Building highways doesn't reduce gridlock, thanks to "The fundamental law of road congestion."
Quote:
Toronto writer Edward Keenan is tired of hearing politicians promise that they are going to end gridlock, whether by building more highways, subways, light rail or magic monorail. But he claims that " the hard truth is that none of these ideas will reduce traffic congestion. At all." He points to a study by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner titled The fundamental law of road congestion which concludes that traffic volume, measured in vehicle-kilometers-travelled increases in exact proportion to lane-kilometers of road built. In any successful city in America this rule holds.
Endquote
This law seems to hold good in Bangalore too. Over the years I have sen road widnng, flyovers and underpasses being built. The travel ti between any two points has not decreased much.In some cases it is worse.
Whats the take of CEans from other Indian cities on this?
A link to the study by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner titled The fundamental law of road congestion is provided in the article. It is a long paper.
#-Link-Snipped-#
Toronto writer Edward Keenan is tired of hearing politicians promise that they are going to end gridlock, whether by building more highways, subways, light rail or magic monorail. But he claims that " the hard truth is that none of these ideas will reduce traffic congestion. At all." He points to a study by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner titled The fundamental law of road congestion which concludes that traffic volume, measured in vehicle-kilometers-travelled increases in exact proportion to lane-kilometers of road built. In any successful city in America this rule holds.
Endquote
This law seems to hold good in Bangalore too. Over the years I have sen road widnng, flyovers and underpasses being built. The travel ti between any two points has not decreased much.In some cases it is worse.
Whats the take of CEans from other Indian cities on this?
A link to the study by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner titled The fundamental law of road congestion is provided in the article. It is a long paper.
#-Link-Snipped-#
Replies
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Kaustubh KatdareInteresting and contrasting view to what I believed. It's kind of similar to "Work expands to fill the available time"; aka the number of cars will grow to fill up the available space on roads.
Ultimately, the best solution is to develop faster and better public transport systems; which will allow us to take off a LARGE number of cars and two wheelers from the roads. But no one seems to be focused on doing that. Everyone wants a car!
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