I'm from Barcelona and we have a very extended bike lane and public transport system. But when I visited Amsterdam I was blown away. Everyone moves around with bikes, trams or trains, the train stations have giant bike parkings, the highways are just 2 or 4 lanes (almost without traffic) and all of them have adjacent bike lanes. What a beautiful sight it was 😢.
@@bramvanduijn8086 I think Rotterdam is more car-centric than Amsterdam, for example, but despite living in Amsterdam, there are many cities i still need to visit, it’s not like things are far away (and everything is connected by cheap trains 🥲) so i can’t say how much better it is in general, Utrecht didn’t strike me as particularly more bike-friendly than Amsterdam for example (but it’s a very high standard for most of the world…).
@@GabrielPettierAnd yet I've always found Rotterdam safer to bike around in than Amsterdam. Utrecht, however, is leagues ahead of both cities concerning bike friendliness. I am writing this as someone who has only biked, but a lot in all three cities
Sadly I live in Eastern Europe, which is about 40 years behind the times. Mayoral elections next week, the big debate was whether a town square that is currently used a surface parking lot should be turned into a) a multi-storey carpark b) an underground carpark. Turning it back into a town square hasn't occurred to any of the candidates (or citizens).
so protest and tell people to stop living in the past and copy exactly what... say the Netherlands are doing import traffic planners from places where traffic is the best, and have them help your country's infrastructure start a movement with likeminded people and elect someone who fixes your cities.
I’m from Warsaw and one of the candidates is planning to straight up remove trams because they take up lanes. Same guy who got interviewed by Piers Morgan about women’s intelligence and did the Hitler salute in Bruxelles.
As Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes likes to say: The only solution to traffic congestion is providing VIABLE ALTERNATIVES TO DRIVING. That does not mean repossessing cars, it does not mean revoking driver's licenses, it does not mean forcing everyone to ride a bike or hop on a bus. It means more freedom, not less. It means the freedom to not have to drive, if something else makes more sense for the trip you're taking.
the problem is that these guys are missing the forest for the trees the issue is that you have to commute in the first place. serving suburbia or exuebia with decent public transit will never be viable.
important info missing: Induced demand exists for all forms of traffic. The reason its not an issue for trains but it is an issue for cars is because while you can widen arterial roads and highways, you cannot widen all the streets, you will always be limited by the amount of cars that can be offloaded. If you offload trains of people into areas where they proceed to walk, the amount of traffic you can offload at once is only limited by the amount of trains you can get off at a station (until you get to extreme numbers of people), so doubling train capacity or adding a second rail line actually does double your throughput. Induced demand is good for public transport, but induced demand is bad for cars because you cannot effectively increase the amount of cars you can offload.
Bonus points: induced demand via train creates more appeal for dense, walkable, transit-oriented development. Induced demand via car makes suburban sprawl more appealing.
Yeah, induced demand for a car adds between 1-8 people per car (average is probably like 2 though), whereas a single train can hold over 100 people. There are some great simulations showing how much space 200 people in cars takes up compared to 200 people in buses, or trams. I wish my city would do more of this, since I do have to drive quite a bit for my job, but I know a ton of people on the freeways don't.
Finally someone says it. Also induced demand only exists where either other forms of transportation existed, in which case those transportation options can now be used by you, or population increases. The roads of Detroit are not going to suddenly be filled if they build 12 lanes.
@@NoodleKeeperwell single train car. High capacity style seating broadgauge metros can hold up to 3000, and a 10 car MU train with 3 by 2 seating can hold over a 1000. Many high speed and sleeper trains can get at least 300 boarded if not 500. Hell double decker trains can start moving even a regional train close to the metro's max. Also with advanced signaling even long distance trains can become frequent. Essentially you don't necessarily even have to add another track to meet induced demand and can even easily reach capacities with such additions where every person can theoretically go anywhere on the network, have space on a train, still save many multiples of the space an equivalent highway system would take, support much higher density and close living, while of course using 100% non-greenhouse-gas-emitting vehicles through electrified train lines fed by power plants run by such energy sources.
Trains CAN hit the capacity limit of their lines (dealing with this was the entire actual Point of High Speed 2 in the UK before it was sabotaged, and is the reason for the construction of the maglev in Japan), but they move a hell of a lot more people a hell of a lot faster while taking up a hell of a lot less space before they hit that capacity limit compared to a road full of cars. (and hey, the 'just add more lanes' thing is actually a thing you can do with trains too, if you really want, but there's a reason why Most routes cap out at 'slow track up, fast track up, fast track down, slow track down' unless a whole bunch of different ones are all converging on approach to a major station).
The Texas highway took 10 years to construct and when it started it had 40k registered vehicles driving on it, when it was finished it had well over a million.
I didn't see a pedestrian bridge over that 26 lane highway and that's millions of parking spaces which everyone has to drive by. Every lane they build is more distance between buildings, making for longer trips. Every parking lot around a building does the same. Now that you've designed your city to make everything too far away, congratulations, you've just induced even more car demand. Better schedule another lane project. The orange cones never stop and I'm sure maintenance costs on 27 lanes won't be much,..
@@thorr18BEMpart of the problem in Houston in particular is that it is frickin hot and insanely humid in the summer time. At least 5 months of the year anyone biking to work or walking more than a block from a bus stop to work is drenched in sweat and stinking to hell. It’s pretty miserable to be around. Yes, people avoid public transportation for many of the classic reasons, but in the souther US in particular the physical environment at the final stretch poses an additional discouragement.
Improving access to public transportation provides an alternative for people who don't want to drive, but, in reducing the number of cars on the road, also reduces traffic for people who DO still want to drive. It's a win-win.
Except when public transport is festering with criminals... They ought have this addressed because it's an issue in my local area and people would use any excuse to use a car.
As Not Just Bikes has said in a video, the strong focus on active travel and public transport is why the Netherlands is one of the best places to drive a car.
If leaders wanted to solve the problem then they would invest in those things. But as soon as they fix the problem, they stop getting funding. It's not that they can't fix traffic, it's that they don't want to.
You also have to think about the maintenance. It’s an important part to keep the infrastructure in a good condition. And how do you want to maintain a bike lane, it’ll look brand-new for decades due to the low weight of bikes. Trains are a lot heavier but rails can handle that a lot better then asphalt. Same problem here, they last for decades, no need for constant maintenance but maintenance is important. Only car infrastructure is perfect for maintenance, you can maintain it all the time and the next day you can start all over again. Isn’t that great!
The question of "why can't we just outbuild traffic" is a valid one. One might thing, eventually we'll build enough lanes. But the problem is that building wider roads ends up moving things further apart, an making alternatives to driving even less feasible. This means that more people must drive, and those people must drive farther, so more lanes actually creates the traffic to fill them. Even if you do create enough roads to eliminate traffic jams (as a few places in Texas have managed to do), you can only do so by spreading things out so much that it still takes a very long time to get between them. So yes, you aren't sitting in traffic for 2 hours, instead you're driving at 70mph for 2 hours...congrats, your commute now takes more fuel in addition to continuing to be an utter nightmare of a time suck.
@@pvic6959 Yeah, I don't think anybody denies the sheer, individual, go anywhere anytime convenience of cars. It's very hard to convince people to give that up, or more realistically to moderate it's usage, when the link to other problems is not instantly apparent.
@@Bustermachine i would love to not use my new car as much as possible.. but im torn. I also have nearly 1k in montly payments for it now so i also want to make use of it LOL. but i do plan to walk/bike when i can
@@pvic6959 That's fair. The point of vids like this isn't to urge people to stop driving cars, it's to get people to realize that if there were viable alternatives, they wouldn't have to drive through traffic.
@@pvic6959 little bit of sunk cost theory here. i have a car too and had that thought too! for longer trips where biking and/or public transportation was so much worse i use my car. but definitely think about biking or public if the trip is only a bit longer. According to gov data: each mile your drive in a car costs 28 cents and then if you are going somewhere without much free parking you need to add that cost into the trip
The worst part about the Katy Freeway is that it was named after the Katy railway, which had some tracks along the same corridor. Eventually they stopped running trains on those tracks (drivers complained that the freight trains blocked traffic), and now most of the tracks have been torn up to make room for more lanes.
I like to look at a picture of a 28 lane freeway hellscape as I listen to the constant drone about "the war on cars". looks like cars won and then nuked everyone for a laugh.
I find this video amusingly timely. My province just rolled out a ad campaign promising to reduce traffic… by building more roads at the cost of a couple billion dollars. Pain.
That’s actually very interesting. It does indeed seem that the more wealthy an area the more likely rich people are to take transit. NYC is a great example of this.
It's exactly what is happening here in Paris. The mayor is completely reshapping the place of the cars inside the city, and its wonderfull even if there is still lots of work to do. If Paris can do it, every capital can.
Same in Tours (Fr), we have a green mayor who made driving your car in the hyper center of the city slower than using bike or commuting.. and turns out I often use my bike now haha
I am honestly not a fan of Paris. However it is an incredibly designed city. I hope no city is cursed with the misery of this city but take pretty much all advice from its planning.
Induced Demand works both ways. Give people an option that's more convenient than driving and they'll take it, but the option has to be there and it has to be better than driving.
Yep, over in Japan you could drive from Tokyo to Osaka in 6 hours, but why would you ever do that when the shinkansen can do that in half the time in comfort and is so punctual that it makes the news if it leaves a few seconds early.
In Barcelona they were gradually banning cars of moving inside the city, however the frequency of buses and trains hasn't changed, so now it gets uncomfortable going by car and also by public transport inside the city
but if the convenient option makes traffic better then it isn't as convenient because traffic got better. It seems to work on a balance between the 2 unlike what is said in the video
@@Reiver-93 And you can do things while on the train. Read a book, play some games, take a nap, even use the restroom as you continue flying down the tracks. Can't do any of that in a car
Yes I'd take the train or trolley more, but I have to drive to the station anyways, so there's rarely a point unless where I'm going is awkward, like when I was going to college. Drive to station, trolley to campus actually was better.
Even if you built a nice comfy high speed train that could travel at triple the speed a car could, using only first class luxury carriages, made the tickets free, and ran the thing on zero emission unicorn farts, some people still wouldn't support mass transit projects and the auto industry would fight tooth and nail to kill any attempt. And kill is probably quite literal. Its fucking ridiculous how much power the oil and auto industries have.
No such thing exists anywhere in the world so you're just making wild guesses. Also, it probably never will. Trains can't cover all the transportation needs. If I'd go to work by train, that would take 2,5 hours, single direction. With my car, 22 mins. Have them fix that, then we can talk again.
@@FilmscoreMetalerif the government had the balls to reallocate the money they waste adding more lanes to making more efficient railways this problem would be solved. Also, building roads is way more expensive and your taxes pay for it
I think it's reasonable to do something about traffic in the cities. A way to reduce traffic would be a combination of bans, taxes and fees. For people who needs a car and lives in the city. Certain spots should be made to carhubs outside the inner city limits. You park your car there, and enter the city through public transport.
@@FilmscoreMetaler the point is that your house is only in such a stupid place relative to your job because of broken urban structure. Public transit has no issue reaching even higher speed than cars when it is given proper attention and right of way instead of being an afterthought.
@@FilmscoreMetaler This is the basic problem of the ideas shown in the video. They apply only on high density cities and you ignore some economic facts. For me it is the same for going to work as for you. This will not be fixable. The money necessary to reduce your travel time is too much since it probably only affect a lower number of people needed to keep that public transport cheap enough.
1. Have more business districts. If you have one business district everyone travels to amd from work at more or less rhe same time creati g trafic jams. 2. Develop every district to have most basic needs within its boarders. This will allow people who work at a certain district use local schools, preschools, stores, bars, restaurants etc. This type of planing will also balance realestate prices and create local business oportunities. 2. Decrease car lanes and increase public transport options that run a reliable schedule. Public transport should have dedictated lanes which other cars, bricks cannot acces. 3. Create an app that plans your trip.
Adam is like" hmm how I make this better" and the after 3-20 steps we have a fucking train doing what ever was previously doing some thing else this time fucking road.
Eh, I don't think there was a video this concise to link when people call for the "induced demand fallacy". Pretty helpful in that regard (but yes, funny)
To be fair to the channel, that's true of almost any youtube creator. The Algorithm is publish or perish, after all. Which means whether you're doing it for money, or for sincerely held activism, you have to put out something on the regular to actually get eyes on your cause. Heck, it's been true of media since the dawn of cable and the 24 hour news cycle, where stories are spread as thin as the last bit of butter on toast.
Literally had the self realization two years ago. I was so angry that it was taking me 45 minutes to leave my local retail park here in the UK, then something tripped in my brain and I realised that I was angry at other people using their cars when me myself, was using mine. How embarrassing, I try and cycle as much as I can now. I've given up trying to explain induced demand to people because they just don't get it.
As a dual citizen, one of my favorite parts of living in Mexico is the public transport. It's not great by any means but it is WAY better than having to drive everywhere in Arizona. Compare that to Leon, GTO where I can literally walk or take a bus to anywhere I want to go.
Adam i've been following you for like 2 years, I'm a climate activist and today someone sent this video in our big chat. Honestly this applies 100% to my city which is built almost exaclty like amsterdam but they are going ahead with expanging the nearby highway. it will be 18 lanes in its widest point, passing 3km from the city center and at the closes 4 meters from the houses. An already impoverished part of the city will lose the few parks that remain (wooded areas were said to be "protected" from any other future highway expansion) while other important things are left behind. Cycling infrastructure sucks because "won't somebody think of the parkings!" while i regularly go anywhere in a radius of 5km in less time than a car. T And our local administrators prize themselves of being the "most eco friendly and progressive city in Italy!" and the quote is literal. What a sad joke
Fun thing which happens in germany every legislation period is over and the opposite party takes over a city parliament: - Reverse the more pedestrian or bike friendly changes to the city - Make more parking spaces and more roads for cars Or vise versa depending on the party taking over the city. Then wonder why neither works ...
The thing which videos like this conveniently ignore is that neither path is really optimal, because those cars aren't just moving around aimlessly. Each of the cars means people going to work, or heading to a store. It powers the economy. If you prevent cars from entering a city, it doesn't just affect traffic. It alters the entire economic infrastructure of the city. It forces the people who previously would have commuted into the city from outside to move into the city or find new (lower paying) jobs outside of the city. If they move into the city, their economic power also decreases, because they're now less mobile for making any economic transactions larger than what you can fit into a medium sized bag, and because they're now paying multiple times the rent. Adam always conveniently ignores all the economic implications of these happenings. Amsterdam is alot more pedestrian and bicycle friendly now, but it has come at a cost. And other cities haven't been quite so lucky as for the changes ending up actually somewhat working. And of course, outside of the cities in the rural areas, none of these "solutions" even work at all. And depending on area, adding more lanes _does_ actually work. Typically this is mostly the case when going from 1 lane in each direction to two lanes, or from two to three in rare cases. More don't really do anything. But especially going from 1 to 2 lanes has fixed traffic issues in many places here. Like the B9, or the expanded parts of the B10. Adding lanes wouldn't work around Berlin or Hamburg or near other big cities. But it does work in mostly rural areas, where the demand baseline is much lower, and where most people already rely on their cars anyway, because there are no viable train or bus networks (And it is not possible to implement viable ones either - mostly because the terrain doesn't allow for trains in areas, and because the throughput of people (for buses as well as trains) is too low to run a business on it). And then obviously, Germany also has vastly different traffic laws. You know the "Rechtsfahrgebot" we have here? That doesn't exist in the USA. Which would naturally make roads clog alot more than they'd need to. If the people going the fastest would always use the leftmost lane, and if people _had_ to switch to the "slower" lanes while they're not overtaking someone (like it is the case here), alot of the traffic issues the Katy Freeway is facing would've been solved years ago, and on a quarter of the amount of lanes.
@@PsychedeliKompot >Each of the cars means people going to work, or heading to a store. It powers the economy. If you prevent cars from entering a city, it doesn't just affect traffic. It alters the entire economic infrastructure of the city. It forces the people who previously would have commuted into the city from outside to move into the city or find new (lower paying) jobs outside of the city. The video isnt suggesting we just get rid of a bunch of roads and suffer the lower capacity, it suggests replacing car lanes with lanes for more efficient forms of mass transit such as trains trams or buses. Those people will still be commuting into the city for their job, just not with a car
@@AtomicAlchemist That is mostly wishful thinking. It suggests that _all_ the commute into cities is possible to pull off with that, but like I explained, you can't hook up every village via trains and direct bus lines - in many regions, that's just not a profitable transit business to operate, or completely impossible to even build when it comes to trains. In theory, yeah, more bike lanes into the city (and inside the city) and maybe two more tram lines do allow for better public transport once you're close to the city. But imagine living in a village 20 minutes away from the city (via car). To get the commute done via Bus, in many regions you have up to an hour or at least half an hour possible waiting time to catch the bus you need, the bus is infinitely slower since it stops everywhere and doesn't take the fastest route, and the Bus might not connect directly to where you need to go either. So you might need to switch to a tram line halfway through the commute. Suddenly, a 25 minute commute has turned into an hour or more. Alot of people can't afford to spend that kind of extra time. In many countries, where those methods of transport are viable, they are already in place. It's only really the USA in the West who aren't up to modern day public transport standards, and who have no clue how to manage _any_ kind of traffic.
You conveniently ignore how it works and is already implemented in practice. Hubs on the outskirts of the city, you park the car there and jump on a bus or a tram. If you think this idea sucks that is only because transport within the city sucks, because you want to keep all the car traffic in densely populated areas.@@PsychedeliKompot
@@igorzmojdzin8245 So how exactly does that remove the need for people to own cars? Also that's still a much longer commute than you'd otherwise have. I dislike cities overall, so I'd never work a job in a city where I have to commute into there with a car. I prefer my village where I can walk for 5 minutes and be surrounded by forest and greenery. Cities aren't appealing to me in the slightest. A concrete and tarmac jungle. I think what cities should invest in are large parking garages with alot of vertical parking space, to prevent cramming the roads. Keep them next to a few key roads where most of the businesses are situated, and convert the rest into car-free zones. Because everything else isn't properly viable for commuters unless they are very enthusiastic about commuting for 2 hours every day.
It’s always good to point out too that amsterdam and the Netherlands infrastructure overhaul was supported by a transportation minister who’s kid was killed by a car
There is a Japanese saying "no one drop of rain believes it is responsible for the flood". I ride a motorcycle nearly every day, to work, for fun, because I love it. It's sometimes uncomfortable, more so than neatly all car drivers would put up with. But when it's good its better than any car journey you can imagine. The same when I'm cycling. I wish I could do that more.
Prague. Prague is Amsterdam in the 60's. Full of cars in historical old town not build for cars, with local politicians ignoring traffic calming measures, promising new and new roads (Radlicka radial, full city ring road) even if the studies are saying it will induce car traffic.
All it takes is a few small bits. In the Mariaplaats in Utrecht (between the 'pedestrian' part of the city and the central station) the city removed some parking spots and reduced the rights of cars against huge opposition from the local shops. Then a few years later the city wanted to remove some more parking spots. And again huge opposition for the local shops. Now they wanted nearly ALL parking spots removed because the shops without parking spots right in front of them had seen a huge improvement of revenue and customers. People/customers will go where cars don't every time if they have the option.
That's fucking wild, because I've been to Prague and the public transport system is darn good. It's clean, comfortable, and you can get from the main train station to literally everywhere in the city in under 45 mins, even the outskirts. Like, I would expect Americans who have never encountered decent public transport to think that you need cars everywhere in the city, but people who live in prague should know better.
It’s actually kind of scary just how much the Netherlands reversed its Car-Infrastructure Stance, now when you visit the Netherlands it’s as if it never happened
@@zycklacon9588 We aren't nearly halfway done. :) And it's spreading nicely beyond our borders too. RandstadRail is a light rail/metro/tram system with a daily ridership of 125.000 in the The Hague-Rotterdam area that keeps continue to grow for journeys where trains are too much of a hassle but bike rides would be longish. It's only a matter of time before Amsterdam, Schiphol , Utrecht and loads of smaller destinations will be included in the network. It only started in 2006. Utrecht already has a similar system of its own with he same specs (40 km apart at this time but with Gouda in the middle).
@@gamlamanIt has it's limits, but yeah, Most of travels through the Prague can be done through public transport or just walking… However, Metro lines stop at midnight, so if you want to go/return-from somewhere, particularly in case of outskirts destinations, you better take a car… Also over the river commuting is for some reason faster with car… In my old workplace (near Chodov), it was from Smíchov about 14 minutes by car OR 40-50 minutes by public transport and 3 changes… Now I have it just 20 minutes door-to-door directly via Metro…
I had to lose my license to notice that riding a bike is actually A GOOD THING for yourself, your health, your mental health and everyone else. Like i am the most calm person in traffic now, before I was an angry idiot just like I see it with everyone else. Now I get almost run over by an BMW SUV and I dont even care anymore, I just accepted it.
I appreciate the more even-handed approach, although I do viscerally react when people lean on "civility/respectability" politics the second you start to sound excited or exasperated.
This is a nice explanation. I think you missed a relatively important point when defining induced demand: Induced demand not only means people switching modes of transportation, but also the fact that the overall number of trips made increases. Basically, if you widen a road, car trips will happen that were by people who would have stayed at home otherwise will happen. The same goes for transit and bikes: If there is good transit and bike paths, more trips will be completedy overall.
we just need to dug a tunnel! that way cars can -go at 30 km/h and create a death trap if one catches on fire- travel on fully automated pods at insane speeds. trust me bro it will work!
Sydney, Australia actually did this in the CBD by converting a major road (George Street) into a tram lane. It is awesome and has made that part of the city really nice. Unfortunately, our state also paid for a large roads project that has been lambasted by everyone for being a confusing mess of roads and tunnels that cost too use due to tolls. It is a shame that in Sydney for every good, popular proposal (closing the Cahill freeway,adding trams to Parramatta road) there is a policy to build another road that no one wants, except for the privately run Transurban who control our motorways. Public/private partnerships have really ruined Australia’s infrastructure.
I like how any City Skylines player will eventually learn or tell you cars are unsustainable and to not use them if you can and instead opt to use anything else but then you got actual professional city planners falling into the same spam roads everywhere trap. I dont blame them totally as they are probably told by their boss's boss boss that everything should be car focused.
@@soundscape26 yeah but, why bother to make the same joke again? just hit like on the other thousands and move on if you can't contribute... so annoying, trying to read a discussion and it looks like a reddit thread, but only the top comment over and over again...
Walking next to wider roads (more than 4 lanes) is stressful and generally a horrible enough experience to make anyone want to drive. Make somewhere nice to walk, safe to cycle and have decent affordable public transport that run frequently enough that a timetable is not necessary to look at 7 days a week. Traffic is generally a space and environment issue, investing in the alternatives is the only way to fix it.
I think an important factor that also nullifies adding lanes is that you still only have one exit at a time. It's also something to point out to people that still advocate for cars that these measures also make driving better.
City in which I live - Almaty, tried to do just that. We have a pretty important 4-lane street in our city called Timiryazev Street and it was a disaster that was severely jammed almost every day. The solution was to make 2 lanes of this street dedicated bus lanes, while cars now use only 2 lanes. This project faced extreme backlash from a lot of people including me, but it was finished and it turns out - I was wrong. Because back then this street was borderline useless because of the extreme traffic jams, but after this upgrade the traffic jams eventually became more rare and even when they happen - buses bypass them
To have a chance against induced demand, you need a form of transit that scales up extremely well (the polar opposite of cars), like trains or failing that big buses.
It’s less “failing that” and more a combination of those, and other options. There isn’t a one size fits all, and trains will never be able to cover all transport needs on their own. Trains are fantastic… when supported by solid bus, tram, bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
@@nathanlonghair Well of course, you need a good mix of all of the above. But rail transit will do most of the heavy lifting to replace the monstrous highways shown as an example in the video.
ANY form of traffic scales up more than personal cars (2,000 passengers/lane.hour) Bus (in traffic): 5,000 Bus (dedicated lane): 9,000 Bike path: 12,000 Walking path: 15,000 Light rail: 20,000 heavy rail: 40,000
The key here is that cars are really, REALLY space-inefficient. A whole vehicle for almost every person traveling takes a whole lot of space. That means the thousands of people commuting to work over main arterial roads are taking up a whole lot of space - and that's where the traffic jam comes from. If those same thousands of people were taking a mix of buses, or subways, or trams, or bicycles, a lot less space would be used, thus reducing traffic.
I mean the logic makes sense. The only way to fix traffic congestion is to get rid of causes it. Cars are what cause traffic congestion. Therefore, get rid of as many cars as possible via lane reductions and public transport to fix the problem.
You'll eventually run in to pedestrian congestion. Standing shoulder to shoulder, cramped up between a bunch of other people. Like the photos in this video straight up showed you lol
@@nudnud9 Yeah like 4:09 in the video. You're telling me all those people bunched up like they're watching a parade are comfortable and happy? They're miserable.
Building a lane works just as well for cyclists as drivers. Put a hundred cyclists in a bike lane stopped up because of a traffic light and watch them complain about congestion. Cyclists and drivers are not so different. Some cyclists really do think that they are.
@@travpennington3219except pedestrian walking takes way less space per person. The reason people keep advocating for public transport despite having to transport the same amount of people either way is because they can transport way more people per sq meter. And land is definitely a limited resources
What if in order to make them more efficient, we had cars link up to eachother, so one car could pull the rest thus saving on fuel, and we can further specialize these cars into a main engine car and the rest can have more space for passangwrs, then we can go a step further and make dedicated lanes for these omni cars where people need them to go to. Lastly we could specialize these lanes to handle omni cars better, like maybe making it uniquely geared towards their wheels or something I havent figured it out yet.
Here's an example of having good alternatives. We live outside of London and whenever my dad and I want to go to central London, we take our car to Southgate (which is about 4 to 5 miles away from the center of London) and we find a free parking spot on the street. Then we go to the Southgate underground tube station and we just take the train to the center. From there we just walk to wherever we want to go, or get a bus if we get tired of walking. Driving to the center would be absolute hell and take longer since you have traffic lights galore, having to pay a congestion fee, paying out the ass for parking and of course, traffic. Now it's not all perfect, we have the option of taking the train direct from our town to a station in London but it's gonna cost about 85 dead queen bucks for a one way trip (2 people) which is a hell of a lot more expensive than the above option. But still, it's nice to have the alternative of taking other options, instead of having to deal with the BS that comes with driving a car towards the center of a very congested city.
The gateway to a city is usually a train station or an airport, which is built as a representative building with good amenities and public transit connection. I was wondering if there could be something like that built at the periphery for cars. Well, there are P+R garages, but these are usually full, pretty basic and connect to small capacity bus line with long intervals. Also it's staggering how often is a train more expensive compared to a car or a plane. I planned a business trip recently from Prague to Marseille and train tickets would cost 2,5 times more compared to plane tickets. And the trip would take 20 hours longer.
One thing I've really grown to hate is all the paper work that goes with owning a car. Inspection reports, insurance policies, gas cards; and it's all expensive as hell. I have a '22 Honda Civic and that thing costs me about $600 US Freedom Bucks per month. I could do a lot with that kind of money
You need to consider the full cost of the Car trip. The car looses Value, needs Insurance, Tax Garage Space and Maintenance. Then also the fuel. Of course it makes a huge difference if you drive a 60.000 Pound BMW or a 10.000 Pound Light EV
Just came from a Japan trip, and WOW! Probably the second-best train system I've seen. The lines are all run by different companies, so quality of both turnstile _and_ actual trains vary, but you can take the train to pretty much anywhere. And their roads! Both Osaka and Tokyo feature main highways where the _sidewalk_ is just as wide as the actual car lanes. Why? Because it needs to accommodate everyone walking to and from train stations.
After living in Japan for 20 years, I'd like to know: What is your first best train system, because if it's better than Japan's system with an average 99% on time schedule, I need to know! Also two pain points for me about Japan -- - A good chunk of people use bikes but there are very little bike lanes/trails/paths. - Rail to bus and bus to rail transfers for a reduced fare are basically non-existent. There's been focus on these points for the last few years, sio I'm hoping they'll get it going.
@@starrwulfeJapan has a great train system, but all their other urban planning is pretty overrated. Huge lack of green spaces, there's often no sidewalks in suburbs, and lack of bike trails/separation of pedestrians and bikes. While the Japanese make it work and it's much better than anything in the US, it does feel pretty weak. But it's worshipped because thing, Japan lol
Even before getting to min. 02:55 I kept thinking “and it also works the other way around” - and there you go: reduction of road capacity (with proving good alternatives). I actually saw it in reality, with initial skepticism and then surprise. One of the key traffic axes in Milan, running from the city center to a key traffic hub in the north-eastern limits of center (Corso Buenos Aires) used to be historically crowded, with long lines of vehicles stuck in traffic. Then, in late 2020 (consider the timing), they decided to reduce the flow to ONE lane per direction, with exceptions only at some crossings. And build a large bike lane per direction. And then widen it. And create more space for pedestrians. Still while maintaining the car traffic flow, with no further interventions (like one-way systems or other). Just letting the habits adjust. At first I thought - “they are crazy. The lines will now start as downtown as Piazza del Duomo”. But, to my massive surprise, in a matter of weeks, everything adjusted basically by itself. Now that boulevard is manageable with bicycles, electric scooters, pedestrians - and cars. The latter still use it. But they are kind of inexplicably fewer, and better flowing. And this seems not even to have generated higher amounts of traffic in adjacent roads. Kind of a mystery. But this video explains very well why.
My case is unique but I sold my car a few years ago to live abroad for awhile and when I moved back to the US, Los Angeles in fact, I decided to take advantage of the subway system, got an apartment downtown, and a job near a subway stop, and am very happily living in LA car-free. It’s great to be saving the money I would be spending on a car and not having to worry about parking, traffic or insurance. I’m loving it.
But how do you get around elsewhere when not commuting to work? Genuinely curious question. Asking as someone who has never owned a car and living in Central Europe.
@@NOTJustANomadalso in Los Angeles, you can actually get to a lot of places on the subway/light rail, even to the Beach. There’s also an inexpensive bike share system.
as an egyptian, seeing our president at 0:55 got me. and you're so right too. in new cairo the avg road is 6 lanes on each side and the only form of "public transport" is micro buses. but the closest micro bus to stop my house is a 40 minute walk..
Texas, as usual, known for their efficient, economical, effective solutions to problems. As a former resident, i am allowed, and furthermore approve this video message.
Self driving cars means there will be more trips per person as you can potentially have trips without people, hence why self driving cars will increase not decrease traffic. Consider even if multiple people are sharing a vehicle, the car will drive the 1st person to his destination, then drive to the second person, empty (more traffic) then pick up and transport the next person. It may reduce parking need, but it will increase traffic. People have pointed out that if people car share, that may reduce traffic. Good point! But that's called a bus, or public transit, which people seem adamantly opposed to. Lyft and Uber both have car share options which are barely used. Unless it's drastically cheaper, people will opt out. Additionally, the best way to make it very efficient would be to have a really big car, with a lot of seating, like you know, a bus.
In addition, self-driving cars will make longer commutes tolerable, since you can read, play video games, text on your phone, sleep-- OI! NONE OF THAT LAZY BUM STUFF! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO *WORK* IN YOUR SELF-DRIVING CAR ON THE WAY TO WORK! INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY! SIGMA GRINDSET! _Anyway,_ since you can get to work without having to endure an hour or more of constant battle-ready Red Alert, you can -create more sprawl- move to a cheaper, more remote place. My prediction is that as SDC's become the norm, they'll start getting even bigger in order to contain a bed, small bathroom, and mini-kitchen (think: small RV) so their passengers can "enjoy" longer commutes in pseudo-comfort.
@@LiteGamer52 Until corporations can be punished with the same consequences as people, when a serious accident does happen a result of negligence, self-driving cars have no business being on the roads without a safety driver. There's a certain amount of accountability with a flesh-and-blood human driver who's own life and freedom is at stake, that you don't get without one.
THIS IS MUCH BETTER! Cause if everything is in walking distance? Why use your car every day? YOU CAN WALK! Streamlining is much better then what we suggest here. Removing lanes will just force conjestion and people to take the alternatives that will flood those areas. Amsterdam for example? BIKE PROBLEM! Bikes will go over sidewalks if they cannot pass or go on roads ment for cars.. cause someone is going too slow for them.. causing possible accidents with cars or pedastrians. But if they can live in walking distance of work. Why bother with cars? Also Amsterdam? Smaller trams and busses are always overflowing with people and getting stuck. It's like Tokyo Japan, you have to be pushed in! This is why Adam's suggestion is not as good as people make it out to be. All you do is move the problem to the other transport problems. But if people have to travel less distance...? Now you fixed the problem of traffic much more.
@@kotlolishand have a good last mile transportation, say, feed the buses and trams by share taxis that only transport between the bus stop and the side streets nearby
@@kotlolish You can walk just fine in Amsterdam, the people who take the trams and busses there either want to or are travelling longer distance. Anyway, Amsterdam is suboptimal but not because of a lack of mixed zoning. Most of Amsterdam is mixed zoning, there are only a few light industrial zones without housing, but they're all surrounded by housing and often connected by good public transit. The reason bikes and pedestrians overflow Amsterdam is a result of the popularity of the city, mostly because of the well executed mixed zoning.
If i can just walk to places in a reasonable amount of time, i absolutely will. I'd much rather see people walking around than deal with a bunch of noisy, eyesore roads.
Think of all the tax revenue we lose by having so much acreage dedicated to car infrastructure. Property taxes, sales tax generated by businesses, etc. On a side note, when the video ended, I got an ad for a car dealership. The YT algorithm never disappoints when it comes to irony. 😆
Induced demand is not even the real barrier. The fact that we all have to arrive at a place made for people at some point makes a choke point for cars. That’s the real problem.
0:56 it's not just current people suddenly use the roads more. Road widening also allows for rapid expansion of development nearby, adding more people. In most cases DOTs require road expansion based on predictions of future growth. By widen roads they guarantee additional growth on that road. They're often building self fulfilling prophecies.
hey, I like the new editing style, I know it changed some videos ago but I was watching some older videos and noticed the big improvement, thanks for the video
This just is how regular demand works. If you reduce the price of a good (in this case the good is travel and the price is time in traffic) you simply reach a higher point on the demand curve. It also works in reverse. It's the same as what is explained in this video, but it is just an example of how regular demand works. I think this is important because the term makes it seem like a special thing, but it is really just basic econ 101.
It's a slightly more specific thing really. In economics you rarely get nascent demand. For car traffic, there is A LOT of nascent demand. That's definitely a subcategory.
Keep the economists out of it, they're just going to lie about it and do bad math. At least with traffic engineers there's a chance that they can figure out that the downs-thomson paradox isn't actually a paradox.
Something not mentioned, and a key thing in the US given our current infrastructure, people not only choose alternative forms of transport but ALSO alternate car routes. Spreading cars out across multiple routes, whether side streets or alternative freeways actually helps traffic overall since it reduces the "crush" that happens when some monstrosity of a 26 lane freeway has to junction with another popular freeway or offload onto a popular side street.
Don't forget that a small local street has a lower capacity than a highway lane. If you come to an intersection at every block of houses and have to slow down, the trip takes longer than if you were driving the same distance on a straight highway without traffic lights.
@@thehappyclam3942 I want you to stop, think and consider the fact that you just suggested a society that can barely handle - actually CAN'T handle - regular ground-based vehicle traffic and can barely get enough people to handle the limited amount of flying vehicles we currently operate under stringent rules and routes...and then suddenly introduce flying cars to it. You're not making anything better; you're literally just putting millions of fun-sized cruise missiles into the sky.
The main problem is that the car is the single most important and best method of transportation. No method of transportation is as fast or as bespoke, as tailored to your specific situation, as the car. I literally get off my bike and push it up a hill. Cars are useful logistically, they can transport the weekly shop. They are also useful in areas underserved by public transportation. The only thing I would go for is UBI but make sure it enables someone to afford a car and a bike.
For those wondering "but won't induced demand also happen with those other forms of transport?" the answer is yes, but those other form of transport are so much more efficient than cars (in people moved per time unit and people moved per space used metrics) that those other forms of transport can either easily outpace demand, and/or it will take literally years instead of months before you'd notice.
The lane capacity difference is 4,5 to 50 times as effective as cars. So invest in an extra carlane or a bikelane? The first adds 2000 capacity, the second adds 14000 capacity. I wonder what the more effective use of money is, not even considering that wear and tear on a bikelane is near 0 compared to a carlane.
Are the busses clogged? Just add a couple new busses and run them more frequently on the route and you've increased capacity with no downsides. Addding car lanes costs tons of money, effort, and doesn't even work
@@sirjmo I saw one some other videos about this topic that car lanes cost about 300x more than bike lanes per mile, so for the cost of building one mile of a car lane you could bike 300 miles of bike infrastructure which would effectively cover most of a small city. And bikes don't tear up the bike lanes they ride on
@@ambiarock590 I can totally believe that 300 number. Car lanes are wider, require more safety features around them and have upkeep from potholes, etc. Not even mentioning that carlanes are often also used by some rather heavy vehicles, like trucks or busses. I was assuming same width used per mode of transportation with the 4,5(crappy bus) to 50(heavy rail) times lane capacity efficiency (people per hour on a 3,5m wide lane).
Imagine a house instead, where you have no enough space to put your stuff. So you get a bigger wardrobe, another room, basement. A year later your new space is filled again, with even more stuff. The more space you have, the more stuff you get (or don’t get rid of). And the additional stuff is more and more like just junk. I was more organized in my small apartment, than in my big house.
But yes the nightmare is still real, and in an instant you've intuited the kind of stochastic scenario that exponentiates traffic on widening highways.
Better Public Transport infrastructure and availability, pedestrian/cycle friendly roads and walkable cities. Also keep poi in close proximity so people can walk from one to the other and not have to make multiple driven journeys.
I think we need the versatility of cars, especially for things like post-dock cargo hauling and ambulances the problem is that the cities are built around highways, not the other way around
The fact we don't even consider redesigning vehicles tells you how emotionally restricted people are. Most of the trips we make are single occupancy. In fact, not engaging society is one of the excuses car-centric people make for continuing this infrastructure. Yet, we do not make single occupancy cars. Why? There is a lot of bizarre psychological barriers that goes into this ridiculous cycle of more lanes, more cars, more traffic, more solutions that upholds all the old ideas.
I can tell you right now: more people in Texas didn't just opt-in to car commutes because of a larger highway. There's something screwy with the idea that 'Induced Demand' is siphoning commuters from mass transit in areas where mass transit simply doesn't exist; Larger Highway = Oh I'm Trading In My Bus Pass For A Tercel is not a thing. It's more likely that the extra lanes don't solve the root problems with congestion in that area.
I think it’s more like "ugh, traffic jam again, it’s everyday now, maybe i’ll take the train tomorrow? Oh wow, this is actually nicer, i’ll do it most days", and when you build more lanes, it takes more people to fill it before you feel the pain and start switching, so demand will basically follow availability. Of course, there are also mindset problems, people liking the autonomy of their cars (i even saw that in Amsterdam, people who used to commute by train a few years ago, but switched to car in 2020 and never went back, because hey, car traffic is actually quite manageable here, with all the alternative options) but we shouldn’t underestimate how much external/environmental incentives plays into what feels like individual decisions (fundamental attribution error).
Presumably people in Texas mostly _accepted_ car commutes because nothing else was available. But that was a choice of local and state governments. Car congestion is not a "root problem," it's a condition that can only exist when you build for it. Everything we do with cars is a choice.
@@Spearca People merely "accepted" a solution that makes them able to travel door to door, without interactions with strangers, with the temperature of their choosing and the music of their choosing (to name a few)? No one would ever choose anything else than car unless they're forced to, with exception of people that enjoy cycling and hiking.
@@Szalbert Ask yourself this: why is real estate in places where you don't need a car, and it's inconvenient to keep one, so much more valuable than real estate where everything is easily accessible by car, as you describe?
@@Spearca Your question has a thesis in it which you would have to prove before me answering the question. In my country, rich/upper class people in major cities are generally moving to suburbia, not the other way around. I also don't think you can isolate a factor of the available transportation alone as the reason the prices are higher. City centers are also attractive for many other reasons.
"Reducing the road capacity and providing good alternatives", I'm not 100% sure about the roads, but the alternatives should be the main priority. In my case I have currently the choice between getting to college in 40 minutes with traffic jams, or use the public transport to get there in around 2 hours... Of course I'll be using my car even though it cost me almost twice as much to buy fuel + potential repairs. The additional 1,5 hours of sleep and not having to deal with obnoxious assholes and drunks, while sitting in a perfectly conditioned car, with my favorite music playing makes totally up for higher cost. I, and probably many other people, would swap to public transport even now, without any reduction of road capacity. The lack of good alternatives is probably 95% of why people prefer their cars.
I'm sure about reducing road capacity, because I've seen it happen in my city. People complain and fret about any lanes being converted to bus or bike lanes, but they adjust and the newly car-free lanes are happily occupied by people on buses and bikes. And the city becomes a bit less noisy and polluted, a bit more walkable, a bit more livable.
This. I'd take a train or trolley regularly, but the problem is I would have to drive to the station, at which point it's just making the trip significantly slower and more expensive, unless I'd be taking it to an exceptionally congested place where you have to pay to park anyways. If the option existed in a reasonable format, I'd take it, but driving an hour to a trolley station, to get onto, ride, then disembark for 30+ minutes the last 5 minutes of driving is just not happening
90% of lane addicts stop one lane before they fix traffic
so true eventually you will run out of demand to induce it's simple logic really
Lol
What do the other 10% do?
@@spinoza_z stop two lanes before fixing traffic forever
@@spinoza_z Spend the money on other stuff and also not fix traffic
But have you thought of adding ANOTHER lane instead? Trust me bro it will work this time I swear
It will work, I know.
It will add 15% more traffic
@@niko_hvathen we simply add 15% more road and after that we build elon must shaped pod based transport system that runs on working class tears.
90% quit right before building the last lane!
Well, at some point, you will have enough lanes for the amount of cars, just keep adding one more lane, and another and another.
Cmon bro, just one more lane. Pls bro, one more. Just one lane bro. Pls.
I'm from Barcelona and we have a very extended bike lane and public transport system.
But when I visited Amsterdam I was blown away. Everyone moves around with bikes, trams or trains, the train stations have giant bike parkings, the highways are just 2 or 4 lanes (almost without traffic) and all of them have adjacent bike lanes.
What a beautiful sight it was 😢.
I visited Amsterdam from the US and it was amazing. We really need better alternatives to driving in the USA
FYI Amsterdam is considered one of the lesser cycling cities in the Netherlands.
@@bramvanduijn8086 I think Rotterdam is more car-centric than Amsterdam, for example, but despite living in Amsterdam, there are many cities i still need to visit, it’s not like things are far away (and everything is connected by cheap trains 🥲) so i can’t say how much better it is in general, Utrecht didn’t strike me as particularly more bike-friendly than Amsterdam for example (but it’s a very high standard for most of the world…).
@@GabrielPettier A great trip I can recommend is going to Haarlem (just 20 mins with train from Schiphol or Amsterdam) and go cycle to the beach.
@@GabrielPettierAnd yet I've always found Rotterdam safer to bike around in than Amsterdam. Utrecht, however, is leagues ahead of both cities concerning bike friendliness.
I am writing this as someone who has only biked, but a lot in all three cities
Actually, Texas was just one lane away from solving traffic FOREVER.
2
Well, just one MORE.
@SusanMacbeth-xg5gg how about get a job
Eventually you build so many lanes that you create a black hole that swallows the traffic congestion there solving traffic and life .
Except they didn't and instead make it law that online adult websites require a drivers license or passport to access 🤭
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
What’s that from?
@@coeus2604usually from the sky
@@coeus2604 who cares lmao. Stalin could've said it and it wouldn't be any less meaningful
@@blacktiger974if anything it'd make it more meaningful
No single raindrop can oppose the tide. Nor would fucking want to for that matter.
Sadly I live in Eastern Europe, which is about 40 years behind the times. Mayoral elections next week, the big debate was whether a town square that is currently used a surface parking lot should be turned into a) a multi-storey carpark b) an underground carpark. Turning it back into a town square hasn't occurred to any of the candidates (or citizens).
Just make it large enough to fit Russian tanks
so protest and tell people to stop living in the past and copy exactly what... say the Netherlands are doing
import traffic planners from places where traffic is the best, and have them help your country's infrastructure
start a movement with likeminded people and elect someone who fixes your cities.
I’m from Warsaw and one of the candidates is planning to straight up remove trams because they take up lanes. Same guy who got interviewed by Piers Morgan about women’s intelligence and did the Hitler salute in Bruxelles.
@@jeremipaw5461Korwina nie ma co w to mieszać bo jego pomysły na Warszawę poprą nieliczni. Mało kto jest aż tak radykalnie nastawiony
This is Prague vibes right there.
As Jason Slaughter of NotJustBikes likes to say: The only solution to traffic congestion is providing VIABLE ALTERNATIVES TO DRIVING. That does not mean repossessing cars, it does not mean revoking driver's licenses, it does not mean forcing everyone to ride a bike or hop on a bus. It means more freedom, not less. It means the freedom to not have to drive, if something else makes more sense for the trip you're taking.
I hate driving, but I have no choice anywhere near where I live.. 20ish minutes to anything. Can confirm..
We really are slaves to our vehicles. Especially those vehicles that eat up big monthly payments.
Yeah, that solution actually has some thought into it, but I would say that we do still need more lanes, just not all on the *same* road
the problem is that these guys are missing the forest for the trees the issue is that you have to commute in the first place. serving suburbia or exuebia with decent public transit will never be viable.
@@kenon6968boss scum got to see green line going up in their real estate investiments portfolio
important info missing: Induced demand exists for all forms of traffic. The reason its not an issue for trains but it is an issue for cars is because while you can widen arterial roads and highways, you cannot widen all the streets, you will always be limited by the amount of cars that can be offloaded. If you offload trains of people into areas where they proceed to walk, the amount of traffic you can offload at once is only limited by the amount of trains you can get off at a station (until you get to extreme numbers of people), so doubling train capacity or adding a second rail line actually does double your throughput. Induced demand is good for public transport, but induced demand is bad for cars because you cannot effectively increase the amount of cars you can offload.
Bonus points: induced demand via train creates more appeal for dense, walkable, transit-oriented development. Induced demand via car makes suburban sprawl more appealing.
Yeah, induced demand for a car adds between 1-8 people per car (average is probably like 2 though), whereas a single train can hold over 100 people. There are some great simulations showing how much space 200 people in cars takes up compared to 200 people in buses, or trams. I wish my city would do more of this, since I do have to drive quite a bit for my job, but I know a ton of people on the freeways don't.
Finally someone says it. Also induced demand only exists where either other forms of transportation existed, in which case those transportation options can now be used by you, or population increases. The roads of Detroit are not going to suddenly be filled if they build 12 lanes.
@@NoodleKeeperwell single train car. High capacity style seating broadgauge metros can hold up to 3000, and a 10 car MU train with 3 by 2 seating can hold over a 1000. Many high speed and sleeper trains can get at least 300 boarded if not 500. Hell double decker trains can start moving even a regional train close to the metro's max. Also with advanced signaling even long distance trains can become frequent. Essentially you don't necessarily even have to add another track to meet induced demand and can even easily reach capacities with such additions where every person can theoretically go anywhere on the network, have space on a train, still save many multiples of the space an equivalent highway system would take, support much higher density and close living, while of course using 100% non-greenhouse-gas-emitting vehicles through electrified train lines fed by power plants run by such energy sources.
Trains CAN hit the capacity limit of their lines (dealing with this was the entire actual Point of High Speed 2 in the UK before it was sabotaged, and is the reason for the construction of the maglev in Japan), but they move a hell of a lot more people a hell of a lot faster while taking up a hell of a lot less space before they hit that capacity limit compared to a road full of cars. (and hey, the 'just add more lanes' thing is actually a thing you can do with trains too, if you really want, but there's a reason why Most routes cap out at 'slow track up, fast track up, fast track down, slow track down' unless a whole bunch of different ones are all converging on approach to a major station).
The Texas highway took 10 years to construct and when it started it had 40k registered vehicles driving on it, when it was finished it had well over a million.
I didn't see a pedestrian bridge over that 26 lane highway and that's millions of parking spaces which everyone has to drive by. Every lane they build is more distance between buildings, making for longer trips. Every parking lot around a building does the same. Now that you've designed your city to make everything too far away, congratulations, you've just induced even more car demand. Better schedule another lane project. The orange cones never stop and I'm sure maintenance costs on 27 lanes won't be much,..
@@thorr18BEMpart of the problem in Houston in particular is that it is frickin hot and insanely humid in the summer time. At least 5 months of the year anyone biking to work or walking more than a block from a bus stop to work is drenched in sweat and stinking to hell. It’s pretty miserable to be around. Yes, people avoid public transportation for many of the classic reasons, but in the souther US in particular the physical environment at the final stretch poses an additional discouragement.
Very hard to believe that area had only 40k cars on it.
Improving access to public transportation provides an alternative for people who don't want to drive, but, in reducing the number of cars on the road, also reduces traffic for people who DO still want to drive. It's a win-win.
Except when public transport is festering with criminals... They ought have this addressed because it's an issue in my local area and people would use any excuse to use a car.
Technically, people who make money off cars, gasoline and concrete will lose😉
@@dallysinghson5569it’s also a circle. They won’t solve this issue unless enough people start using public transportation.
@@WaffleAbuser Good! Car retail is a shitty job anyway and road construction is a horrible job, neither pays well.
As Not Just Bikes has said in a video, the strong focus on active travel and public transport is why the Netherlands is one of the best places to drive a car.
1:46 Building a 26-lane highway, but no money for:
- trains and rails
- buses and bus lanes
- bicycle lanes or
- pedestrian infrastructure
education, affordable housing, public healthcare...
Don't forget winterization of their powerplants.
Well yeah, they spent all their money building that highway. Now they don't have anything left over for any of the other stuff.
If leaders wanted to solve the problem then they would invest in those things. But as soon as they fix the problem, they stop getting funding. It's not that they can't fix traffic, it's that they don't want to.
You also have to think about the maintenance. It’s an important part to keep the infrastructure in a good condition. And how do you want to maintain a bike lane, it’ll look brand-new for decades due to the low weight of bikes. Trains are a lot heavier but rails can handle that a lot better then asphalt. Same problem here, they last for decades, no need for constant maintenance but maintenance is important. Only car infrastructure is perfect for maintenance, you can maintain it all the time and the next day you can start all over again. Isn’t that great!
I always wondered "if adding more lanes makes traffic worse, does removing them make it better?"
thanks for the answer! im surprised its true
The question of "why can't we just outbuild traffic" is a valid one. One might thing, eventually we'll build enough lanes. But the problem is that building wider roads ends up moving things further apart, an making alternatives to driving even less feasible. This means that more people must drive, and those people must drive farther, so more lanes actually creates the traffic to fill them.
Even if you do create enough roads to eliminate traffic jams (as a few places in Texas have managed to do), you can only do so by spreading things out so much that it still takes a very long time to get between them. So yes, you aren't sitting in traffic for 2 hours, instead you're driving at 70mph for 2 hours...congrats, your commute now takes more fuel in addition to continuing to be an utter nightmare of a time suck.
You also have to bulldoze whatever was there before to widen a road.
in addition to the billions of dollars it would take which could have been invested in actually making good infrastructure
Then you will have the citys themself as a choke point.
Fundamentally the answer to that question is that cars are inherently too space-inefficient to fulfill our transport needs within the available space.
@@wernerderchampthen they demolish the cities to make space for more roads
The thing about adding more lanes is that cars have to get off the road eventually. So they're going to bottleneck at some point anyway
That is also the reason a 6-lane strode has a lower capacity than a 2-lane road.
this is when we add 3 lane off-ramps
@@catswork One-lane ramps will probably do, as long as there is no traffic light directly after the ramp.
@@karstenschuhmann8334 You've never driven in the south.
@@TroIIingThemSoftly Does this mean you say they cannot drive in the south of the USA?
Always remember: You are not *stuck in* a traffic jam, you are *part of* a traffic jam!
i just bought a car lmao. and mostly bc public transport isnt easy nor cheap where i am
@@pvic6959 Yeah, I don't think anybody denies the sheer, individual, go anywhere anytime convenience of cars. It's very hard to convince people to give that up, or more realistically to moderate it's usage, when the link to other problems is not instantly apparent.
@@Bustermachine i would love to not use my new car as much as possible.. but im torn. I also have nearly 1k in montly payments for it now so i also want to make use of it LOL. but i do plan to walk/bike when i can
@@pvic6959 That's fair. The point of vids like this isn't to urge people to stop driving cars, it's to get people to realize that if there were viable alternatives, they wouldn't have to drive through traffic.
@@pvic6959 little bit of sunk cost theory here. i have a car too and had that thought too! for longer trips where biking and/or public transportation was so much worse i use my car. but definitely think about biking or public if the trip is only a bit longer. According to gov data: each mile your drive in a car costs 28 cents and then if you are going somewhere without much free parking you need to add that cost into the trip
The worst part about the Katy Freeway is that it was named after the Katy railway, which had some tracks along the same corridor. Eventually they stopped running trains on those tracks (drivers complained that the freight trains blocked traffic), and now most of the tracks have been torn up to make room for more lanes.
this hurts my soul
I like to look at a picture of a 28 lane freeway hellscape as I listen to the constant drone about "the war on cars". looks like cars won and then nuked everyone for a laugh.
A lot of good that did
I find this video amusingly timely.
My province just rolled out a ad campaign promising to reduce traffic… by building more roads at the cost of a couple billion dollars.
Pain.
Where are you, out of interest? Does the project have a name?
«B- But it will work this time bro trust me i swear»
I'm assuming Canada
We're a pot of fantastic ideas, currently
Sounds like someone lives in Ontario. Wouldn't be the 413 that nobody but the provincial government wants built, would it?
Ontario?
A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation. ― Gustavo Petro
THIS!
That’s actually very interesting. It does indeed seem that the more wealthy an area the more likely rich people are to take transit. NYC is a great example of this.
It's exactly what is happening here in Paris. The mayor is completely reshapping the place of the cars inside the city, and its wonderfull even if there is still lots of work to do.
If Paris can do it, every capital can.
Can they? Sure. Will they? Hopefully, though not in the US.
Paris? Does this involve setting more cars on fire?
Same in Tours (Fr), we have a green mayor who made driving your car in the hyper center of the city slower than using bike or commuting.. and turns out I often use my bike now haha
I am honestly not a fan of Paris. However it is an incredibly designed city. I hope no city is cursed with the misery of this city but take pretty much all advice from its planning.
Texas is doing its best to pave over the whole state. Dallas is practically a parking lot with buildings.
Soon, Texas might become only a car sewer.
Can't stop, won't stop, at least not until every driveway is an on ramp.
Why don't we just place homes and offices underground and pave the whole country so that we would finally roam freely in our beloved fancy cars
I want them to keep doing it. I don't want to lose my laughing stock
Don’t get me started on traffic in Dallas. It was awful in the summer time.
As wiseman once said :
"TRAINS FIX TRAFFIC"
Not just that but buses as well along side of other alternatives
Induced Demand works both ways.
Give people an option that's more convenient than driving and they'll take it, but the option has to be there and it has to be better than driving.
Yep, over in Japan you could drive from Tokyo to Osaka in 6 hours, but why would you ever do that when the shinkansen can do that in half the time in comfort and is so punctual that it makes the news if it leaves a few seconds early.
In Barcelona they were gradually banning cars of moving inside the city, however the frequency of buses and trains hasn't changed, so now it gets uncomfortable going by car and also by public transport inside the city
but if the convenient option makes traffic better then it isn't as convenient because traffic got better. It seems to work on a balance between the 2 unlike what is said in the video
@@Reiver-93 And you can do things while on the train. Read a book, play some games, take a nap, even use the restroom as you continue flying down the tracks. Can't do any of that in a car
Yes
I'd take the train or trolley more, but I have to drive to the station anyways, so there's rarely a point unless where I'm going is awkward, like when I was going to college. Drive to station, trolley to campus actually was better.
Even if you built a nice comfy high speed train that could travel at triple the speed a car could, using only first class luxury carriages, made the tickets free, and ran the thing on zero emission unicorn farts, some people still wouldn't support mass transit projects and the auto industry would fight tooth and nail to kill any attempt. And kill is probably quite literal.
Its fucking ridiculous how much power the oil and auto industries have.
No such thing exists anywhere in the world so you're just making wild guesses. Also, it probably never will. Trains can't cover all the transportation needs. If I'd go to work by train, that would take 2,5 hours, single direction. With my car, 22 mins. Have them fix that, then we can talk again.
@@FilmscoreMetalerif the government had the balls to reallocate the money they waste adding more lanes to making more efficient railways this problem would be solved. Also, building roads is way more expensive and your taxes pay for it
I think it's reasonable to do something about traffic in the cities.
A way to reduce traffic would be a combination of bans, taxes and fees.
For people who needs a car and lives in the city.
Certain spots should be made to carhubs outside the inner city limits.
You park your car there, and enter the city through public transport.
@@FilmscoreMetaler the point is that your house is only in such a stupid place relative to your job because of broken urban structure. Public transit has no issue reaching even higher speed than cars when it is given proper attention and right of way instead of being an afterthought.
@@FilmscoreMetaler This is the basic problem of the ideas shown in the video. They apply only on high density cities and you ignore some economic facts. For me it is the same for going to work as for you. This will not be fixable. The money necessary to reduce your travel time is too much since it probably only affect a lower number of people needed to keep that public transport cheap enough.
1. Have more business districts. If you have one business district everyone travels to amd from work at more or less rhe same time creati g trafic jams.
2. Develop every district to have most basic needs within its boarders. This will allow people who work at a certain district use local schools, preschools, stores, bars, restaurants etc. This type of planing will also balance realestate prices and create local business oportunities.
2. Decrease car lanes and increase public transport options that run a reliable schedule. Public transport should have dedictated lanes which other cars, bricks cannot acces.
3. Create an app that plans your trip.
The solution is same as always: Build railways.
but they are ugly, destroy nature and we will only get two trains per hour!
Please expand the highway to 30 lanes, so I can drive to work
@@wernerderchamp as if cars aren't even uglier, noisier and produce tons of emissions in contrast to the often electric and quiet trains, heh
They have lots of railroads in the US but shuttling people isn't nearly as profitable as cargo.
Adam is like" hmm how I make this better" and the after 3-20 steps we have a fucking train doing what ever was previously doing some thing else this time fucking road.
Train good, car bad.
Sending this to everyone I know when they ask me why I hate cars now.
Politicians: "Maybe one more lane will help"
Adam: "Maybe making one more video with the exact same content will help"
Eh, I don't think there was a video this concise to link when people call for the "induced demand fallacy". Pretty helpful in that regard (but yes, funny)
To be fair to the channel, that's true of almost any youtube creator. The Algorithm is publish or perish, after all. Which means whether you're doing it for money, or for sincerely held activism, you have to put out something on the regular to actually get eyes on your cause. Heck, it's been true of media since the dawn of cable and the 24 hour news cycle, where stories are spread as thin as the last bit of butter on toast.
I dont remember where i read it. But its hammered in my head
When you get angry about the trafic jam, always remember than you are part of it.
Literally had the self realization two years ago. I was so angry that it was taking me 45 minutes to leave my local retail park here in the UK, then something tripped in my brain and I realised that I was angry at other people using their cars when me myself, was using mine. How embarrassing, I try and cycle as much as I can now. I've given up trying to explain induced demand to people because they just don't get it.
And whizzing past a traffic jam on a bike, bus, train, or tram is so liberating.
As a dual citizen, one of my favorite parts of living in Mexico is the public transport. It's not great by any means but it is WAY better than having to drive everywhere in Arizona. Compare that to Leon, GTO where I can literally walk or take a bus to anywhere I want to go.
Adam i've been following you for like 2 years, I'm a climate activist and today someone sent this video in our big chat. Honestly this applies 100% to my city which is built almost exaclty like amsterdam but they are going ahead with expanging the nearby highway. it will be 18 lanes in its widest point, passing 3km from the city center and at the closes 4 meters from the houses. An already impoverished part of the city will lose the few parks that remain (wooded areas were said to be "protected" from any other future highway expansion) while other important things are left behind. Cycling infrastructure sucks because "won't somebody think of the parkings!" while i regularly go anywhere in a radius of 5km in less time than a car. T
And our local administrators prize themselves of being the "most eco friendly and progressive city in Italy!" and the quote is literal. What a sad joke
Fun thing which happens in germany every legislation period is over and the opposite party takes over a city parliament:
- Reverse the more pedestrian or bike friendly changes to the city
- Make more parking spaces and more roads for cars
Or vise versa depending on the party taking over the city. Then wonder why neither works ...
The thing which videos like this conveniently ignore is that neither path is really optimal, because those cars aren't just moving around aimlessly. Each of the cars means people going to work, or heading to a store. It powers the economy. If you prevent cars from entering a city, it doesn't just affect traffic. It alters the entire economic infrastructure of the city. It forces the people who previously would have commuted into the city from outside to move into the city or find new (lower paying) jobs outside of the city. If they move into the city, their economic power also decreases, because they're now less mobile for making any economic transactions larger than what you can fit into a medium sized bag, and because they're now paying multiple times the rent.
Adam always conveniently ignores all the economic implications of these happenings. Amsterdam is alot more pedestrian and bicycle friendly now, but it has come at a cost. And other cities haven't been quite so lucky as for the changes ending up actually somewhat working.
And of course, outside of the cities in the rural areas, none of these "solutions" even work at all. And depending on area, adding more lanes _does_ actually work.
Typically this is mostly the case when going from 1 lane in each direction to two lanes, or from two to three in rare cases. More don't really do anything. But especially going from 1 to 2 lanes has fixed traffic issues in many places here. Like the B9, or the expanded parts of the B10. Adding lanes wouldn't work around Berlin or Hamburg or near other big cities. But it does work in mostly rural areas, where the demand baseline is much lower, and where most people already rely on their cars anyway, because there are no viable train or bus networks (And it is not possible to implement viable ones either - mostly because the terrain doesn't allow for trains in areas, and because the throughput of people (for buses as well as trains) is too low to run a business on it).
And then obviously, Germany also has vastly different traffic laws. You know the "Rechtsfahrgebot" we have here? That doesn't exist in the USA. Which would naturally make roads clog alot more than they'd need to. If the people going the fastest would always use the leftmost lane, and if people _had_ to switch to the "slower" lanes while they're not overtaking someone (like it is the case here), alot of the traffic issues the Katy Freeway is facing would've been solved years ago, and on a quarter of the amount of lanes.
@@PsychedeliKompot >Each of the cars means people going to work, or heading to a store. It powers the economy. If you prevent cars from entering a city, it doesn't just affect traffic. It alters the entire economic infrastructure of the city. It forces the people who previously would have commuted into the city from outside to move into the city or find new (lower paying) jobs outside of the city.
The video isnt suggesting we just get rid of a bunch of roads and suffer the lower capacity, it suggests replacing car lanes with lanes for more efficient forms of mass transit such as trains trams or buses. Those people will still be commuting into the city for their job, just not with a car
@@AtomicAlchemist That is mostly wishful thinking. It suggests that _all_ the commute into cities is possible to pull off with that, but like I explained, you can't hook up every village via trains and direct bus lines - in many regions, that's just not a profitable transit business to operate, or completely impossible to even build when it comes to trains.
In theory, yeah, more bike lanes into the city (and inside the city) and maybe two more tram lines do allow for better public transport once you're close to the city.
But imagine living in a village 20 minutes away from the city (via car). To get the commute done via Bus, in many regions you have up to an hour or at least half an hour possible waiting time to catch the bus you need, the bus is infinitely slower since it stops everywhere and doesn't take the fastest route, and the Bus might not connect directly to where you need to go either. So you might need to switch to a tram line halfway through the commute. Suddenly, a 25 minute commute has turned into an hour or more. Alot of people can't afford to spend that kind of extra time.
In many countries, where those methods of transport are viable, they are already in place. It's only really the USA in the West who aren't up to modern day public transport standards, and who have no clue how to manage _any_ kind of traffic.
You conveniently ignore how it works and is already implemented in practice. Hubs on the outskirts of the city, you park the car there and jump on a bus or a tram. If you think this idea sucks that is only because transport within the city sucks, because you want to keep all the car traffic in densely populated areas.@@PsychedeliKompot
@@igorzmojdzin8245 So how exactly does that remove the need for people to own cars?
Also that's still a much longer commute than you'd otherwise have.
I dislike cities overall, so I'd never work a job in a city where I have to commute into there with a car. I prefer my village where I can walk for 5 minutes and be surrounded by forest and greenery. Cities aren't appealing to me in the slightest. A concrete and tarmac jungle.
I think what cities should invest in are large parking garages with alot of vertical parking space, to prevent cramming the roads. Keep them next to a few key roads where most of the businesses are situated, and convert the rest into car-free zones.
Because everything else isn't properly viable for commuters unless they are very enthusiastic about commuting for 2 hours every day.
It’s always good to point out too that amsterdam and the Netherlands infrastructure overhaul was supported by a transportation minister who’s kid was killed by a car
Now u know what to do...
kid killer time traveller conspiracy..
It's kinda fucked up that's what it takes to change people's minds sometimes: big wake up calls
Ferb, I know what we're going to do today
There is a Japanese saying "no one drop of rain believes it is responsible for the flood".
I ride a motorcycle nearly every day, to work, for fun, because I love it.
It's sometimes uncomfortable, more so than neatly all car drivers would put up with. But when it's good its better than any car journey you can imagine. The same when I'm cycling. I wish I could do that more.
Instructions unclear. I have become a car.
Goddammit, now I want an urban planning analysis of cybertron!
Reject modernity. Become car.
When you plan for cars and traffic you become cars and traffic
Kachow
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh.
Prague. Prague is Amsterdam in the 60's. Full of cars in historical old town not build for cars, with local politicians ignoring traffic calming measures, promising new and new roads (Radlicka radial, full city ring road) even if the studies are saying it will induce car traffic.
All it takes is a few small bits. In the Mariaplaats in Utrecht (between the 'pedestrian' part of the city and the central station) the city removed some parking spots and reduced the rights of cars against huge opposition from the local shops. Then a few years later the city wanted to remove some more parking spots. And again huge opposition for the local shops. Now they wanted nearly ALL parking spots removed because the shops without parking spots right in front of them had seen a huge improvement of revenue and customers. People/customers will go where cars don't every time if they have the option.
That's fucking wild, because I've been to Prague and the public transport system is darn good. It's clean, comfortable, and you can get from the main train station to literally everywhere in the city in under 45 mins, even the outskirts.
Like, I would expect Americans who have never encountered decent public transport to think that you need cars everywhere in the city, but people who live in prague should know better.
It’s actually kind of scary just how much the Netherlands reversed its Car-Infrastructure Stance, now when you visit the Netherlands it’s as if it never happened
@@zycklacon9588 We aren't nearly halfway done. :) And it's spreading nicely beyond our borders too. RandstadRail is a light rail/metro/tram system with a daily ridership of 125.000 in the The Hague-Rotterdam area that keeps continue to grow for journeys where trains are too much of a hassle but bike rides would be longish. It's only a matter of time before Amsterdam, Schiphol , Utrecht and loads of smaller destinations will be included in the network. It only started in 2006. Utrecht already has a similar system of its own with he same specs (40 km apart at this time but with Gouda in the middle).
@@gamlamanIt has it's limits, but yeah, Most of travels through the Prague can be done through public transport or just walking…
However, Metro lines stop at midnight, so if you want to go/return-from somewhere, particularly in case of outskirts destinations, you better take a car…
Also over the river commuting is for some reason faster with car…
In my old workplace (near Chodov), it was from Smíchov about 14 minutes by car OR 40-50 minutes by public transport and 3 changes…
Now I have it just 20 minutes door-to-door directly via Metro…
I had to lose my license to notice that riding a bike is actually A GOOD THING for yourself, your health, your mental health and everyone else. Like i am the most calm person in traffic now, before I was an angry idiot just like I see it with everyone else. Now I get almost run over by an BMW SUV and I dont even care anymore, I just accepted it.
What, no f bombs? Who is this polite Adam i never knew existed? 😂
I appreciate the more even-handed approach, although I do viscerally react when people lean on "civility/respectability" politics the second you start to sound excited or exasperated.
I think he wants to make this a video you can send to your dad.
@@DryBones111 yeah this seems to be a video for a more general audience who might not be familiar with his channel
Also i think there was a very decent effort made on production compared to usual videos, he might be trying things to see how that impacts his reach.
This is a nice explanation. I think you missed a relatively important point when defining induced demand: Induced demand not only means people switching modes of transportation, but also the fact that the overall number of trips made increases. Basically, if you widen a road, car trips will happen that were by people who would have stayed at home otherwise will happen. The same goes for transit and bikes: If there is good transit and bike paths, more trips will be completedy overall.
So it helps the economy
3:48 Replace every second 'and' into 'to' and that's dropping bars 🔥
we just need to dug a tunnel! that way cars can -go at 30 km/h and create a death trap if one catches on fire- travel on fully automated pods at insane speeds. trust me bro it will work!
You beat me to it! A great idea. I’m sure Adam will love it!
based and muskpilled. we fixing traffic with this one 🗣🔥🔥🔥❗❗❗
You're a tech genius, literally Anthony stark
Just gimme teleportation already
Sydney, Australia actually did this in the CBD by converting a major road (George Street) into a tram lane. It is awesome and has made that part of the city really nice.
Unfortunately, our state also paid for a large roads project that has been lambasted by everyone for being a confusing mess of roads and tunnels that cost too use due to tolls. It is a shame that in Sydney for every good, popular proposal (closing the Cahill freeway,adding trams to Parramatta road) there is a policy to build another road that no one wants, except for the privately run Transurban who control our motorways. Public/private partnerships have really ruined Australia’s infrastructure.
I like how any City Skylines player will eventually learn or tell you cars are unsustainable and to not use them if you can and instead opt to use anything else but then you got actual professional city planners falling into the same spam roads everywhere trap. I dont blame them totally as they are probably told by their boss's boss boss that everything should be car focused.
Fun fact: 90% of urban planners quit adding lanes right before fixing traffic forever!
come on bro add just 10 more lanes bro i promise we'll get it right this time bro
Every comment in this thread is this same joke, wtf, are these bots?
@@QualquerCoisaAnonima no its a hivemind
@@QualquerCoisaAnonimaLack of ideas I guess
@@soundscape26 yeah but, why bother to make the same joke again? just hit like on the other thousands and move on if you can't contribute... so annoying, trying to read a discussion and it looks like a reddit thread, but only the top comment over and over again...
Walking next to wider roads (more than 4 lanes) is stressful and generally a horrible enough experience to make anyone want to drive. Make somewhere nice to walk, safe to cycle and have decent affordable public transport that run frequently enough that a timetable is not necessary to look at 7 days a week. Traffic is generally a space and environment issue, investing in the alternatives is the only way to fix it.
I think an important factor that also nullifies adding lanes is that you still only have one exit at a time. It's also something to point out to people that still advocate for cars that these measures also make driving better.
City in which I live - Almaty, tried to do just that. We have a pretty important 4-lane street in our city called Timiryazev Street and it was a disaster that was severely jammed almost every day. The solution was to make 2 lanes of this street dedicated bus lanes, while cars now use only 2 lanes. This project faced extreme backlash from a lot of people including me, but it was finished and it turns out - I was wrong. Because back then this street was borderline useless because of the extreme traffic jams, but after this upgrade the traffic jams eventually became more rare and even when they happen - buses bypass them
To have a chance against induced demand, you need a form of transit that scales up extremely well (the polar opposite of cars), like trains or failing that big buses.
It’s less “failing that” and more a combination of those, and other options.
There isn’t a one size fits all, and trains will never be able to cover all transport needs on their own.
Trains are fantastic… when supported by solid bus, tram, bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
@@nathanlonghair Well of course, you need a good mix of all of the above.
But rail transit will do most of the heavy lifting to replace the monstrous highways shown as an example in the video.
@@Luzgar hmmmm
comment needs more punctuation bye
That's the most important thing. You can't just reduce lanes, you have to replace that space with well supported public transport options.
ANY form of traffic scales up more than personal cars (2,000 passengers/lane.hour)
Bus (in traffic): 5,000
Bus (dedicated lane): 9,000
Bike path: 12,000
Walking path: 15,000
Light rail: 20,000
heavy rail: 40,000
The key here is that cars are really, REALLY space-inefficient. A whole vehicle for almost every person traveling takes a whole lot of space. That means the thousands of people commuting to work over main arterial roads are taking up a whole lot of space - and that's where the traffic jam comes from. If those same thousands of people were taking a mix of buses, or subways, or trams, or bicycles, a lot less space would be used, thus reducing traffic.
And a railway which is empty 95% of the time is efficient, right?
@@Szalbert what train were you on? They're not always full, but in rush hour they are usually filled to capacity.
@@khnelli4918 i said railway, not trains.
@@Szalbert yeah, and? Trains run every ~15 mins. What train line do you mean?
@@khnelli4918 which means the space is wasted almost all the time
I mean the logic makes sense. The only way to fix traffic congestion is to get rid of causes it. Cars are what cause traffic congestion. Therefore, get rid of as many cars as possible via lane reductions and public transport to fix the problem.
You'll eventually run in to pedestrian congestion. Standing shoulder to shoulder, cramped up between a bunch of other people. Like the photos in this video straight up showed you lol
@@travpennington3219"pedestrian congestion" 😂
@@nudnud9 Yeah like 4:09 in the video. You're telling me all those people bunched up like they're watching a parade are comfortable and happy? They're miserable.
Building a lane works just as well for cyclists as drivers. Put a hundred cyclists in a bike lane stopped up because of a traffic light and watch them complain about congestion. Cyclists and drivers are not so different. Some cyclists really do think that they are.
@@travpennington3219except pedestrian walking takes way less space per person. The reason people keep advocating for public transport despite having to transport the same amount of people either way is because they can transport way more people per sq meter. And land is definitely a limited resources
What if in order to make them more efficient, we had cars link up to eachother, so one car could pull the rest thus saving on fuel, and we can further specialize these cars into a main engine car and the rest can have more space for passangwrs, then we can go a step further and make dedicated lanes for these omni cars where people need them to go to. Lastly we could specialize these lanes to handle omni cars better, like maybe making it uniquely geared towards their wheels or something I havent figured it out yet.
trains are like crabs.
Good idea
However, I have to drive an hour to reach the closest station, so there might be a bit of a problem
i love this new editing style, very snappy and entertaining. Keep this up.
Here's an example of having good alternatives.
We live outside of London and whenever my dad and I want to go to central London, we take our car to Southgate (which is about 4 to 5 miles away from the center of London) and we find a free parking spot on the street. Then we go to the Southgate underground tube station and we just take the train to the center. From there we just walk to wherever we want to go, or get a bus if we get tired of walking.
Driving to the center would be absolute hell and take longer since you have traffic lights galore, having to pay a congestion fee, paying out the ass for parking and of course, traffic.
Now it's not all perfect, we have the option of taking the train direct from our town to a station in London but it's gonna cost about 85 dead queen bucks for a one way trip (2 people) which is a hell of a lot more expensive than the above option.
But still, it's nice to have the alternative of taking other options, instead of having to deal with the BS that comes with driving a car towards the center of a very congested city.
The gateway to a city is usually a train station or an airport, which is built as a representative building with good amenities and public transit connection. I was wondering if there could be something like that built at the periphery for cars. Well, there are P+R garages, but these are usually full, pretty basic and connect to small capacity bus line with long intervals.
Also it's staggering how often is a train more expensive compared to a car or a plane. I planned a business trip recently from Prague to Marseille and train tickets would cost 2,5 times more compared to plane tickets. And the trip would take 20 hours longer.
Upvote for the "dead queen bucks"
That's my general experience with public transport in the UK: good, but unconsciably expensive, especially for long distance travel.
One thing I've really grown to hate is all the paper work that goes with owning a car. Inspection reports, insurance policies, gas cards; and it's all expensive as hell. I have a '22 Honda Civic and that thing costs me about $600 US Freedom Bucks per month. I could do a lot with that kind of money
You need to consider the full cost of the Car trip. The car looses Value, needs Insurance, Tax Garage Space and Maintenance. Then also the fuel. Of course it makes a huge difference if you drive a 60.000 Pound BMW or a 10.000 Pound Light EV
Just came from a Japan trip, and WOW! Probably the second-best train system I've seen. The lines are all run by different companies, so quality of both turnstile _and_ actual trains vary, but you can take the train to pretty much anywhere. And their roads! Both Osaka and Tokyo feature main highways where the _sidewalk_ is just as wide as the actual car lanes. Why? Because it needs to accommodate everyone walking to and from train stations.
After living in Japan for 20 years, I'd like to know:
What is your first best train system, because if it's better than Japan's system with an average 99% on time schedule, I need to know!
Also two pain points for me about Japan --
- A good chunk of people use bikes but there are very little bike lanes/trails/paths.
- Rail to bus and bus to rail transfers for a reduced fare are basically non-existent.
There's been focus on these points for the last few years, sio I'm hoping they'll get it going.
Wish it was possible to use trains in North Amarica.
@@starrwulfeI think Switzerland might have better trains
Idk tho
@@starrwulfeJapan has a great train system, but all their other urban planning is pretty overrated. Huge lack of green spaces, there's often no sidewalks in suburbs, and lack of bike trails/separation of pedestrians and bikes. While the Japanese make it work and it's much better than anything in the US, it does feel pretty weak. But it's worshipped because thing, Japan lol
Even before getting to min. 02:55 I kept thinking “and it also works the other way around” - and there you go: reduction of road capacity (with proving good alternatives). I actually saw it in reality, with initial skepticism and then surprise. One of the key traffic axes in Milan, running from the city center to a key traffic hub in the north-eastern limits of center (Corso Buenos Aires) used to be historically crowded, with long lines of vehicles stuck in traffic. Then, in late 2020 (consider the timing), they decided to reduce the flow to ONE lane per direction, with exceptions only at some crossings. And build a large bike lane per direction. And then widen it. And create more space for pedestrians. Still while maintaining the car traffic flow, with no further interventions (like one-way systems or other). Just letting the habits adjust. At first I thought - “they are crazy. The lines will now start as downtown as Piazza del Duomo”. But, to my massive surprise, in a matter of weeks, everything adjusted basically by itself. Now that boulevard is manageable with bicycles, electric scooters, pedestrians - and cars. The latter still use it. But they are kind of inexplicably fewer, and better flowing. And this seems not even to have generated higher amounts of traffic in adjacent roads. Kind of a mystery. But this video explains very well why.
My case is unique but I sold my car a few years ago to live abroad for awhile and when I moved back to the US, Los Angeles in fact, I decided to take advantage of the subway system, got an apartment downtown, and a job near a subway stop, and am very happily living in LA car-free. It’s great to be saving the money I would be spending on a car and not having to worry about parking, traffic or insurance. I’m loving it.
But how do you get around elsewhere when not commuting to work? Genuinely curious question. Asking as someone who has never owned a car and living in Central Europe.
@@NOTJustANomad taxis, ride sharing with a friend, buses
@@NOTJustANomadI ride the train or buses. On the occasions where I’m going somewhere impractical by transit I can get a zipcar…
@@NOTJustANomadalso in Los Angeles, you can actually get to a lot of places on the subway/light rail, even to the Beach. There’s also an inexpensive bike share system.
la public transit is unfortunately terrible compared to almost any other major city, even ones in the US like new york
Just one more lane bro 😅
Just the tip (of destruction)
This needs to be shared across every locationsl community sub. Quick, simple, straight-forward, and smart.
Great vid as always, Adam Something
Love this new style of production. Well done Adam
as an egyptian, seeing our president at 0:55 got me. and you're so right too. in new cairo the avg road is 6 lanes on each side and the only form of "public transport" is micro buses. but the closest micro bus to stop my house is a 40 minute walk..
Texas, as usual, known for their efficient, economical, effective solutions to problems. As a former resident, i am allowed, and furthermore approve this video message.
That guy who knows more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive gave you the solution to traffic.
Self driving cars means there will be more trips per person as you can potentially have trips without people, hence why self driving cars will increase not decrease traffic. Consider even if multiple people are sharing a vehicle, the car will drive the 1st person to his destination, then drive to the second person, empty (more traffic) then pick up and transport the next person. It may reduce parking need, but it will increase traffic. People have pointed out that if people car share, that may reduce traffic. Good point! But that's called a bus, or public transit, which people seem adamantly opposed to. Lyft and Uber both have car share options which are barely used. Unless it's drastically cheaper, people will opt out. Additionally, the best way to make it very efficient would be to have a really big car, with a lot of seating, like you know, a bus.
In addition, self-driving cars will make longer commutes tolerable, since you can read, play video games, text on your phone, sleep--
OI! NONE OF THAT LAZY BUM STUFF! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO *WORK* IN YOUR SELF-DRIVING CAR ON THE WAY TO WORK! INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY! SIGMA GRINDSET!
_Anyway,_ since you can get to work without having to endure an hour or more of constant battle-ready Red Alert, you can -create more sprawl- move to a cheaper, more remote place. My prediction is that as SDC's become the norm, they'll start getting even bigger in order to contain a bed, small bathroom, and mini-kitchen (think: small RV) so their passengers can "enjoy" longer commutes in pseudo-comfort.
think you also had to point out how public transit is more efficient than cars
Solution to traffick: just one more car bro, I swear
Solution to traffic: promote work from home, so a lot fewer people have to drive.
@@carultch Solution to traffic: Make all cars self-driving, I swear
@@LiteGamer52 Until corporations can be punished with the same consequences as people, when a serious accident does happen a result of negligence, self-driving cars have no business being on the roads without a safety driver. There's a certain amount of accountability with a flesh-and-blood human driver who's own life and freedom is at stake, that you don't get without one.
Introduce mixed zoning to move the houses closer to work
THIS IS MUCH BETTER! Cause if everything is in walking distance? Why use your car every day? YOU CAN WALK!
Streamlining is much better then what we suggest here. Removing lanes will just force conjestion and people to take the alternatives that will flood those areas.
Amsterdam for example? BIKE PROBLEM! Bikes will go over sidewalks if they cannot pass or go on roads ment for cars.. cause someone is going too slow for them.. causing possible accidents with cars or pedastrians.
But if they can live in walking distance of work. Why bother with cars?
Also Amsterdam? Smaller trams and busses are always overflowing with people and getting stuck. It's like Tokyo Japan, you have to be pushed in!
This is why Adam's suggestion is not as good as people make it out to be. All you do is move the problem to the other transport problems.
But if people have to travel less distance...? Now you fixed the problem of traffic much more.
@@kotlolishand have a good last mile transportation, say, feed the buses and trams by share taxis that only transport between the bus stop and the side streets nearby
@@kotlolish You can walk just fine in Amsterdam, the people who take the trams and busses there either want to or are travelling longer distance. Anyway, Amsterdam is suboptimal but not because of a lack of mixed zoning. Most of Amsterdam is mixed zoning, there are only a few light industrial zones without housing, but they're all surrounded by housing and often connected by good public transit.
The reason bikes and pedestrians overflow Amsterdam is a result of the popularity of the city, mostly because of the well executed mixed zoning.
If i can just walk to places in a reasonable amount of time, i absolutely will.
I'd much rather see people walking around than deal with a bunch of noisy, eyesore roads.
Think of all the tax revenue we lose by having so much acreage dedicated to car infrastructure. Property taxes, sales tax generated by businesses, etc.
On a side note, when the video ended, I got an ad for a car dealership. The YT algorithm never disappoints when it comes to irony. 😆
Induced demand is not even the real barrier. The fact that we all have to arrive at a place made for people at some point makes a choke point for cars. That’s the real problem.
WITH ENOUGH LANES one must wonder where all these cars are actually going.
Adam's editing is fucking incredible. It perfectly captures what he wants to talk about.
You're not in traffic... you ARE traffic.
0:56 it's not just current people suddenly use the roads more. Road widening also allows for rapid expansion of development nearby, adding more people. In most cases DOTs require road expansion based on predictions of future growth. By widen roads they guarantee additional growth on that road. They're often building self fulfilling prophecies.
hey, I like the new editing style, I know it changed some videos ago but I was watching some older videos and noticed the big improvement, thanks for the video
This just is how regular demand works. If you reduce the price of a good (in this case the good is travel and the price is time in traffic) you simply reach a higher point on the demand curve. It also works in reverse.
It's the same as what is explained in this video, but it is just an example of how regular demand works.
I think this is important because the term makes it seem like a special thing, but it is really just basic econ 101.
It's a slightly more specific thing really. In economics you rarely get nascent demand. For car traffic, there is A LOT of nascent demand. That's definitely a subcategory.
Keep the economists out of it, they're just going to lie about it and do bad math. At least with traffic engineers there's a chance that they can figure out that the downs-thomson paradox isn't actually a paradox.
I don't know if this is a new one-off video style, but i really like it.
Omg finally, a proper 5 minute video summing up all urban ytbers.
oh wow the production quality on this
Yea that was really good
Something not mentioned, and a key thing in the US given our current infrastructure, people not only choose alternative forms of transport but ALSO alternate car routes. Spreading cars out across multiple routes, whether side streets or alternative freeways actually helps traffic overall since it reduces the "crush" that happens when some monstrosity of a 26 lane freeway has to junction with another popular freeway or offload onto a popular side street.
There are a few interesting examples where closing an alternative route actually speeds up traffic.
Don't forget that a small local street has a lower capacity than a highway lane. If you come to an intersection at every block of houses and have to slow down, the trip takes longer than if you were driving the same distance on a straight highway without traffic lights.
I hope it’s trains!!
Choo Choo 🚂 are so 1860's
wait its all trains? _always has been_
@@thehappyclam3942 what does this mean? no like genuinely confused about this comment, to the point i want to study you.
@@Rustylorde trains are incredibly outdated, inconvenient and uncomfortable for passenger travel what we need to avoid road congestion is flying cars.
@@thehappyclam3942 I want you to stop, think and consider the fact that you just suggested a society that can barely handle - actually CAN'T handle - regular ground-based vehicle traffic and can barely get enough people to handle the limited amount of flying vehicles we currently operate under stringent rules and routes...and then suddenly introduce flying cars to it.
You're not making anything better; you're literally just putting millions of fun-sized cruise missiles into the sky.
"And we'll keep repeating this again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again until you stop adding more lanes"
The main problem is that the car is the single most important and best method of transportation. No method of transportation is as fast or as bespoke, as tailored to your specific situation, as the car. I literally get off my bike and push it up a hill. Cars are useful logistically, they can transport the weekly shop. They are also useful in areas underserved by public transportation. The only thing I would go for is UBI but make sure it enables someone to afford a car and a bike.
For those wondering "but won't induced demand also happen with those other forms of transport?" the answer is yes, but those other form of transport are so much more efficient than cars (in people moved per time unit and people moved per space used metrics) that those other forms of transport can either easily outpace demand, and/or it will take literally years instead of months before you'd notice.
The lane capacity difference is 4,5 to 50 times as effective as cars.
So invest in an extra carlane or a bikelane? The first adds 2000 capacity, the second adds 14000 capacity. I wonder what the more effective use of money is, not even considering that wear and tear on a bikelane is near 0 compared to a carlane.
Are the busses clogged? Just add a couple new busses and run them more frequently on the route and you've increased capacity with no downsides. Addding car lanes costs tons of money, effort, and doesn't even work
@@sirjmo I saw one some other videos about this topic that car lanes cost about 300x more than bike lanes per mile, so for the cost of building one mile of a car lane you could bike 300 miles of bike infrastructure which would effectively cover most of a small city. And bikes don't tear up the bike lanes they ride on
@@ambiarock590 I can totally believe that 300 number.
Car lanes are wider, require more safety features around them and have upkeep from potholes, etc.
Not even mentioning that carlanes are often also used by some rather heavy vehicles, like trucks or busses.
I was assuming same width used per mode of transportation with the 4,5(crappy bus) to 50(heavy rail) times lane capacity efficiency (people per hour on a 3,5m wide lane).
Can you do a series that roasts my city? It has terrible transportation. What are trains anyway.
Trains are what you ride going to the reedumacation camp.
Another brilliant video and summary of this! I hope more and more people will understand this, all across the world 🤞
The motion graphics in your videos are getting better and better!!!
Imagine a house instead, where you have no enough space to put your stuff. So you get a bigger wardrobe, another room, basement. A year later your new space is filled again, with even more stuff. The more space you have, the more stuff you get (or don’t get rid of). And the additional stuff is more and more like just junk.
I was more organized in my small apartment, than in my big house.
This guy is the new “I like trains guy”
Leave it to Texas to spend $2.8 billion to make the problem without a doubt objectively worse, on multiple levels
holy shit imagine having to get from the rightmost lane to the exit on that highway at 1:49
Leftmost for that one. It's in the USA so drive on the right and exit on the right (usually)
But yes the nightmare is still real, and in an instant you've intuited the kind of stochastic scenario that exponentiates traffic on widening highways.
Wonderful video. Even fits into the attention span of some of the carbrains I know. Now all we need is just one more lane bro
Better Public Transport infrastructure and availability, pedestrian/cycle friendly roads and walkable cities. Also keep poi in close proximity so people can walk from one to the other and not have to make multiple driven journeys.
How to fix traffic: remove cars and make cities actually good for walking, biking, and moving around through public transport.
I think we need the versatility of cars, especially for things like post-dock cargo hauling and ambulances the problem is that the cities are built around highways, not the other way around
The fact we don't even consider redesigning vehicles tells you how emotionally restricted people are. Most of the trips we make are single occupancy. In fact, not engaging society is one of the excuses car-centric people make for continuing this infrastructure. Yet, we do not make single occupancy cars. Why? There is a lot of bizarre psychological barriers that goes into this ridiculous cycle of more lanes, more cars, more traffic, more solutions that upholds all the old ideas.
People want to drive something big
Rational people meanwhile drive two- and three-wheeled transport
Meanwhile, New Jersey is spending $11 billion to widen the NJ Turnpike leading into NYC despite NYC introducing congestion pricing.
its really just 'if you build it they will come'. if you build for cars, cars will come. if you build for say, bikes, bike will appear!
Love the fast paced, information packed videos of AdamU
Adam: It takes courage to fix traffic.
Politicians: We removed the headphone jack.
I can tell you right now: more people in Texas didn't just opt-in to car commutes because of a larger highway.
There's something screwy with the idea that 'Induced Demand' is siphoning commuters from mass transit in areas where mass transit simply doesn't exist; Larger Highway = Oh I'm Trading In My Bus Pass For A Tercel is not a thing. It's more likely that the extra lanes don't solve the root problems with congestion in that area.
I think it’s more like "ugh, traffic jam again, it’s everyday now, maybe i’ll take the train tomorrow? Oh wow, this is actually nicer, i’ll do it most days", and when you build more lanes, it takes more people to fill it before you feel the pain and start switching, so demand will basically follow availability. Of course, there are also mindset problems, people liking the autonomy of their cars (i even saw that in Amsterdam, people who used to commute by train a few years ago, but switched to car in 2020 and never went back, because hey, car traffic is actually quite manageable here, with all the alternative options) but we shouldn’t underestimate how much external/environmental incentives plays into what feels like individual decisions (fundamental attribution error).
Presumably people in Texas mostly _accepted_ car commutes because nothing else was available. But that was a choice of local and state governments. Car congestion is not a "root problem," it's a condition that can only exist when you build for it. Everything we do with cars is a choice.
@@Spearca People merely "accepted" a solution that makes them able to travel door to door, without interactions with strangers, with the temperature of their choosing and the music of their choosing (to name a few)? No one would ever choose anything else than car unless they're forced to, with exception of people that enjoy cycling and hiking.
@@Szalbert Ask yourself this: why is real estate in places where you don't need a car, and it's inconvenient to keep one, so much more valuable than real estate where everything is easily accessible by car, as you describe?
@@Spearca Your question has a thesis in it which you would have to prove before me answering the question. In my country, rich/upper class people in major cities are generally moving to suburbia, not the other way around. I also don't think you can isolate a factor of the available transportation alone as the reason the prices are higher. City centers are also attractive for many other reasons.
Love that thought “you’re city is likely already Amsterdam… in the 1960s”
"Reducing the road capacity and providing good alternatives", I'm not 100% sure about the roads, but the alternatives should be the main priority. In my case I have currently the choice between getting to college in 40 minutes with traffic jams, or use the public transport to get there in around 2 hours... Of course I'll be using my car even though it cost me almost twice as much to buy fuel + potential repairs. The additional 1,5 hours of sleep and not having to deal with obnoxious assholes and drunks, while sitting in a perfectly conditioned car, with my favorite music playing makes totally up for higher cost.
I, and probably many other people, would swap to public transport even now, without any reduction of road capacity. The lack of good alternatives is probably 95% of why people prefer their cars.
I'm sure about reducing road capacity, because I've seen it happen in my city. People complain and fret about any lanes being converted to bus or bike lanes, but they adjust and the newly car-free lanes are happily occupied by people on buses and bikes. And the city becomes a bit less noisy and polluted, a bit more walkable, a bit more livable.
This.
I'd take a train or trolley regularly, but the problem is I would have to drive to the station, at which point it's just making the trip significantly slower and more expensive, unless I'd be taking it to an exceptionally congested place where you have to pay to park anyways.
If the option existed in a reasonable format, I'd take it, but driving an hour to a trolley station, to get onto, ride, then disembark for 30+ minutes the last 5 minutes of driving is just not happening