I think there was at least one case where the city went broke maintaining roads and everyone left. That was a success.
Having been on a small town board, the truth is roads are funded at the state level (may vary by state) with funds distributed to the county governments, who maintain the county highways. The towns and cities get some amount from the county and more from the state to be used for anything highway related.
If this were not the case, and all else being equal many rural towns would go under. Private transportation is currently being subsidized at rates sometimes much higher than the property tax income the towns bring in. It’s unsustainable and barely working like everything else, it’s like long term vision is irrelevant and only short term gains are even considered…
That was my every childhood game of SimCity.
My back was to put in rail everywhere with zero roads. People constantly complained about wanting roads, but there was never any congestion. And the desire for roads never seemed to affect anything.
CityNerd did a video explaining why this happens. It’s because city planners and traffic engineers assume that the same proportion of people will drive in the future, just that there will be more of them. So if you assume everyone’s still going to drive you have to build more lanes because everyone will drive.
90% of city planners quit one lane before fixing traffic forever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWeFw0I-igI
Building roads does decrease congestion. Just don’t place them randomly. Use simulations and modern traffic engineering. Do you think that inaction build the Netherlands?
Sure an extra lane can relieve congestion, for a bit then 10 years later you’re back to where you started or worse.
This is mostly due to the fact that American cities grow sprawl and not density. So basically unless there’s a population collapse adding another lane is a temporary solution.
That’s why they are basically always adding new lanes, they can’t keep up with the demand. So instead of continually trying to keep up with demand it’s time to work on reducing demand
Building roads is not an extra lane and an extra bus bike or tram lane has surely relieved congestion. Same for an extra lane for queueing in niche cases. Added a random feature at a random spot will not yield desired results.
This post is about the lack of scientific evidence for your theory. Care to supply some?
Case studies are not scientific evidence, they’re well-documented anecdotes that suggest the need for scientific study.
Case studies are scientific evidence. They are just not strong scientific evidence.
