I think the downsides to the 100 lane highway you mention are acceptable. Those problems already exist. In the 1900s, a 14-lane highway would have probably been seen as an excessive solution. Today, that capacity is normal. Why can't a 30 lane+ capacity highway be normalized? It's a matter of accessible resources and efficient engineering. Both of which in theory are in near infinite supply. 2 layers 3?
As a lifelong 2nd generation trucker i can tell you what is wrong with traffic and what can be done to fix it.the largest issue i see is thru traffic should be on left lanes,speed limits should be the same for trucks and cars, and people need to leave a reasonable amount space to use brakes as little as possible to prevent a chain reaction of stop and go traffic. citations need to be givin to people driving recklessly or impeding the flow of traffic not for speeding a few miles above the posted alone. Local traffic should stay out of thru traffic lanes so they dont slow everyone down trying to get their exit and trying to get to the fast lane/thru traffic lane and 3 or 4 lanes is enough to to get traffic working smoothly with these rules its not always about how many lanes you got its about how theyre used
Trains are shit in the US. From my home I can drive to a well-known city in maybe an hour and a half depending on traffic. To take the train, which stops a 5 minute walk from my house, to that same well-known city, would take me 3 to 5 hours and be prohibitively expensive compared to driving. Trains are not as optimized in the US compared to other places.
@@jap_m maybe it could be good for really high traffic interstate high-speed highways but that's about it and by that I mean an extremely high traffic highway between California and New York
The Japanese seem to have solved congestion by investing in bullet trains that are frequent AND punctual while arresting car drivers that fail to protect cyclists. Singapore by awesome public transport and virtually banning private car ownership. The Dutch by introducing one way roads for cars, investing in their fully integrated public transport network, protected bike lanes and bike parking fit for their queen (who does use it) and sidewalks that continued across T junctions to make it clear the pedestrians do not have to yield. The Scandinavians clear snow off footpaths and cycle lanes before roads which allows their little children to cycle to school AND saves a lot of money (a sprained wrist or broken hip lowers GDP more than a broken light).
@@robertparkinson2102 Japan has horrible traffic in many areas. I was in Matsumoto in October and horrified how a city of 200000 or so people could have such bad traffic, even with busses and trains. It had to do with all of the stoplights in the city and the farmers and tourists packing the city.
The fundamental problem with traffic is that, if given the opportunity, everyone will drive to do what they need/want to do right now, and no realistic road network can accommodate everyone traveling at once.
100 lanes would be just as slow, the main slowdown happens in intersections, like the street that can only allow cars through 1 at a time. It'll get backed up just as much.
Like, most of the time, the traffic is up until a certain exit. Its not the highway that is over capacity, its the exit. Adding one more lane will do nothing
This is wrong. If given the opportunity, walkable mix use neighborhoods where everything is walking distance would pop up everywhere. And even if no public transportation or bike network is offered by the state - only car and sidewalks, many people will opt to live somewhere where they don't have to drive for everything. The issue is that those kinds of places are illegal to build in North America due to zoning regulations and parking requirements and many more laws.
@@Basta11The problem is job location, affordability, and ease of moving your household. Home ownership and matching good employees to good jobs will never allow this approach to work except in highly urban downtown areas.
@@stevecooper7883 How about we have some more rail infrastructure? It's a lot more energy efficient, a lot more space efficient, a lot less polluting, a lot safer, usually faster and usually cheaper (although you can spend some more to make it a lot faster).
@@stevecooper7883 Induced demand in this context is pretty straightforward and doesn’t deal with economic growth, however. Instead it deals with everything re: policy decisions on how we decide to move people. Aka why we it makes way more sense in pretty much every objective factor to build transit oriented infrastructure since the capacity is simply much larger with less land usage.
Yes but how about we dont force people to use public transport? Having a healthy mix of both a massive road network and having inner cities be designed aroundthe 10 minute concept and large scale rail network connected yo important points in cities with bus networks attached to the rail station would keep people being free to move yet on their own choice. Just how the Netherlands does it.@@Davdaphone
@cyancyborg1477 bulit upon slavery and exploitation. The embodiment of the Industrial revolution and it's consequences. The Antichrist. The anti everything good
2100: Mankind has finally discovered the new solution to high traffic by reducing the need of cars after implementing public transit. This is a historic moment!
@@St0ckwell One (1) bullet train is not equivalent to the devastation of landscape a 100 lane highway would produce. Be just a little bit for real, dude.
1970: Just one more lane. 1980: Just one more lane. 1990: Just one more lane. 2000: Just one more lane. 2010: Just one more lane. 2020: Maybe we have a traffic problem. %99 of city planners quit just before adding one more lane that will fix everything, trust me bro.
@@whathm9077and remove the non-car infrastructure, just gets in the way of car infrastructure, trust me bro, building everything around cars is the way to go
Yeah, Americans use cars way too much. Their cities aren't good for walking and train connections around the country aren't good and you can literally fly cheaper than to go by train. Their solution to traffic: "Just one more lane"
In europe 1 lane actually solved the problems i had everywhere there were problems before , but texas population is increasing faster than they can adapt
The solution to traffic jams is less car-dependent living culture and a greater variety of ways for people to travel. The channel Not Just Bikes brings this point across nicely.
Yes bikes are useful but motorcycles are better. If you simply just allow lane splitting and incentivize drivers to get on 2 wheels then you'll eliminate a ton of traffic. I don't remember the statistics exactly but it was something like if 6% of the population started riding motorcycles to work and were allowed to lane split then 40% of the traffic would disappear. It was some crazy low amount of bikes for a very noticeable amount of traffic difference.
dude, I am jealous on how beautiful and well-maintained a lot of subway systems in europe and japan are. Driving in cities are a pain in the ahh , but you can get to anywhere you want in 20 minutes via the metro. Felt like I had the city at my fingertips
@@deekamikaze Motorcycles would also cause tons of issues like a insane amount of traffic injuries and deaths. Lane splitting is also very dangerous. Bikers are extremely vulnerable in urban areas.
But that would mean cars would have less utility and if the automotive industry slows down the oil industry slows down and the if the oil industry slows down well that means we dissappear into a vacuum cause the oil industry must always live on💯💯💯
There would still be traffic jams because the entry and exit point would still be attached to normal 2-lane roads. The bottleneck from such a ridiculously massive highway structure would be even worse than they are today.
@@aronasmundurjonasson3175 an actual solution would be good public transport.. a bus will regularly hold 60 people ... and because almost everyone drives alone .. that translates directly to 50 less cars on the road per bus ... and if you make proper connections via bus then there is less reason to even have a car ..
Think of all the beat up altimas with paper plates crossing every lane to make their exit, those poor people on the road with them would never stand a chance
The other issue is traffic Shockwave. In other words, if one person panic slams on their brakes on a 5 lane highway, that can cause everyone else to slam on their breaks and it just keeps going.
@@iamjimgrothUntil the reason they slam their brakes is because a semi flipped over and is blocking most of them horizontally. Because everyone slows down when the see the flipped over semi. Really, they do that for all accidents.
@@hannanah8036 oh no, whatever will we do without projects! Smile, laugh, enjoy our time outside? I hate people enjoying their lives, surround that neighborhood with crack dens immediately!
Some modern GPS navigation apps will deliberately give you a route that's 2 or 3 minutes slower, and give similar penalities to a hundred other drivers, in order to prevent the main thoroughfares from getting backed up for 2 hours. (edit: spelling)
Some time ago, waze caused a lot of traffic deadlocks so large that São Paulo breaked its congestion record by far and after some change in apps have never occurred again. It’s preferable create alternate routes, reduce drastically the number of exits and create some segregated local lane besides
I think it's prophetic that most drivers are too selfish to realize that the only way to reduce traffic long-term is by facilitating different modes like transit and cycling.
It juat depresses me. There's a UA-cam channel called Not Just Bikes that's all about good transportation, and he demonstrates how effective it can be by showing off transportation options in the Netherlands. I would love to sell my car. It's expensive to maintain, and once you've spend enough time driving ~24,000 miles a year and seeing how many idiots operate on our roadways, it doesn't exactly make driving desirable anymore, either. I would love if America took the time to create a system where I could safely ride my bicycle anywhere I needed to go
Oh fuck I hate that... This happens in Ontario with Trucks passing each other, all trucks are limited to 105km/h... but you get trucks that can do 106 and some doing 104... so they pass each other... slowly...
“Wrong era in history, the highway boom was in the 1950s, the slow, gradual genocide of First Nation peoples happened over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. It would make more sense to write the quote as America to the Blacks” - 🤓
@@vschmerz Removal of lands from First Nations peoples also happened in the 1950s, it was a major influence behind the rise of the American Indian Movement of the 60s and 70s. One example would be the Tuscarora Reservation
Yeah, cz making more roads benefits the contractors pal. The policians give those contracts to their mates who pay them for those favours. Win- win. Tragic loss for u, but hey, at least u r in a CAPITALIST country right?
The issue of traffic is almost entirely a driver-made problem. You can put as many lanes as you want but all it takes is one idiot to crash for six police cars to block way too many lanes thus slowing the 72 people behind them.
There's a giant layered highway junction like that near my house that everyone in my family has dubbed "The Spaghetti Bowl" because of how it looks. I would infinitely prefer having more options for public transportation in my city, but I do at least appreciate that one specific highway clusterfuck has a funny name.
Does everyone call their local disaster interchange “The Spaghetti Bowl?” Because I don’t live in any of the above mentioned cities, and everyone in my area calls it that too.
@@NarwahlGamingbro the unions are not the problem here maybe part ig but if u think unions are the biggest reason our infrastructure and transportation are fucked then you are a bit simple minded
@@NarwahlGaming I won’t discount your experiences but imo it’s cutting corners to save money or making appliances cheaply so the customer has to buy a new one sooner. Not to mention the fact that they just stopped doing inspections in parts of the country to save money and potential repair costs. Like ur probably right I just don’t think it’s the biggest problem in that area
My state fixed one of the biggest points of congestion just by changing an exit so that it went into its own lane instead of merging immediately, which gives people time to switch lanes ahead of some highway splits. Almost entirely cleared any congestion. And I’d rather have multiple paths to get into work because the worst problem is one route essentially shutting down due to accidents.
A trolly or train would be far better than a new lane as well, since they hold far more people in the same amount of space. The problem near where I live is that the regional train goes city to city with dirty local busses that people don't like to use that get caught in the same slow traffic. I'm really close to the train station (a mile as the crow flies, a mile and a half if I walk along the roads) but I'd have to cross 2 major roads that have no sidewalks that are so congested people are turning right on red constantly (two lanes, so someone goes right while others are turning left.) How do most people use that train? Driving over and parking... and boy do the tow companies love yanking cars out of the apartment lots around there! There's nowhere near enough parking, but if they just put sidewalks in...
@@sofiadragon6520 roads give far better access to different places so it would be far more expensive to create the required number of trams or trains.
It's because the American people have been effectively convinced that cars are the greatest mode of freedom, and that public transportation is restrictive and shitty. And unfortunately, here in the States, they're right--our public transportation system is awful and horribly unreliable. Big cities like NYC have decent intracity subway systems, but that's it. Most Americans don't even know how amazing transportation systems can be in places like the Netherlands
In Katy, Texas, (West Houston) there's a section of I-10 with 17 lanes. It's the worst traffic in town. You can never build your way out of traffic congestion. Ever.
I end up having to take it pretty frequently, so I don’t really have to imagine. It’s a nightmare every time. You’d think the civil engineers around here would’ve learned a thing or two, but Houston’s freeways are still under continual construction. When you combine this with the fact that alternative methods of transportation are unviable (infrastructure for passenger rail, biking and foot travel are virtually nonexistent and beyond unreliable or sometimes even unsafe), it’s not a mystery why traffic never improves around here. In addition, Houston’s level of urban sprawl is unrivaled across the country. As the saying goes, Houston is an hour away from Houston. Our car-reliant transportation infrastructure only exacerbates this problem.
@@cpwl27those 17 lanes include the feeder roads and both directions of traffic. It’s really only 5-6 lanes not including the 1-2 lane toll road. This person is being dramatic. No roads are 17 lanes wide on one side
American architects and city planners literally will come up with this shit and then have the audacity to say that expanding public transport is “too expensive”
The video is wrong. Cars don't appear out of nowhere. Problem is adding lanes does not solve the underlying issue of adding more lanes on all roads, not just the highway: exit ramps are still bottlenecks
That is a function of your home big your suburban homes and land plots are. The moment you accept smaller homes like NY, public transport enters the conversation.
This has been long proven. 100 lanes are simply hypothetical so this is not an argument. Look into Europe and figure out public transportation. Europe has it's faults as well having gone the "car way" too long but we have stopped and pop up bike lanes and new public transportation, adding pedestrian zones in inner cities, park and ride spots and giving new life and value to towns. Cities begin to be more livable, air is cleaner and people have lower stress levels. I think we are on the right path 🇪🇺
@@martingerlitz1162 you forgot to add that Europe is no longer the factory of the world. There is very little regimented movement of people that comes with 9-5 or three shift work patterns.(Which is why you need multi lane roads in the first place. Large volumes of entries and exits.)
@@Abstract_zx How most European countries fix that is by having train stations for moving between cities and then local buses, trams and metro’s to get exactly where you need to be
@@appelmoes3433 Yeah but the problem is most European countries are smaller than individual US states, with very different population distribution due to the land available and the amount of time they've been there. Hell, most European countries are smaller than my province(Ontario, Canada) They've had thousands of years of infrastructure to keep rebuilding over top of, with limited space to spread out and grow. We're over here on a much much larger, still fresh continent we started from scratch less than 500 years ago with technology constantly changing before we can even plan for it. give us a break.
If only there was like a vehicle that traveled on rails, ran on electricity and carried a large number of people to many different places along its route.
@@tonybrown5425 they aren't Sol, they're just not even trying to fix it. Got "better" things to spend the money on, like new development and prosecuting homeless people.
@azraellie_ so there are other advantages for adding an extra lane. The streets are less congested. Before all those other people who avoided the lane would use the streets but now go on the freeway. Roadways are more likly to wear and less capable of handling slow moving or stalled traffic. Thus they would be damaged quicker.
In Europe, you're able to ignore it. As well as having a better public Transportation system because Europe is substantially smaller than the United States. Just driving across Texas is like driving from Normandy to Warsaw.
Also, even though that super-road is now wide enough, all the connecting roads are not. So now there is a traffic jam at all entrances and exits. You widen up those, and now there is a traffic jam at the next junction. Repeat that, all the way to your driveway.
And you've expended so much land that now your destinations need to be further apart because the land they would have been on is asphalt. Which means you need more road to get to more distant destinations.
@@shieldgenerator7 You think it is a joke? A family of 5 needs 5 cars, if you don’t want to work as a taxi driver for your high school kids… And that needs a big driveway.
@@Starioshka No, You are very wrong. Cities built around public transit are the only places where you don't have this problem. They are hundreds time cheaper and easier to maintain. It's a statistical fact not an opinion. What you are describing is cities that are built around cars trying to implement public transit. Which makes the initial cost much higher than it needs to be.
@@pixeltochi4961 I think you meant "soviet planned cities". Those are the only ones with good access to everything on foot, car and good public transport.
@pixeltochi4961 Japan, Britain, France, Switzerland, New York, China… Do I need to name more or show you why your argument falls flat while also talking about carbon emissions?
In Germany you can pay 49€ per month to use unlimited trams, buses, subway and regional trains. If I take a 4h trip once a month it's already cheaper than driving. Also, what do you take into account for trip cost? Just fuel or also cost of maintenance, insurance, ownership, taxes? And even if some trips might be slower than driving, you can do whatever during that time, read, work, walk around...
"Sounds like communism to me!" -Texan probably Oh wait, no -- this one is better: "I'll give you my truck when you pry it from my cold dead hands!" -Texan probably
Trains and subways are fine, they do increase mobility, and allow more people to access the city, but as a traffic reduction tool, they really don't achieve that. Because the traffic usually comes from people who live outside of where the line is, So many cities in Asia have excellent metros, and still have horrible traffic.
@@linuxman7777 not if you stop building stupid "traffic reduction" freeways. Only provide fast cheap public transport, and leave the existing roads to get more congestion
@@linuxman7777They work if America wouldn't have been destroyed and rebuilt by car lobbyists. They used to have fantastic tram and bus systems, and the whole country was built by trains back in the day. People wouldn't have to go into the city every day if zoning laws didn't prohibit commercial buildings (and thus job opportunities) to be built in suburban neighborhoods. Instead everyone has to take the crappy 6 lane highway to get to their job everyday. America has the funds to build both roads and public transport opportunities that are way more efficient and higher quality than india's too, if proper leaders would be in charge for once then they could be leaps ahead of where it is now.
imagine cities such as Filthadelphia, NYC managing to keep the hobos, panhandlers, junkies and drug dealers off the trains,platforms and stations. yea I aint taking SEPTA when I can get bumrushed by pan handlers, hobos outside 7-Eleven, Wawa
When they make a train which can pick me up on my schedule and drop me off exactly where i need to be i will agree with you. Seeing as such a thing is impossible looks like i wont ever agree with you.
No you see according to the geniuses in the replies we can’t do anything other than a car based society because we should think about the 150 people in bumfuck nowhere who might not even use it, so everyone in Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso must suffer unto them.
Traffic jams are a phenomenon, a consequence of safe acceleration after a series of cars have to use their breaks for more than a fraction of a second. I guarantee you you also don't have the reaction time necessary to be a part of the non-traffic causing space on the road.
People like to tailgate and hit their brakes every 5 seconds instead of letting off the gas and coasting, thus causing the car behind to brake and so on and so forth.
I have a way better idea: promote remote jobs. You don't have to go to the office and back, it will significantly reduce the pollution. The virus actually helped us introduce online tools for work. Some professions cant do that, but if we move all IT departments back to the home it will significantly reduce traffic, pollution, energy consumption and stress
@@thomaspriewasser6660 more like think of the restaurants that no longer exist, think of the clothing places out of business, the construction firms out of business, banks no longer moving money, positions eliminated such as building security and maintenance, and on and on. Entire segments of the economy will be wiped out just so people can be unproductive in their pajamas.
@@Freyia935 public transport is for the EU, not America. EU countries are small, and buses/bikes are excellent there. In the US a car is a necessity, not a luxury.
One thing I’ve noticed about this scenario is that it never takes into account why the traffic backs up. It’s often the result of bottle necking at interchanges or when lanes are otherwise lost. Traffic behaves as a fluid in a pipe. Narrow the pipeline and you increase the pressure.
Traffic is also caused by extensive lane switching with cumulative effects, phantom effects from bad drivers, as well as with these simulations the effect that having a large network like this has. It encourages more spread out infrastructure that requires driving to get around which encourages more spread out infrastructure and so on. It's not just when the lanes turn into less lanes
A well designed interchange helps reduce traffic for sure. Next to my work the roads are badly designed for where people want to go. You end up with about 8 lanes worth of car (different roads all leading to the same place) trying to merge into an highway entrance/exit that leads to another highway. Needless to say, during rush hour you can easily get stuck for half an hour moving less than half a mile.
In my city they announced they'd widen a road, and I was excited since I thought the frequent 2-to-1 mergers on the 2 mile strip of road would then become 2 lanes all the way down greatly increasing throughput and reducing mergers. The mergers are just wider and prettier now. I lost faith in urban planning after that.
@@Pangora2 Who proposes it knows nothing about urban planning and whom to solve. Really, good planning take long, if there isn’t some group continuously working, gathering date and a lot of simulations/ validation
A 100 lane road would be 1200 ft. wide or 4 football fields wide which is approximately 1/4 mile wide. This is assuming 100 lanes is combined between both directions of traffic if it’s 100 on each side you would double these numbers
There is also always a point where you have to transition from those 100 lanes back to fewer lanes, and that is where the traffic jam will start. You can build a 100 lame high way between cities, but inside of the city that would have to become smaller. (Unless you live in the US, then you just keep the 100 lanes and call it a flourishing down town) and when it becomes smaller you get a bottleneck.
You can mitigate some of the problem by "stacking" tunnels, surface streets, highways, and rail lines on top of each other like they do in a lot of places where space is limited, like in parts of Europe and Asia, but some of their solutions don't really apply in other areas because a lot of stuff is just too spread out in North America. Another part of the problem is there's so much bullshit corruption and grift and lawfare/ownership nonsense going on here that it simply can't get better without significant changes and pains. My city for example, there's a core freight rail line that feeds most of my province from the US, it runs at surface level right through the middle of the city, and cuts across several arterial roads. This rail line is a core part of half the country's economy, any significant downtime on that line would collapse Canada in a couple weeks kind of important, and it's privately owned the entire way through. It's taken the better part of 60 years and several hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on planning and meetings and hearings and bullshit between 3 layers of government and the company that owns the rail line to finally start building an underpass 5 years ago, that is still isn't done yet.
@@superhobo666 The issue they're talking about wouldn't be solved by "stacking" though, cuz they're talking about when you're reducing the number of lanes. That would still happen when you're going from surface level highway to tunnel expressway, or otherwise trying to divert the flow of traffic to the alternate route.
@@superhobo666 I think the rail line is older than city sprawl and I think it’s the city should building these underpasses. Also if I was the Ceo of this rail company, I would make impossible to have streets crossing my rail line.
Adding 100 lanes has a lot of scary reasons to not do it and a funny reason to not do it. The point of the road is to go from your house to the store. If you replace both your house and the store with a giant freaking road then where are you even going. If you make an enormous pavement desert you've turned your county into Mars.
Why don't we build up then? It's why we have sky scrapers instead of amazon warehouses for office space and apartments. Put 5 lanes down and then put another 5 above it and another 5 above that and just say every freeway gets the 3rd exit. It shouldn't be terribly far to just get off at an exit and drive back like 10 minutes and if people are scared they will just take up the side streets. Problem solved lol
@deekamikaze if Amazon is why malls died, yet people are STILL driving... to go to the stores..., that could be in a MALL..., WHAT IS THE PROBLEM HERE???🤨 Bring back the malls and put MORE of them in the center of large communities, so everyone isn't driving across town for a store that's only got 1 location!🙄
All traffic comes from stopping. Traffic lights, merging, or accidents. That’s it. More lanes fixes merging, it cannot fix accidents or traffic lights. It also doesn’t fully fix merging because people will always want to switch lanes (to exit or move to the faster lane), but it does help with that. Adding more lanes that just merge later are 100% pointless and add more traffic
Once cars per road area exceeds a certain amount, people will slow because they don't want to go 70mph 10 feet behind the person in front of them. More lanes means more road area, so higher capacity
@@mikeymullins5305 Don't strawman, he didn't say 'never stop'. By pointing out all traffic is stopping, you can properly determine the cause and address it.
alternative 1: motorbike alternative 2: cycle, skate, etc alternative 3: rob a police car/ambulance and make noise alternative 4: D e s t r o y h u m a n i t y alternative 5: walk
@Windowsfan100 1: public transport brings you from a place you are not at to a place you don't want to be 2: Public transport is so unhygienic and crowded that most people rather sit in a traffic jam. Also you can't regulate temperature in public transport. 3: it's incredibly expensive and too unprofitable for the private sector to do something with it, which leaves the government to do it, which means it will suck considering the government can't do anything right. (If you disagree please name something the government didn't screw up in the last 30 years)
@asronome Most people have a parking spot close to their home while bus stops or metro stations are usually further away. The largest reason people drive is to go to their work, and it turns out most offices and factories have their own parking spots for employees. For groceries, cars are better because you can load your car at the store. The only reason for public transport is if you live in NYC or Tokyo or something, But my other 2 arguments still stand anyway.
A proposal simply install a train Station at a convenient location to significantly cut down on the commuters Oh, wait, this nation's too cheap for that.
It's not too cheap. It's actually too expensive. The government will spend $5000 on a rubber eraser. It will cost way too much, take way too long to build, and cost too much to maintain, so it will get filthy and dangerous within a year or two.
A better proposal would be reduce the cost of living so that people don't have to work 40+ hours a week to survive. Technology has exponentially increased output as to where work isn't as necessary as it was several hundred years ago. But the billionaire class will never allow that to happen.
It wont reduce traffic though... You have to understand that Pubic transportation as well as building highways are just ways to increase people's mobility which is a good thing. But they are not effective tools for reducing traffic, as if some people choose to use the train instead of the highway, other people from further out will use the highway who formerly did not.
They know, but it's a quick "fix" that wins votes, employs people to build and maintain the road, and increases GDP. They don't care that it won't solve the problem, it's a convenient way to buy votes and thanks to induced demand, you can repeat the process every election.
It's not just about adding lanes, it's about what happens at the end; like traffic lights or round abouts, that cause the traffic to slow or come to a stop
there's a term for this... I can't remember. Basically when someone slows down or causes a vehicle to slow down, all the vehicles behind are forced to do so and traffic start accumulates at the area which causes traffic jam... and the most annoying part is that most of the time you can't see the causes. The road in front is clear but everyone just decided to slow down bcs previously the passerby did the same thing.
One thing you forgot. In this scenario you gave, the alternate route and traveling later are now more efficient again when you add another lane. Yes, the highway might stay as busy, but it adds capacity of traffic so the other routes are quicker.
@@robertagren9360 now imagine if there were more smaller McDonald's spread out across cities. So close in fact that it is more convenient to walk to them. Now that everyone is walking you can make the streets smaller because people don't take up as much space so you can make more houses and businesses in place of the street and parking space. Now you also commute to work by walking. Maybe even build a school, clinic and smaller grocery shop in the freed space. Everything just a 15 minute walk away.
@@shApYT The reason behind the roads was a business scheme to profit on making more roads they constructed work. Centralize cars in the center and grocery in the outskirt was meant to reduce distance from factory to grocery. People were never considered existing.
Plan your trip better… start working your way over earlier. But people don’t want to do this… which is a big part of the reason we have traffic in the first place.
@@bobinthewest8559 Is this a joke? If most people leave early, we just get bottleneck early. So its a rat race people leaving early. The cycle repeats
@@GippyHappyhe isn’t wrong though. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen someone dart across the lanes one hundred or less feet from their turn, I could buy Amazon.
@@Checkpoint_King I won't deny people are bad drivers, but the solution "Just drive better then having 100 lanes wouldn't be a bad idea" is like saying "Just don't do murder and then we won't need to lock our doors at night" like yeah wow I wonder why no one ever thought of that before. Also there's like 10,000 other reasons why having that many lanes sucks, as outlined in this very video, that aren't even related to driving ability. So no I still think he's definitely wrong. I don't actually care either way I was just making a joke.
This is part of a video that goes way deeper into why traffic exists over on our main channel if you find this interesting!
Can't click on it
Put the video/link above the short title so we can click on it
I think the downsides to the 100 lane highway you mention are acceptable. Those problems already exist. In the 1900s, a 14-lane highway would have probably been seen as an excessive solution. Today, that capacity is normal. Why can't a 30 lane+ capacity highway be normalized? It's a matter of accessible resources and efficient engineering. Both of which in theory are in near infinite supply. 2 layers 3?
I can't click on the link
As a lifelong 2nd generation trucker i can tell you what is wrong with traffic and what can be done to fix it.the largest issue i see is thru traffic should be on left lanes,speed limits should be the same for trucks and cars, and people need to leave a reasonable amount space to use brakes as little as possible to prevent a chain reaction of stop and go traffic. citations need to be givin to people driving recklessly or impeding the flow of traffic not for speeding a few miles above the posted alone. Local traffic should stay out of thru traffic lanes so they dont slow everyone down trying to get their exit and trying to get to the fast lane/thru traffic lane and 3 or 4 lanes is enough to to get traffic working smoothly with these rules its not always about how many lanes you got its about how theyre used
That chicken's never getting to the other side again.
😂😂
Yea safe to say it would be well done by lane 30 or so
😂
you've clearly never played crossy road
😂😂😅😅
“SHII MY EXIT”
Crosses over 78 lanes of traffic
😂😂😂😂😂😂
I turn now, good luck everybody else!
😂😂😂
Asian drivers in California...
This thought experiment played out in my head in less time than it took to read the title
100 lane super highway is the final American Boss Fight
Have you seen those 20 lane highways in china? They got traffic jams too, lol
I honestly kinda wanna see it
@@marcokrueger3399 The longest traffic jam actually happened in China. Guess everyone can conveniently forget that just to hate on USA.
@@marcokrueger3399yeah, where it bottles necks back down two three lanes.
@@danny_hamptonnothing bottles neck
the american determination to never take a train is truly impressive
I'm jealous of the crime free utopia you live in
The country is the size of Europe and most of it is wilderness outside of major cities
One would swear “train” is a unit in the metric system
Trains are shit in the US. From my home I can drive to a well-known city in maybe an hour and a half depending on traffic. To take the train, which stops a 5 minute walk from my house, to that same well-known city, would take me 3 to 5 hours and be prohibitively expensive compared to driving. Trains are not as optimized in the US compared to other places.
A vast majority of our rails are freight, there are hardly public trains widely available across the country.
Imagine having to cross 49 lanes to exit. You'd need to start working your way over miles in advance, lol.
Imagine the exit you need is on the left after just getting on
but faster if you are still not exiting
@@jap_m maybe it could be good for really high traffic interstate high-speed highways but that's about it and by that I mean an extremely high traffic highway between California and New York
Or you could do the ultimate Jersey slide
@@bradleyskbthat’s not possible
99% of civil engineers quit 1 lane before permanently solving traffic
Tell me you have a gambling problem without telling me you have a gambling problem 😂
The Japanese seem to have solved congestion by investing in bullet trains that are frequent AND punctual while arresting car drivers that fail to protect cyclists. Singapore by awesome public transport and virtually banning private car ownership. The Dutch by introducing one way roads for cars, investing in their fully integrated public transport network, protected bike lanes and bike parking fit for their queen (who does use it) and sidewalks that continued across T junctions to make it clear the pedestrians do not have to yield. The Scandinavians clear snow off footpaths and cycle lanes before roads which allows their little children to cycle to school AND saves a lot of money (a sprained wrist or broken hip lowers GDP more than a broken light).
And that one lane is a bus lane or tram line.
@@robertparkinson2102 Japan has horrible traffic in many areas. I was in Matsumoto in October and horrified how a city of 200000 or so people could have such bad traffic, even with busses and trains. It had to do with all of the stoplights in the city and the farmers and tourists packing the city.
@@linuxman7777 can you show us proof?
Just one more lane bro
LMAO
@@PaulAthanasiou I swear bro
@@evolution__snow6784add another lane so the comment section doesn’t move to slow
Trust me bro
Just one more lane bro, I swear bro. Just one more lane. Just one more lane bro and we're gonna fix traffic. I swear.
Considering that there's people on the interstate who will jacknife through multiple lanes of traffic and or ride the shoulder to avoid the jam... 😅
GPS: "In 2 miles, use the right 15 lanes to exit"
Me: "Shit! I need to get over 30 lanes."
Uber GPS: in 100 feet get into the right 3 lanes
You now need to get over 35 lanes good luck
🤣
Exactly, that’s why it would also be more dangerous
😂😂😂😂😂
Mannn this made me laugh way too hard 😂😂😂
“How much blinker I need to cross 99 lanes of traffic? Oh, my exit. I turn now, good luck everybody else”
Your car now looks like a Christmas lights.
Zero if you have a BMW
Family guy 😂
I read that wrong, thought u meant "How much blinker fluid would i need to cross a 99 lanes of traffic" 😂😂😂
You're gonna need about eighteen gallons of blinker fluid to cross the road
Crossy road lore finally dropped
What a dark future lore
HAHAHAH
the final boss
You know what would really free up traffic? Sending all the migrants back and getting rid of their ability to get drivers licenses.
The fundamental problem with traffic is that, if given the opportunity, everyone will drive to do what they need/want to do right now, and no realistic road network can accommodate everyone traveling at once.
100 lanes would be just as slow, the main slowdown happens in intersections, like the street that can only allow cars through 1 at a time. It'll get backed up just as much.
Ok here me out
What if it was just one massive road every where road every where
Like, most of the time, the traffic is up until a certain exit. Its not the highway that is over capacity, its the exit. Adding one more lane will do nothing
This is wrong. If given the opportunity, walkable mix use neighborhoods where everything is walking distance would pop up everywhere. And even if no public transportation or bike network is offered by the state - only car and sidewalks, many people will opt to live somewhere where they don't have to drive for everything.
The issue is that those kinds of places are illegal to build in North America due to zoning regulations and parking requirements and many more laws.
@@Basta11The problem is job location, affordability, and ease of moving your household.
Home ownership and matching good employees to good jobs will never allow this approach to work except in highly urban downtown areas.
>>>falling asleep at the wheel and drifting for 12 minutes until you hit the rumble strip
You know what would really free up traffic? Sending all the migrants back and getting rid of their ability to get drivers licenses.
Better naps 👍🏻
Well that would be a powernap
"You weren't the only one thinking that" is the ultimate problem lol
"Induced Demand" is just another name for economic growth 😅. NIMBYs hate that since they were already here first
@@stevecooper7883 How about we have some more rail infrastructure? It's a lot more energy efficient, a lot more space efficient, a lot less polluting, a lot safer, usually faster and usually cheaper (although you can spend some more to make it a lot faster).
@@stevecooper7883 Induced demand in this context is pretty straightforward and doesn’t deal with economic growth, however. Instead it deals with everything re: policy decisions on how we decide to move people. Aka why we it makes way more sense in pretty much every objective factor to build transit oriented infrastructure since the capacity is simply much larger with less land usage.
a problem to which the solution is more public transit funding and mixed-use development (10-minute cities)
Yes but how about we dont force people to use public transport? Having a healthy mix of both a massive road network and having inner cities be designed aroundthe 10 minute concept and large scale rail network connected yo important points in cities with bus networks attached to the rail station would keep people being free to move yet on their own choice. Just how the Netherlands does it.@@Davdaphone
imagine jaywalking this highway. you bout to unlock skins on crossy roads
Human Frogger 😂
Awful joke
@@M3Busssin nerd alert
@@goofyappleman incel femboy alert
Ultimate Frogger
The way that traffic randomly spawns
Yes
JuSt OnE mOrE lAnE, ArThUr!
Lol good reference
One more lane = tahiti
Mango farm
There's always a goddamn lane! *cough*
Whats up with your keyboard ?
The main road in Dubai has like 14 lanes. But there are still traffic jams during peak hours
You mean our Sheikh Zayed Road on a Monday morning at 9am ? 💀
Probably because the geniuses who designed that city decided to use trucks instead of installing proper pipelines to get rid of sewage
Dubai is everything I hate about the plastic veneer of the modern world, boiled down into a single city.
@cyancyborg1477 bulit upon slavery and exploitation. The embodiment of the Industrial revolution and it's consequences. The Antichrist. The anti everything good
Heard someone say is like given a 3 yr old sim city and 5 hours 😂@@cyancyborg1477
you're not stuck in traffic - you are traffic.
2100: Mankind has finally discovered the new solution to high traffic by reducing the need of cars after implementing public transit. This is a historic moment!
There's a simpler solution. If you add a lane, add 2 extra bike lines instead.
In India its a good solution, in other countries the number of bikes on roads are very less compared to cars @@RandomYT05_01
@@rep-vilePublic transportation is great in a low crime society. But not in a high crime society. Many of us Europeans are beginning to realize that.
@@Lerppunen What are you even talking about? What does "crime" have to do with public transit?
There is a 26 lane highway in Texas, literally the biggest in the whole world
It still gets traffic jams
GPS: "Right exit in 1 mile."
Driver: *Shifts through 50 lanes in a span of 10 seconds*
Having to maneuver that quickly suggests that they're traveling at 360mph. Must be a Tesla.
@@leedsmancteslas(/electric cars) accelerates fast, they dont go that fast
@@leedsmanc
More importantly, it’s suggests they’re a s**t driver. Must be a Tesla fan
@@leedsmanc ?
"Goodluck everybody else!"
Don't be giving the Texas DoT ideas. They would build a 100 lane highway if they weren't beholden to things like budgets and people's homes.
People have to be able to get to work. No one should be forced to be around smelly criminals on their way to work....
@@gomahklawm4446Just how many smelly criminals have you been around?
Oh please. You didn't complain when the DoT took a lot of people's land to give it to Texas Central to build the Dallas-Houston-Austin bullet train
@@St0ckwell One (1) bullet train is not equivalent to the devastation of landscape a 100 lane highway would produce. Be just a little bit for real, dude.
@@gomahklawm4446No one should be forced to be around smelly criminals with multitonne loud boxes on their way to work
1970: Just one more lane.
1980: Just one more lane.
1990: Just one more lane.
2000: Just one more lane.
2010: Just one more lane.
2020: Maybe we have a traffic problem.
%99 of city planners quit just before adding one more lane that will fix everything, trust me bro.
Just add one more lane
@@whathm9077and remove the non-car infrastructure, just gets in the way of car infrastructure, trust me bro, building everything around cars is the way to go
♻️
No we got people population problems
Plenty of cities don't have traffic problems.
Crosses 58 lanes and runs out of blinker fluid...
“…but this wouldn’t come without a cost.”
Yeah that’s an understatement
hello
That would cost like, at least 15.000 $
@@SoThisIsMyCatNoooo roads are 750000 dollars a mile
bruh has 3 IQ
@@megalo-rex hey
imagine having to go across 100 lanes to get to your exit 😭🙏
Oh man.. I didn't even think of that 😂
Plan ahead lol
Good luck everyone else!
You'd only have to cross 49 at most. Unless he's putting 100 lanes on each side which would be ludicrous.
Math is not your strong suit i assume.
My european mind cant comprehend this
Yeah, Americans use cars way too much. Their cities aren't good for walking and train connections around the country aren't good and you can literally fly cheaper than to go by train.
Their solution to traffic: "Just one more lane"
Take solace in the fact that Americans will see a castle and shart their jorts
In europe 1 lane actually solved the problems i had everywhere there were problems before , but texas population is increasing faster than they can adapt
@@aarettikoski1172 yeah, I'm from Washington and I agree that we need to come up with a different solution to traffic.
The US is A LOT more spread out than in Europe.
The solution to traffic jams is less car-dependent living culture and a greater variety of ways for people to travel. The channel Not Just Bikes brings this point across nicely.
Yes bikes are useful but motorcycles are better. If you simply just allow lane splitting and incentivize drivers to get on 2 wheels then you'll eliminate a ton of traffic. I don't remember the statistics exactly but it was something like if 6% of the population started riding motorcycles to work and were allowed to lane split then 40% of the traffic would disappear. It was some crazy low amount of bikes for a very noticeable amount of traffic difference.
@@deekamikazemotorcycles are loud expensive dangerous and in no way are a good mode of urban transportation
The unbelievable lenghts an American can go to avoid public transport is insane
dude, I am jealous on how beautiful and well-maintained a lot of subway systems in europe and japan are.
Driving in cities are a pain in the ahh , but you can get to anywhere you want in 20 minutes via the metro. Felt like I had the city at my fingertips
@@deekamikaze Motorcycles would also cause tons of issues like a insane amount of traffic injuries and deaths. Lane splitting is also very dangerous. Bikers are extremely vulnerable in urban areas.
Imagine if we had a multiple connected cars, driving on a fixed lane, that can go through any terrain or something
Driverless cars could do that, but people don't trust them.
Yeah, but these cars would also need maglev and vacuum tunnels to travel in.
(Edit: it's a joke 😭)
And imagine one of those cars having the ability to fit multiple dozens of people at once! Traffic would be abolished
#ILikeTrains 🚉
@@louisrobitaille5810he was making a joke about using subways and trains
But that would mean cars would have less utility and if the automotive industry slows down the oil industry slows down and the if the oil industry slows down well that means we dissappear into a vacuum cause the oil industry must always live on💯💯💯
There would still be traffic jams because the entry and exit point would still be attached to normal 2-lane roads. The bottleneck from such a ridiculously massive highway structure would be even worse than they are today.
Solution: just make EVERY SINGLE ROAD ON EARTH 100 lanes. Problem solved!
@@aronasmundurjonasson3175This sounds like my solution when I first played city skylines lmao
@@aronasmundurjonasson3175solution, alternative transport!
@@aronasmundurjonasson3175 an actual solution would be good public transport.. a bus will regularly hold 60 people ... and because almost everyone drives alone .. that translates directly to 50 less cars on the road per bus ... and if you make proper connections via bus then there is less reason to even have a car ..
Think of all the beat up altimas with paper plates crossing every lane to make their exit, those poor people on the road with them would never stand a chance
The other issue is traffic Shockwave. In other words, if one person panic slams on their brakes on a 5 lane highway, that can cause everyone else to slam on their breaks and it just keeps going.
With a couple of hundred lanes that won't happen. 😂
Like Final Destination!!
like an explosive traffic snake!
@@iamjimgrothUntil the reason they slam their brakes is because a semi flipped over and is blocking most of them horizontally.
Because everyone slows down when the see the flipped over semi.
Really, they do that for all accidents.
@@ZT1ST We just need so many lanes that the slowdown for a flipped semi doesn't effect the traffic overall. 🤣
100 lanes? Dude just created Ultimate Frogger!
Lmao the info-graphic of the high-way plowing through like 10 neighborhoods xD
Its like something out of a dystopian movie
Sadly it's not that far off from what happened in a lot of American cities in the mid 1900's.
This actually happened in the USA. Search up Robert Moses and you can see that he bulldozed minority communities to build highways.
you mean america to most cheap urban housing the past 50-70 years
@@hannanah8036 oh no, whatever will we do without projects! Smile, laugh, enjoy our time outside?
I hate people enjoying their lives, surround that neighborhood with crack dens immediately!
Not that dystopian. It's the exact playbook of mid-century USA - it's just straightforwardly real life.
Not a good thing, just pretty much reality.
That 50-lane highway in China that merges into 4 lanes.
That sounds,,,,,,, fucking ATROCIOUS
That is fake
It ain't 💀@@marcosgroxko8378
I heard people got stuck on traffic for days with no food and water
thats a checkpoint
Some modern GPS navigation apps will deliberately give you a route that's 2 or 3 minutes slower, and give similar penalities to a hundred other drivers, in order to prevent the main thoroughfares from getting backed up for 2 hours.
(edit: spelling)
Some time ago, waze caused a lot of traffic deadlocks so large that São Paulo breaked its congestion record by far and after some change in apps have never occurred again. It’s preferable create alternate routes, reduce drastically the number of exits and create some segregated local lane besides
@@victortaveira8271good
@@victortaveira8271explain
Conspiracy theorist...who is right.
Is it really 2 or 3 minutes slower if it's preventing you a 2 hour long delay?
I think it's prophetic that most drivers are too selfish to realize that the only way to reduce traffic long-term is by facilitating different modes like transit and cycling.
It juat depresses me. There's a UA-cam channel called Not Just Bikes that's all about good transportation, and he demonstrates how effective it can be by showing off transportation options in the Netherlands.
I would love to sell my car. It's expensive to maintain, and once you've spend enough time driving ~24,000 miles a year and seeing how many idiots operate on our roadways, it doesn't exactly make driving desirable anymore, either. I would love if America took the time to create a system where I could safely ride my bicycle anywhere I needed to go
@@itsmeikethey would rather add more lanes to the highway then add 1 bike lane😢
@@itsmeikeah yes Netherlands, a country the size of Manhattan
@@itsmeikehow exatcly are you going to get your bicycle up to 69 mp/h?
@@Phantom_7003oh they will add bike lane, but make it a suicide lane and get it to go through most inconvenient and risky places
No, there’d be 100 people going roughly the same speed next to each other, and the rest of us ticked off behind them
So? Just add one more lane and then you can overtake them.
@@andrewyang2449 stop
Oh fuck I hate that... This happens in Ontario with Trucks passing each other, all trucks are limited to 105km/h... but you get trucks that can do 106 and some doing 104... so they pass each other... slowly...
Someone would still be going 60 in the left lane
I'm the guy intentionally equalling speed in the line to fuck with you
Texas Traffic Engineers: **profusely taking notes**
Pffft, stacks yet another flyover on top of the previous 6.
Fixed it
And yet people will still find a way to camp in the left lane…
@@fgtsiroeht2562 Texas left lane is for 2 things, big rigs going 65 and F150s going 85
hold my traffic cone
Me: *driving on the carpool lane*
Copilot: that was our exit (49 lanes away)
There would be a carpool exit on the left-hand side. i.e. Williams Street off I-85 South Bound in Atlanta.
Good carpool lanes have separate exits.
@@edporter4208 Stahhp, you're ruining the car hater's echo chamber
The most iconic game since “Frogger”
@@6Sparx9 making a joke based on the video is now “car hating” lol
This looks like a chinese investment in Africa to me lol
This is why we need more trains
Someone finally said it
And public transport in general. One bus takes less space than cars with same amount of passengers, though still takes place on the road
We did but then we abandoned them or removed the other ones..
"I like trains!" - several characters at this point (name some for a ⭐️)
No, we need more lane
"This seems like the perfect place for a 100 lane highway!"- America to the natives
American infrastructure planners, seeing a low income neighborhood
You mean the natives who were all warring, raiding, kidnapping, killing, and stealing from each other for millennia before “America” existed
@@Voltorb1993me when I'm Robert Moses
“Wrong era in history, the highway boom was in the 1950s, the slow, gradual genocide of First Nation peoples happened over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. It would make more sense to write the quote as America to the Blacks” - 🤓
@@vschmerz Removal of lands from First Nations peoples also happened in the 1950s, it was a major influence behind the rise of the American Indian Movement of the 60s and 70s. One example would be the Tuscarora Reservation
*"WE DID IT! WE SOLVED TRAFFIC!"*
-Civil engineer gambler that just added one more lane
Yeah, cz making more roads benefits the contractors pal. The policians give those contracts to their mates who pay them for those favours. Win- win. Tragic loss for u, but hey, at least u r in a CAPITALIST country right?
Meanwhile, neglecting the perfectly good, already-existing alternate route that no one is taking.
You real?
@@its_me34567 Unfortunately. Way too many traffic engineers are completely unqualified for the job.
i finally get this tired joke everyone else was making 😅😅😅
The issue of traffic is almost entirely a driver-made problem. You can put as many lanes as you want but all it takes is one idiot to crash for six police cars to block way too many lanes thus slowing the 72 people behind them.
There's a giant layered highway junction like that near my house that everyone in my family has dubbed "The Spaghetti Bowl" because of how it looks. I would infinitely prefer having more options for public transportation in my city, but I do at least appreciate that one specific highway clusterfuck has a funny name.
Reno?
We also have a spaghetti bowl in my small texas town, American needs public transportation infrastructure 🤦♂️
Does everyone call their local disaster interchange “The Spaghetti Bowl?” Because I don’t live in any of the above mentioned cities, and everyone in my area calls it that too.
Damn, Albuquerque?
Northeast of Atlanta? Literally called Spaghetti Junction
Civil engineers really will do everything before even thinking about rails
Civil Engineers when they don't understand they can simply build upwards instead of out:
Road construction is more constant and repetitive.
That equals more kickbacks from the unions.
@@NarwahlGamingbro the unions are not the problem here maybe part ig but if u think unions are the biggest reason our infrastructure and transportation are fucked then you are a bit simple minded
@castanzofranzman2013 No. I have first-hand experience with unions and union workers.
There is definitely meddling.
@@NarwahlGaming I won’t discount your experiences but imo it’s cutting corners to save money or making appliances cheaply so the customer has to buy a new one sooner. Not to mention the fact that they just stopped doing inspections in parts of the country to save money and potential repair costs. Like ur probably right I just don’t think it’s the biggest problem in that area
My state fixed one of the biggest points of congestion just by changing an exit so that it went into its own lane instead of merging immediately, which gives people time to switch lanes ahead of some highway splits. Almost entirely cleared any congestion. And I’d rather have multiple paths to get into work because the worst problem is one route essentially shutting down due to accidents.
A trolly or train would be far better than a new lane as well, since they hold far more people in the same amount of space. The problem near where I live is that the regional train goes city to city with dirty local busses that people don't like to use that get caught in the same slow traffic. I'm really close to the train station (a mile as the crow flies, a mile and a half if I walk along the roads) but I'd have to cross 2 major roads that have no sidewalks that are so congested people are turning right on red constantly (two lanes, so someone goes right while others are turning left.)
How do most people use that train? Driving over and parking... and boy do the tow companies love yanking cars out of the apartment lots around there! There's nowhere near enough parking, but if they just put sidewalks in...
@@sofiadragon6520 roads give far better access to different places so it would be far more expensive to create the required number of trams or trains.
@@casematecardinalwasn't a problem for most of europe
@@CasterborousEurope is incredibly small
@@thel1tch857 and the us is incredibly rich
There is one fairly simple solution to high localized demand of traffic: collective transportation. But the US politicians seem to be allergic to it
It's because the American people have been effectively convinced that cars are the greatest mode of freedom, and that public transportation is restrictive and shitty.
And unfortunately, here in the States, they're right--our public transportation system is awful and horribly unreliable. Big cities like NYC have decent intracity subway systems, but that's it. Most Americans don't even know how amazing transportation systems can be in places like the Netherlands
I pray no government official ever sees this video
Like their room temperature IQ would understand it 😒
Or anyone from the road-building lobby.
U.S. "write that down, write that down."
Unfortunately China already found it
lol
In Katy, Texas, (West Houston) there's a section of I-10 with 17 lanes. It's the worst traffic in town. You can never build your way out of traffic congestion. Ever.
Holy hell. Imagine being in the far left lane and your exit’s coming
I end up having to take it pretty frequently, so I don’t really have to imagine. It’s a nightmare every time. You’d think the civil engineers around here would’ve learned a thing or two, but Houston’s freeways are still under continual construction. When you combine this with the fact that alternative methods of transportation are unviable (infrastructure for passenger rail, biking and foot travel are virtually nonexistent and beyond unreliable or sometimes even unsafe), it’s not a mystery why traffic never improves around here. In addition, Houston’s level of urban sprawl is unrivaled across the country. As the saying goes, Houston is an hour away from Houston. Our car-reliant transportation infrastructure only exacerbates this problem.
I mean you can,
But not by building more car infrastructure,
Because we need the efficient alternatives to be available.
The 401 in Ontario Canada goes up to 18 lanes at its widest & is often said to be THE busiest highway in North America 🤷🏻♂️
@@cpwl27those 17 lanes include the feeder roads and both directions of traffic. It’s really only 5-6 lanes not including the 1-2 lane toll road. This person is being dramatic. No roads are 17 lanes wide on one side
“Good luck everybody else” - Bad Driver in Family Guy
Asian driver, specifically.
@@Gameking40 this is the core most important part of the joke, just to remind everyone observing 👲
@@Gameking40FEMALE Asian driver.
@@accelerator1666 "I'll be as untouched as the turn signal inside of an Asian woman's car."
“I'm not addicted. I can quit any time.“
American architects and city planners literally will come up with this shit and then have the audacity to say that expanding public transport is “too expensive”
The video is wrong. Cars don't appear out of nowhere. Problem is adding lanes does not solve the underlying issue of adding more lanes on all roads, not just the highway: exit ramps are still bottlenecks
That is a function of your home big your suburban homes and land plots are. The moment you accept smaller homes like NY, public transport enters the conversation.
This has been long proven. 100 lanes are simply hypothetical so this is not an argument. Look into Europe and figure out public transportation. Europe has it's faults as well having gone the "car way" too long but we have stopped and pop up bike lanes and new public transportation, adding pedestrian zones in inner cities, park and ride spots and giving new life and value to towns. Cities begin to be more livable, air is cleaner and people have lower stress levels. I think we are on the right path 🇪🇺
@@martingerlitz1162 you forgot to add that Europe is no longer the factory of the world. There is very little regimented movement of people that comes with 9-5 or three shift work patterns.(Which is why you need multi lane roads in the first place. Large volumes of entries and exits.)
Because it is
Partial Fix: find out where the most people are traveling to and from, then connect those with mass transit (not a bus).
the problem is what if people want to be able to go somewhere else from their destination if you don't fully connect lots of places
This isn't the partial fix.
This is the *main solution* for every developed nation except the US.
@@Abstract_zx How most European countries fix that is by having train stations for moving between cities and then local buses, trams and metro’s to get exactly where you need to be
Permanent fix: develop mass public transit so roads become obsolete
@@appelmoes3433 Yeah but the problem is most European countries are smaller than individual US states, with very different population distribution due to the land available and the amount of time they've been there. Hell, most European countries are smaller than my province(Ontario, Canada)
They've had thousands of years of infrastructure to keep rebuilding over top of, with limited space to spread out and grow.
We're over here on a much much larger, still fresh continent we started from scratch less than 500 years ago with technology constantly changing before we can even plan for it. give us a break.
If only there was like a vehicle that traveled on rails, ran on electricity and carried a large number of people to many different places along its route.
Train TriMet
Already exists but it's got an equal number of downsides
@@PillboxingAmerican spotted
@kroneexe not even close
@@Pillboxing Kyrgyz spotted.
Houston traffic is heavy despite all the lanes. Idk why they keep building more instead of adding atleast a few train stations 😢
This research was conducted in the netherlands in the 1960s. So in Europe we deliberately try to avoid this.
I feel like a lot of big cities in America dug themselves into a hole before they realized it wouldn’t make anything better and now they’re kind SOL.
@@tonybrown5425 they aren't Sol, they're just not even trying to fix it. Got "better" things to spend the money on, like new development and prosecuting homeless people.
@azraellie_ so there are other advantages for adding an extra lane. The streets are less congested. Before all those other people who avoided the lane would use the streets but now go on the freeway. Roadways are more likly to wear and less capable of handling slow moving or stalled traffic. Thus they would be damaged quicker.
In Europe, you're able to ignore it. As well as having a better public Transportation system because Europe is substantially smaller than the United States. Just driving across Texas is like driving from Normandy to Warsaw.
in Germany we really don’t
Also, even though that super-road is now wide enough, all the connecting roads are not. So now there is a traffic jam at all entrances and exits. You widen up those, and now there is a traffic jam at the next junction. Repeat that, all the way to your driveway.
And you've expended so much land that now your destinations need to be further apart because the land they would have been on is asphalt. Which means you need more road to get to more distant destinations.
imagine expanding your driveway to 5 lanes
@@shieldgenerator7 You think it is a joke? A family of 5 needs 5 cars, if you don’t want to work as a taxi driver for your high school kids… And that needs a big driveway.
what a clown,@@juzoli. anything over 2 cars for a family of 5 is overkill
@@juzolibut hey, you are from usa, so it all makes sense
It's almost like we'll do anything other than develop public transit
Public transit even in places where "it's the best" is still more expensive and much slower than owning a car.
@@Starioshka No, You are very wrong. Cities built around public transit are the only places where you don't have this problem. They are hundreds time cheaper and easier to maintain. It's a statistical fact not an opinion.
What you are describing is cities that are built around cars trying to implement public transit. Which makes the initial cost much higher than it needs to be.
@@pixeltochi4961 I think you meant "soviet planned cities". Those are the only ones with good access to everything on foot, car and good public transport.
@pixeltochi4961 Japan, Britain, France, Switzerland, New York, China… Do I need to name more or show you why your argument falls flat while also talking about carbon emissions?
In Germany you can pay 49€ per month to use unlimited trams, buses, subway and regional trains. If I take a 4h trip once a month it's already cheaper than driving.
Also, what do you take into account for trip cost? Just fuel or also cost of maintenance, insurance, ownership, taxes?
And even if some trips might be slower than driving, you can do whatever during that time, read, work, walk around...
Solution: diversify trsnsportation. Have trains, public buses, taxis, own cars, and motorcycles. Combining all would lessen traffic.
Texas really needs public transportation
ong
Straight up
Republicans are in the pocket of big oil and car and Democrats don't win in Texas
"Sounds like communism to me!"
-Texan probably
Oh wait, no -- this one is better:
"I'll give you my truck when you pry it from my cold dead hands!"
-Texan probably
@@Galimeer5"Try and take it"
"Roads?... where we're going we don't need roads"
-Doc Brown
Thats what Taylor Swift says
The only viable long term solution
The dimension of pure CHAOS!
Brilliant. Instead of adding more lanes, lets use time travel to distribute the traffic load evenly across time.
damn. underrated.
If only we have a way to transport a lot of people from one place to another that uses only a single lane...
Fuck that I want a huge lifted truck that I use to drive 30 miles for bread and eggs
Trains and subways are fine, they do increase mobility, and allow more people to access the city, but as a traffic reduction tool, they really don't achieve that. Because the traffic usually comes from people who live outside of where the line is, So many cities in Asia have excellent metros, and still have horrible traffic.
@@linuxman7777 not if you stop building stupid "traffic reduction" freeways. Only provide fast cheap public transport, and leave the existing roads to get more congestion
@@linuxman7777They work if America wouldn't have been destroyed and rebuilt by car lobbyists. They used to have fantastic tram and bus systems, and the whole country was built by trains back in the day. People wouldn't have to go into the city every day if zoning laws didn't prohibit commercial buildings (and thus job opportunities) to be built in suburban neighborhoods. Instead everyone has to take the crappy 6 lane highway to get to their job everyday. America has the funds to build both roads and public transport opportunities that are way more efficient and higher quality than india's too, if proper leaders would be in charge for once then they could be leaps ahead of where it is now.
Bus lanes, my country has them and it's an efficient mode of transport, and they pump out hundreds of buses daily
Better public transportation would have been the answer but America isn't interested in investing in that 😮
100 lanes would mean no traffic jams?
China called, they want you to hold their beer
Imagine just building a train...
imagine cities such as Filthadelphia, NYC managing to keep the hobos, panhandlers, junkies and drug dealers off the trains,platforms and stations. yea I aint taking SEPTA when I can get bumrushed by pan handlers, hobos outside 7-Eleven, Wawa
@@harveylong5878 you ok?
When they make a train which can pick me up on my schedule and drop me off exactly where i need to be i will agree with you.
Seeing as such a thing is impossible looks like i wont ever agree with you.
@@GromDarkwater you ever heard of Switzerland?
@@GromDarkwateror better yet, walking a short distance to and from your train station??
Civil engineers be like: "Bro just one more lane I swear I can fix traffic bro just one more lane"
That's why car based city is dumb, the money that lost in the traffic jam is ridiculous.
No you see according to the geniuses in the replies we can’t do anything other than a car based society because we should think about the 150 people in bumfuck nowhere who might not even use it, so everyone in Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso must suffer unto them.
@@harukiri2738 “see, cars are the foundation of America. When we beat the British at Yorktown, we were using ford f150-“
I've seen Americans are proud of that but it's ridiculous. It seems like an NPC's life to spend hours in the car and in traffic jams.
walkability ftw
@@harukiri2738Ever wondered why cities are car based, despite the traffic jams and other downsides?
Adding another lane to solve traffic is like loosening your belt to solve obesity
It doesn't matter How big Road is. There is Always an Idiot at the top of the road who cause Traffic jam for no reason.
Traffic jams are a phenomenon, a consequence of safe acceleration after a series of cars have to use their breaks for more than a fraction of a second. I guarantee you you also don't have the reaction time necessary to be a part of the non-traffic causing space on the road.
Keep thinking that instead of comprehending that its not the case and you are the "traffic" yourself aswell.
just add another lane bro
People like to tailgate and hit their brakes every 5 seconds instead of letting off the gas and coasting, thus causing the car behind to brake and so on and so forth.
@@NASCAR_JunkYup, I see this shit all the time. People know how to operate a vehicle but they don’t know how to drive if you know what I mean.
Easy, just make a 8 billion lane highway
I have a way better idea: promote remote jobs. You don't have to go to the office and back, it will significantly reduce the pollution.
The virus actually helped us introduce online tools for work.
Some professions cant do that, but if we move all IT departments back to the home it will significantly reduce traffic, pollution, energy consumption and stress
Bbbuuut we can't have that. Think of the poor bosses, who can no longer scream at their employees or force them into overtime.
#Sarcasm
@@thomaspriewasser6660 more like think of the restaurants that no longer exist, think of the clothing places out of business, the construction firms out of business, banks no longer moving money, positions eliminated such as building security and maintenance, and on and on. Entire segments of the economy will be wiped out just so people can be unproductive in their pajamas.
Ah yes because good public transport and infrastructure is never a solution in America
Or live where you work -
@@Freyia935 public transport is for the EU, not America. EU countries are small, and buses/bikes are excellent there.
In the US a car is a necessity, not a luxury.
He did it. He added another lane for traffic
Dont forget that now instead of walking to the grocery store a few blocks away, you suddenly need to cross a 100 lane highway, necessitating a car.
Frogger irl I see
Yeah i guess we europeans were lucky to just use the same timeless style of using your legs to get around.
Just get a car then.
@@Jebu911 Nah bro u r just broke.
@@randomchad915lol they live in towns built 100s of years before a car .
Back when a Town had like 5 horses
Short answer is no. Imagine the road delay just making those extra lanes.
we should try actually designing cities well and implementing public transport for once
It’s too late. It’s over.
agreed
We could bulid more sidewalks and solve this obesity crisis
New York did that look how it turn out
@catacocamping874 New York is notorious corrupt
One thing I’ve noticed about this scenario is that it never takes into account why the traffic backs up. It’s often the result of bottle necking at interchanges or when lanes are otherwise lost. Traffic behaves as a fluid in a pipe. Narrow the pipeline and you increase the pressure.
Specifically a supersonic fluid
Traffic is also caused by extensive lane switching with cumulative effects, phantom effects from bad drivers, as well as with these simulations the effect that having a large network like this has. It encourages more spread out infrastructure that requires driving to get around which encourages more spread out infrastructure and so on.
It's not just when the lanes turn into less lanes
A well designed interchange helps reduce traffic for sure.
Next to my work the roads are badly designed for where people want to go. You end up with about 8 lanes worth of car (different roads all leading to the same place) trying to merge into an highway entrance/exit that leads to another highway.
Needless to say, during rush hour you can easily get stuck for half an hour moving less than half a mile.
@@conorknoxy never said it’s just, but I will say it’s a major enough proportion that addressing it alone will solve most of the problem.
@@falsehero2001 well then you are in opposition to traffic flow experts and the city traffic simulations. And also the wealth of real life examples.
Adding another lane wont fix it, because the road always bottlenecks back into 1 or 2 lanes as it approaches its destination.
In my city they announced they'd widen a road, and I was excited since I thought the frequent 2-to-1 mergers on the 2 mile strip of road would then become 2 lanes all the way down greatly increasing throughput and reducing mergers.
The mergers are just wider and prettier now. I lost faith in urban planning after that.
@@Pangora2 Who proposes it knows nothing about urban planning and whom to solve. Really, good planning take long, if there isn’t some group continuously working, gathering date and a lot of simulations/ validation
A 100 lane road would be 1200 ft. wide or 4 football fields wide which is approximately 1/4 mile wide. This is assuming 100 lanes is combined between both directions of traffic if it’s 100 on each side you would double these numbers
Imagine being on the left lane and forgetting the next exit is YOUR exit.
Here in the Philippines, the drivers can still create heavy traffic even if you add 100 lanes.
In the Philippines, they'll also make their own lanes by riding on the lines instead of between them.
There is also always a point where you have to transition from those 100 lanes back to fewer lanes, and that is where the traffic jam will start.
You can build a 100 lame high way between cities, but inside of the city that would have to become smaller. (Unless you live in the US, then you just keep the 100 lanes and call it a flourishing down town) and when it becomes smaller you get a bottleneck.
You can mitigate some of the problem by "stacking" tunnels, surface streets, highways, and rail lines on top of each other like they do in a lot of places where space is limited, like in parts of Europe and Asia, but some of their solutions don't really apply in other areas because a lot of stuff is just too spread out in North America.
Another part of the problem is there's so much bullshit corruption and grift and lawfare/ownership nonsense going on here that it simply can't get better without significant changes and pains.
My city for example, there's a core freight rail line that feeds most of my province from the US, it runs at surface level right through the middle of the city, and cuts across several arterial roads. This rail line is a core part of half the country's economy, any significant downtime on that line would collapse Canada in a couple weeks kind of important, and it's privately owned the entire way through.
It's taken the better part of 60 years and several hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on planning and meetings and hearings and bullshit between 3 layers of government and the company that owns the rail line to finally start building an underpass 5 years ago, that is still isn't done yet.
@@superhobo666 The issue they're talking about wouldn't be solved by "stacking" though, cuz they're talking about when you're reducing the number of lanes. That would still happen when you're going from surface level highway to tunnel expressway, or otherwise trying to divert the flow of traffic to the alternate route.
I think there a 20 lane road that goes to 4 lanes in china
@@superhobo666 I think the rail line is older than city sprawl and I think it’s the city should building these underpasses. Also if I was the Ceo of this rail company, I would make impossible to have streets crossing my rail line.
I LOVE VELICHE BASED INFRASTRUCTURE I LOVE DRIVING 40 MINUTES TO STORE TO GET SOME CHIPS
That family guy skit with the Asian lady driving switching lanes seems a lot more scarier now
Bro I think of that scene every time I see a multilane road like that 🤣🤣
good luck everybody else!
Adding 100 lanes has a lot of scary reasons to not do it and a funny reason to not do it.
The point of the road is to go from your house to the store.
If you replace both your house and the store with a giant freaking road then where are you even going.
If you make an enormous pavement desert you've turned your county into Mars.
Why don't we build up then? It's why we have sky scrapers instead of amazon warehouses for office space and apartments. Put 5 lanes down and then put another 5 above it and another 5 above that and just say every freeway gets the 3rd exit. It shouldn't be terribly far to just get off at an exit and drive back like 10 minutes and if people are scared they will just take up the side streets. Problem solved lol
@@deekamikazeMoney
@deekamikaze if Amazon is why malls died, yet people are STILL driving... to go to the stores..., that could be in a MALL..., WHAT IS THE PROBLEM HERE???🤨
Bring back the malls and put MORE of them in the center of large communities, so everyone isn't driving across town for a store that's only got 1 location!🙄
Even with 100 lanes there would be that one German guy who always drives on the far left 😂
THIS xD
lol like Nazism 😄
@@PANZERFAUST90 multi-layered joke 😂
@@6Sparx9 hehehehe ✋😂
Don’t get it
This is why Europe and the rest of the world also has public transportation
All traffic comes from stopping. Traffic lights, merging, or accidents. That’s it. More lanes fixes merging, it cannot fix accidents or traffic lights. It also doesn’t fully fix merging because people will always want to switch lanes (to exit or move to the faster lane), but it does help with that. Adding more lanes that just merge later are 100% pointless and add more traffic
Once cars per road area exceeds a certain amount, people will slow because they don't want to go 70mph 10 feet behind the person in front of them. More lanes means more road area, so higher capacity
You're right. People should never stop. There's no reason for anyone to ever stop.
@@mikeymullins5305 right, so there will always be traffic numb nuts
@@mikeymullins5305 Don't strawman, he didn't say 'never stop'. By pointing out all traffic is stopping, you can properly determine the cause and address it.
.
You merging past all the oncoming traffic lanes too, huh
Good luck bro lol
theres only 50 lanes going in one direction
@@exeexecutor noted
Everyone would be using the right 4ish lanes
By the time you merge to the inner most lane, you have already missed your exit.
alternative 1: motorbike
alternative 2: cycle, skate, etc
alternative 3: rob a police car/ambulance and make noise
alternative 4: D e s t r o y h u m a n i t y
alternative 5: walk
Alternative 6: build better public transport
@Windowsfan100 1: public transport brings you from a place you are not at to a place you don't want to be
2: Public transport is so unhygienic and crowded that most people rather sit in a traffic jam. Also you can't regulate temperature in public transport.
3: it's incredibly expensive and too unprofitable for the private sector to do something with it, which leaves the government to do it, which means it will suck considering the government can't do anything right. (If you disagree please name something the government didn't screw up in the last 30 years)
@@heinrichvonschnitzel8600 Guess what, when you go by car the only destination is a parking lot. You still don't get directly to your destination
@asronome Most people have a parking spot close to their home while bus stops or metro stations are usually further away. The largest reason people drive is to go to their work, and it turns out most offices and factories have their own parking spots for employees. For groceries, cars are better because you can load your car at the store. The only reason for public transport is if you live in NYC or Tokyo or something, But my other 2 arguments still stand anyway.
@@heinrichvonschnitzel8600peak carbrain
Knowing Texas, they'll make it a toll road! 🤣
A proposal simply install a train Station at a convenient location to significantly cut down on the commuters Oh, wait, this nation's too cheap for that.
It's not too cheap. It's actually too expensive. The government will spend $5000 on a rubber eraser. It will cost way too much, take way too long to build, and cost too much to maintain, so it will get filthy and dangerous within a year or two.
A better proposal would be reduce the cost of living so that people don't have to work 40+ hours a week to survive. Technology has exponentially increased output as to where work isn't as necessary as it was several hundred years ago. But the billionaire class will never allow that to happen.
@@scotturbanski740 shorter work days won't fix traffic
I don't think big oil will be happy ☹️
It wont reduce traffic though... You have to understand that Pubic transportation as well as building highways are just ways to increase people's mobility which is a good thing. But they are not effective tools for reducing traffic, as if some people choose to use the train instead of the highway, other people from further out will use the highway who formerly did not.
It sometimes feels like induced demand is a concept completely unknown to transport planners.
Unknown to the politicians who decide what gets built.
it's not, but it can be ignored with a bit of cash.
If only bulk transit options existed that took up less space.
They know, but it's a quick "fix" that wins votes, employs people to build and maintain the road, and increases GDP. They don't care that it won't solve the problem, it's a convenient way to buy votes and thanks to induced demand, you can repeat the process every election.
if by "induced demand" you mean more people traveling to more places - i.e. a good thing.
It's not just about adding lanes, it's about what happens at the end; like traffic lights or round abouts, that cause the traffic to slow or come to a stop
I’m with you, we should get rid of those
there's a term for this... I can't remember. Basically when someone slows down or causes a vehicle to slow down, all the vehicles behind are forced to do so and traffic start accumulates at the area which causes traffic jam... and the most annoying part is that most of the time you can't see the causes. The road in front is clear but everyone just decided to slow down bcs previously the passerby did the same thing.
@@kupangrebus3177i think it's called phantom traffic?
Car crashes would probably do the same but worse.
Shh, your post is too intelligent for trainbrains and bikebrains
One thing you forgot. In this scenario you gave, the alternate route and traveling later are now more efficient again when you add another lane. Yes, the highway might stay as busy, but it adds capacity of traffic so the other routes are quicker.
"Why the chicken cross the road"
"I dont think it would get to the other side"
We always forget about the bottleneck that is the destination
If people didn't stop for no reason their would be minimal bottlenecks
Everyone going to McDonald's at the same time
@@robertagren9360 now imagine if there were more smaller McDonald's spread out across cities. So close in fact that it is more convenient to walk to them. Now that everyone is walking you can make the streets smaller because people don't take up as much space so you can make more houses and businesses in place of the street and parking space. Now you also commute to work by walking. Maybe even build a school, clinic and smaller grocery shop in the freed space. Everything just a 15 minute walk away.
@@shApYT
The reason behind the roads was a business scheme to profit on making more roads they constructed work. Centralize cars in the center and grocery in the outskirt was meant to reduce distance from factory to grocery. People were never considered existing.
Imagine trying to get to your exit when you’re in lane 36
Plan your trip better… start working your way over earlier.
But people don’t want to do this… which is a big part of the reason we have traffic in the first place.
@@bobinthewest8559 that’s dumb
@@bobinthewest8559 Is this a joke? If most people leave early, we just get bottleneck early. So its a rat race people leaving early. The cycle repeats
@@GippyHappyhe isn’t wrong though. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen someone dart across the lanes one hundred or less feet from their turn, I could buy Amazon.
@@Checkpoint_King I won't deny people are bad drivers, but the solution "Just drive better then having 100 lanes wouldn't be a bad idea" is like saying "Just don't do murder and then we won't need to lock our doors at night" like yeah wow I wonder why no one ever thought of that before. Also there's like 10,000 other reasons why having that many lanes sucks, as outlined in this very video, that aren't even related to driving ability. So no I still think he's definitely wrong.
I don't actually care either way I was just making a joke.
To go from Lane no. 1 to Lane no. 100, you have to pay 3 Tolls 😂😂