, not a building. Not unlike a shopping mall - with each tenant selling different goods. So, if you worked for Company A, your next door office neighbor could work for Company Z, across the hall would be Company M.
This was based on the idea that technology could provide the means of for meaningful human interaction with other work mates as needed.
Each office would have its own connection to that company's private network - for data and multimedia. Meetings could be done via voice only or video/voice.
In a certain sense the work at home via internet VPN just bypasses the need for a decentralized office scenario.
If the company I work for wanted to be more aggressive about WAH, it could downsize its real estate footprint and save a boatload of money in the process. It would also take a thousand cars off the streets during rush hour.
“commuting to places OUTSIDE the central core. “
That core creates the congestion as people drive into, out of, or through the core. In places where there is no city center, traffic is not as congested. Of course, bad roads anywhere can make for congestion.
BINGO! WE HAVE A WINNER! Give that man a CIGAR!
The advantage of a central city is that its density promotes the kind of "critical mass" that is needed for any kind of mass transit to work efficiently. Conversely, it is damn near impossible to accommodate suburb-to-suburb commuters with any kind of mass transit alternatives at all.
The same could be said of mass transit also.
I beleive a lot of our woes are illegal immigration related. imho of course...
AMEN
Do not widen existing roads. Build new roads. Also, run the price of gasoline/diesel to $5 a quart.
Limiting new housing is one of several reasons real estate costs get so ridiculous in some areas.
So subsidizing mass transit is better? Mass transit is inefficient by it’s nature - you can’t possibly have something going to every place that people need to go from every place they come from. It’s hard to retrofit one anyway, if a city is built from the start with mass transit, or in a very dense city, it works.
In DC it works OK, because a large chunk of people work in the central city...in many areas that’s not the case.
The carpool lanes were a good idea on paper, but the fact is, most do not want to give up their independence, and the lanes lay there unused, while traffic crawls just one lane over.
| Widen and/or build more freeways |
|
| Add more carpool only lanes |
|
| Improve mass transit options |
|
| Encourage working from home |
|
| Limit new housing development |
I worked construction for many years. In the summer we would start work at 7AM instead of 8:00 to avoid traffic.
Granted, in Fairbanks, Alaska we do not have the traffic problems of major cities,but the difference was noticable.
Perhaps industry could stagger their hours of operation to spread traffic over longer periods.
This is something that would have an immediate effect, and cost very little, or nothing.
If you take into account the opportunity cost for building a highway or lost hours for sitting in traffic, my bet is mass transit has a much higher NPV than highways in densely populated areas. Of course low density areas have no need for it.
You are welcome to argue, but please don't contradict without at least providing some type of fiscal argument.
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