Traffic is an issue with automobile oriented infrastructure because automobiles are such a space inefficient way of transporting people.
In the context of a conversation of how trucks are getting bigger and bigger, it's worth noting that the size gains are having implications on traffic too!
The point being though that electric cars will be just as space inefficient as ICE cars. If we want to move more people, more efficiently and avoid traffic jams and new highway construction, we'll have to opt for different solutions.
I agree but it's an interesting problem, things like parking spaces and roads will still have to be made to the size of largest vehicle that will use them and I imagine more cars in the same amount of road will lead to even more traffic.
Article is about solving traffic jams, but point #3 focuses on increasing the use of electric vehicles... how does this assist in solving traffic jams?
It's not possible. It's a geometry problem. Cars take up too much space.
And if you increase the size of the roads well, you simply induce demand, adding more space inefficient cars to clog up the road. This is why places like LA and Houston have never solved their traffic problems.
There's only really one way to move people faster, and that's to focus on moving the person with more space efficient forms of transportation (ie. trains).
The problem is there's only so much room for automobiles in a city. The more you decrease traffic, the more you'll induce demand to fill those improved traffic flow patterns.
The more infrastructure that is built downtown, the more people want to be downtown.
Traffic is bad, but fossil traffic is strictly worse than EV traffic. So again, it seems possible to advocate both less traffic and that the remaining traffic should be better.
This problem generalises and is why building more, bigger roads is not a silver bullet solution to congestion. More road capacity pushes people towards using cars for all their journeys so increases traffic, sometimes to the extent that congestion is worsened not lessened.
It seems obvious that the second systemic problem (increasing road capacity increases traffic) is a result of the effect of road capacity on the decision to take trips using a car, rather than the way people drive, and will therefore continue with intercommunicating robotic cars.
IMO, making it easier to drive will increase the number of people who commute. There isn’t enough space to add extra lanes to facilitate the increase in traffic these vehicles will cause. I think we should be working on other transportation problems.
You missed my point: of course they will be more sophisticated, but if they increase the demand for road resources then there will be more cars out there. They will move efficiently but as slowly as people are able to tolerate before switching to alternate means (e.g. trains, biking, etc).
The solution is not to build more highways and roads, as much as many people hate to hear that. Basically as soon as it is made slightly easier and faster to drive, people will adjust by driving more.
There are quite a few instances where an already large interstate has been increased in size and the traffic got /worse/ after the fact. Cars just aren't an efficient way to move people around for the money they cost.
I'm genuinely curious if things are going to start swinging back in the other direction where there is more focus on other transportation modes outside of cars. There have been some small scale rail expansions in larger cities, some intercity rail lines opening (brightline) and being built (california high speed rail). It hasn't been enough to hit a sort of tipping point yet though.
Except this is not an issue and, in any case, not the issue here.
Number of cars on the road depends on population at this point an on the housing model. We don't build "more and more roads" just to accommodate an infinitely growing number of cars. This is a mature market, no the 1950s or 1960s. If areas are deemed too congested there are already ways to limit congestion.
No, this is a tax income problem caused by EV but they are taking the 'opportunity' to bamboozle us into thinking that trackers and dynamic pricing is required and that there is no alternative.
In the context of a conversation of how trucks are getting bigger and bigger, it's worth noting that the size gains are having implications on traffic too!
The point being though that electric cars will be just as space inefficient as ICE cars. If we want to move more people, more efficiently and avoid traffic jams and new highway construction, we'll have to opt for different solutions.
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