Found here: https://twitter.com/CarsRuinedCity/status/1677005785862406144?t=Xolo43mUk4GnegFQE19q3g&s=19
Caption: Photo collage of a beach in Alexandria, Egypt, showing a progression in 3 images:
- Alexandria “Problem” - empty beach + walking street + 6 lane road with medium traffic + dense mid-rise buildings (likely housing)
- Alexandria “Solution” - empty beach (doesn’t seem to matter) + narrower walkway or sidewalk + 10 lane brand new and empty road + tiny sidewalk + the same buildings
- Alexandria “Results” - crowded beach + crowded beach walkway + traffic jam on the 10 lane road
I like to explain this phenomenon as the free cake effect.
Say you set up a food stand with a sign “free cake”. It doesn’t matter how many cakes you baked, people will keep showing up until all the cake is gone.
and the science gets done and you make a neat gun for the people who are
still alive
Classic
Well, we do what we must because we can
Induced demand at it’s finest
Playing factorio has given me a deeper appreciation of how much adding lanes doesn’t help traffic.
Adding an extra conveyor belt to your factory line won’t help you process materials any faster. You have to add more processing elements, widening the belt lines does absolutely nothing!
Please don’t say the F word around me; I need to sleep tonight :')
City Skylines is where i learned plentiful with so much fun. Soon City Skylines 2 will be released with even more enhancement/ improvements.
Does learning from games like city skylines make you infuriated when you see real life examples of poor layouts and planning?
I cant wait to buy every single feature as an overpriced dlc.
Why’s there no one on the beach in the “problem” pic? Kinda seems like one was taken in the slow season and the other was taken in peak rush hour of the busy season.
Completely agree, that’s something I noticed as well. Seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Does it matter? It didn’t solve traffic so adding the lanes did nothing
Yeah, I think it matters. I don’t think inaccurate memes as a form of propaganda are acceptable regardless of whether or not I agree with the original topic. There are plenty of stats, studies, and examples that show the benefits of walkable cities and public transportation. This meme shows a not so busy road and a very busy road with more lanes, the only thing that can be inferred from it is that the pictures were taken on different days, nothing else.
My point stands, adding lanes did nothing
No it doesn’t lol. You have no idea what adding lanes did or didn’t do, because all this is is a single still image. That’s my point.
Someone on here posted the picture of a toll road which again, functions very differently to a motorway, so the comparison is unfair
I don’t think it really matters how busy it was before, because the road clearly didn’t solve the problem and now there’s just as much congestion as there could’ve been on a busy day before, but with more pollution.
Mh… there is still some beach left where you can add even more lanes!
This will definitely solve the problem!Yeah, ten is just unlucky, it’s obvious it will not work…
“iMpROvEMenT”
Wild
I don’t understand how the middle and right pictures compare. There are ten total lanes in the middle picture, but only six in the right picture.
The right-side pic only shows one direction. There’s a middle separator and another set of lanes in the other direction (not visible). I think this is the area: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.2207203,29.9301834,3a,75y,224.65h,97.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipMJJwta1iFu8TyB9UUb6xVX6fjj30Ph2Z0UGKs!2e10!7i5760!8i2880?entry=ttu feel free to look around, I’m not sure how up to date the photos are.
The whole comparison is stupid without time and date stamps. First looks like it’s an early morning before most people are out and about. Third looks like there’s an event at the beach. Second is strange, maybe the road was just completed or shut down or the cars were edited out.
This is one of those arguments that never made sense to me. People like to say that adding lanes just creates more traffic, but what is the proposed mechanism? Does anyone suppose that people who didn’t want to go somewhere suddenly remembered that the highway added more lanes, and then decided to go for a cruise?
It suggests to me that the demand for transit far exceeds capacity, or that this traffic would otherwise have just taken a different route. Probably some of both.
That’s not an argument to just build 15 lane highways everywhere, just that the common form of the supply creates demand argument seems implausible.
Even if the same number of cars are on the road, it is likely that the bottleneck is somewhere else in the city, so adding 20 lanes won’t help the issue anyway.
This like complaining the bathroom is clogged and your solution is to make the showerhead bigger.
The idea behind induced demand is the easier and more convenient/cheaper you make a method of transit the more people will use it. So if you make driving easier by building a super highway people will default to that whole if you build put a rail network that gets peole to where they need to go they’ll take that. Transit being crowded in some ways is a good thing as it shows the route you’ve got is good but could prbsky do with a capacity upgrade. Of course roads being crowded is bad due to massive space inefficiencies and environmental issues.
There are probably a couple mechanisms:
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Reduced viability of hyper local services. People drive a longer distance to a central location more than the shorter distance.
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Less self-optimization of work-home proximity. People are more likely willing to work further away.
Both can be argued as both a good and bad thing.
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Here’s an explainer for Induced Demand. You’ll never guess by who: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za56H2BGamQ
If you’re looking for a job and you see an opening but it’s going to take you more than an hour each way to get to and from work, doesn’t that make that job less desirable than jobs that are closer by?
Conversely if you’re looking for a new place to live aren’t you going to consider places that are closer to work to be more desirable?
Suddenly there’s road expansion and a house that used to be 2 hours drive away is now 30 minutes drive from you. So you buy the house.
This would all work out great if you were the only one that thought this. But unfortunately there are many many more people that will also get a house or find a job that’s further way, because it’s only a 30 minutes drive now. So now more people are using the highway and that 10 lane highway is clogged, and that commute time starts going back up. But now you have a mortgage now and so you’re stuck. Everyday in your car for more than an hour each way again.
Cars are simply an inefficient way to move a lot of people. A highway expansion only temporarily solves the problem, but when the highways work well, more people use it and those inefficiencies rear their ugly head again.
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That actually does help, I think, for better grasping the concept! Also…
In order to avoid the rebound effect, environmental economists have suggested that any cost savings from efficiency gains be taxed in order to keep the cost of use the same.[7]
Found that tidbit interesting. The concept of removing the cost savings to insulate efficiency gains against the rebound effect is interesting yet weirdly logical
Adamsomething has a few videos on this
Also Not Just Bikes
Damn, this is uggly AF…
My neuro cogitators return revulsion at the sight of this. I choose to experience this feeling.
All the three looks bad to be fair, side with buildings probably businesses cannot attract that much customer which likely come from the beach since there is no way to go to the other side. Though first one is still bearable.
widening roads increases traffic. always.
Anyone should intuitively understand this if they’ve watched people try to merge. More lanes, more god awful merging and bottlenecking at exits.
But I guess everyone forgets this intuitive wisdom when they start asking for more lanes.
Well yes, but no.
An infinity wide road has no traffic, but the first time you try to connect your magic highway to real exits and local streets, you are stuck again.
By this I’m pointing out that it isn’t the road itself causing traffic in isolation, it’s the real world bottle necks anywhere this new highway connects to things.
Add in induced demand (people taking new trips) and now you have more people trying to fit down the same offramps, local streets and parking lots than you did in the first place.
all you’ve illustrated is that the only place my statement doesn’t apply is in a theoretical (and impossible) fantasy, but you do then go on to explain the means by which what I said is true.
so… thanks?
It’s a conversation bro. We agree about some parts and have other thoughts about other parts.
It’s not the width of the highway that CAUSES the traffic alone, it’s the bottlenecks and access. It’s not the induced demand alone that causes the issue, it’s the offramps and local streets that ruin the new highway.
It’s not the width of the highway that CAUSES the traffic alone, it’s the bottlenecks and access. It’s not the induced demand alone that causes the issue, it’s the offramps and local streets that ruin the new highway.
I’m pretty sure I thanked you explaining how my initial statement was correct.
It’s a conversation bro. We agree about some parts and have other thoughts about other parts.
and I’m enjoying the conversation, bro. your “other” thoughts seem to be an explanation of how my statement is correct and why.
Ok
An infinitely wide road couldn’t be effective unless it was also infinitely long. Cars enter and edit at one edge, and transferring lanes reduces capacity, so adding lanes had diminishing returns.
Indeed, but the width of the highways doesn’t create that effect, the logic surrounding “exits at the edge” does. Totally agree with the diminishing returns
More capacity on the roads will make driving a more attractive option to more people, both for journeys they previously made by other means and those that they wouldn’t have taken, which leads to more cars on the roads until the congestion is as bad as it was before.
I’m aware of induced demand, but the issue with more drivers simply isn’t them inhabiting the new lane, it’s the increased population of the highway still trying to use the same offramps, local streets and parking.
It’s both.
Not if all people that would possibly go on the road can fit on it. And I’m 100% positive that this one extra lane will accomplish that, trust me broo!
I love it when other countries copy the worst parts of America
When I went to Egypt they were driving crazy there like bumper cars
I taught someone from Egypt how to drive here in the UK. She would absolutely attest to this 😂 She’d tell me that when she drove in Egypt it was a case of having faith in God getting you to your destination. She also said God must have gotten sick of driving for her so He provided her a good instructor 🥰
Edit: I also just realised where I’m posting! Being an instructor, I guess I’m the devil incarnate in this community 👀
Don’t worry, the title says f* cars, not car instructors ;-)
