Whoopsie! Sydney's road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.
For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney's Central Business District.
It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it's turned into a giant car park:
"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.
"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.
"Those travel delays have now blown out."
So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?
'Dude! Just one more lane!'
From the article:
"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.
"That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks."
#roads #traffic #cars @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #motorways #fuckcars
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism
I think it's more a case of this whole interchange has been built for western harbour tunnel. ie the more lanes are coming...in 5 years.
@jedsetter @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism
Seems more like it, I would expect induced demand to be more prominent on the longer time scales.
In particular, I recall a simple graph example where you'd have two parallel roads with some traffic on them. And then you create a link between them, aiming to improve the situation. However, the link gets jammed and the overall situation gets worse
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