this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Whoopsie! Sydney's road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway. (aus.social)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
49 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Whoopsie! Sydney's road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.

For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney's Central Business District.

It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it's turned into a giant car park:

"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.

"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.

"Those travel delays have now blown out."

So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?

'Dude! Just one more lane!'

From the article:

"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.

"That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/how-planners-got-rozelle-traffic-modelling-horribly-wrong-20231129-p5ensa.html

#roads #traffic #cars @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #motorways #fuckcars

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[–] WaxedWookie 55 points 10 months ago (2 children)

While the money sold have been spent on public transport, it's a bit fucking premature to put this down to induced demand - the tangled mess has been operating for what - like 3 business days? People are getting confused and doing silly bullshit. It's a problem, but it's not induced demand.

Induced demand is a thing, and it'll almost certainly be relevant here - there's no need to lie about it - give it a minute to settle first. This is the benefit of being correct - there's no need to be dishonest.

[–] krewjew 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I came here to point this out and love the way you stated it. Confusion, hesitation and unnecessary lane changes are what create traffic. There has never been a major highway development in history that didn’t cause at least some short term issues. We should give city planners a bit more credit than that

[–] grue 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

No, volume of cars is what creates traffic.

Edit: you'd think that in a fuck cars community, of all places, we'd all be able to agree on this basic principle. We're apparently infested with six idiot trolls who think cars don't cause traffic and that induced demand isn't real.

[–] krewjew 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The volume of cars is a scale factor that determines the impact of traffic causing behaviors and conditions for free flowing highways (no traffic lights, stop signs, etc.). Following too closely and improper lane changing are two specific behaviors that actually create slow downs. There are numerous models that simulate this.

[–] grue 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes, yes, I'm well aware of how it works (I'm a former traffic engineer IRL). Although it's true the behaviors trigger the slowdowns, it's the traffic volume that creates the conditions where switching to the congested flow regime becomes possible.

In other words, if high traffic volumes aren't present, those behaviors don't have that consequence, and moreover, if high traffic volumes are present, the free-flow regime is such an unstable equilibrium that some kind of event (even one as minor as a driver briefly tapping their brakes) triggering a shift away from it and to the congested regime is inevitable. It's the volume that's the essential condition, not the behavior.

[–] themeatbridge 50 points 10 months ago

More lanes won't help, but what the hell are those pinch points? 3 lanes down to 1? Did they never drive in a car?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

The American Dream circa 1962 is alive and well in Australia

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Why don’t they just move people’s houses closer to where they work, or vice versa?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You mean mixing businesses and residential units in the same walkable neighborhood like we've done for thousands of years? That would never work! We must maximize commuting distances in order to reduce traffic and commuting times.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You really need to put a sarcasm tag on that. I almost got whiplash.

My city is doing the same thing. They let developers build out exclaves around the city and then ask the city to annex it. There seems to be no limit to how stupid the city council is about this. The latest one is on a hill with no water, police, fire, or school services that got annexed. Now the city has to build out everything. The ROI to the city is in the range of centuries based on the tax revenues. Add in that it's 100% commercial district free and now we've added an eternal car snake on a tiny two lane road into town.

We've gotta start building some mixed use density or all of this infrastructure is going to collapse.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism but it's literally never worked anywhere before, so it must work this time!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism There is a specific CATEGORY of threat to humanity's operations, that needs systematic countering:

The counter-intuitive.

Things like "add more roads, they'll de-congest" are *natural* assumptions, and *wrong*.

But there are many counter-intuitive things,
and it is *incompetent* to pretend that every manager, authority, whatever, everywhere, is going to somehow, magically, independently discover that they are counter-intuitive & need to be managed *backwards* to one's unconscious "reasoning".

It's like trying to get somebody to understand countersteering...

Until they *understand* that you're literally riding the bike on the *side* of the tire, it can't make any sense.

Counter-intuitive functions need to be catalog'd, organized, and systematically defeated by school-kids, or in job-training, or ANYthing.

The costs of *not* doing-so are compounding too much.

---

Perhaps a Required Lessons for each domain, & each job within that domain...

SOMEthing, though, and we need it yesterday.

_ /\ _

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

It’s like trying to get somebody to understand countersteering.

Yep.

Until they understand that you’re literally riding the bike on the side of the tire, it can’t make any sense

Wait, what? Countersteering is about manipulating the contact patch relative to the center of gravity. The side of the tire has relatively no relevance.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism

I think it's more a case of this whole interchange has been built for western harbour tunnel. ie the more lanes are coming...in 5 years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

@jedsetter @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism
Not even that; the additional lanes already exist, they're just signposted so confusingly that people are avoiding them and instead crowding onto what's now intended to be a local road

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@jedsetter @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism
To be clear—

The tunnel sign-posted as "City, Port Botany ✈️ [toll]" goes to Anzac Bridge, toll-free. If you're used to taking Victoria Road to Anzac Bridge, you should take the tunnel.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@jedsetter @ajsadauskas @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism
Seems more like it, I would expect induced demand to be more prominent on the longer time scales.

In particular, I recall a simple graph example where you'd have two parallel roads with some traffic on them. And then you create a link between them, aiming to improve the situation. However, the link gets jammed and the overall situation gets worse

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]