The joys of building more roads
 

I found this interesting and funny video. It's about the history of London's ring bypasses, but also remarks on how new, high speed roads effect the cities they are supposed to help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEHWhO_HdY

...funny how "humors"--like "rumors"--always have a grain (or two, or three, or...) of truth behind them!

He he. If you can find clips then google "The Secret History of the Motorway" for how we in the UK never finished these things.

There are loads of "bridges to nowhere" here. A Jnr always has a laugh at the motorway junction in Glasgow next to the M8 which just ends in mid-air - well, ok the entry to it is blocked off :D

http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyr...3/0/bridge.jpg

Apprently they have won money to complete it and make it into a cycling bridge - good for them. There are similar ones in Manchester too. I worked for about 3 months in Manchester Uni more or less level with where the road would have ended up coming through the building. Just found it :D

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/...2b40c6a1c9.jpg

The Glasgow one is about to be completed though because traffic coming from Scotland's airports have to cross the Clyde and go through the centre of Glasgow to get to the motorway South (to England). So now they are making a new connection south of the "Bridge to Nowhere" which cuts that part out.

It's a persistent & cultivated myth that more roads attract more traffic.
Traffic increases anyway, regardless of wether new roads are built or not.
More people growing ever older, emancipation, a more active lifestyle, for a longer period of our life, have all lead to more traffic.

Over here, in the late 70s, construction of many planned main roads was put on halt , and there weren't many new main roads built since.
Population however, increased by over 10%.
Traffic boomed.
While the number and km of roads still increased, many of those were residential - and the residents all had and have to get away over the same main road system.
Only fairly recently, some of the so-called missing links have been or are being built to ease off traffic on the other roads.

dunno if its a myth I always follow the rule
If you build it they will come. :thumbup:

...traffic, like collected "junk," always seems to "...expand to fill all of the available space..."

...at least based upon my experience in the cities: New York, Boston, Memphis, Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, Phoenix and Tucson.

In NY City we don't have any unfinished roads. However we do have a few major highways that end in unexpected areas because their original plan to link up with other major highways was defeated and aborted back in the '70's when local neighborhoods opposed eminent domain, 'tooth and nail' (local politics).

However, we do have shopping malls with idiotic circular routes that unavoidably increase distance and travel greatly. One mall in particular requires traversing at least a quarter to half a mile, just to enter or exit the mall at all. Even worse, there is an office building exclusively located in the mall space (with no access other than being in the mall road loop) whose parking lot can only be accessed by entering the mall from one end, then driving the half mile to get to it, as the roads in the mall are exclusively all one-way traffic patterns. If you enter from the other end of the mall you need to drive in an oval route that doubles the distance required. It's the equivalent of a flight holding pattern at a major airport where much time and effort is spent in circling the destination. :rolleyes:

I agree, the myth is supported by the impression given that when newer and better routes are opened that people start to use them.

What is often overlooked is that when you build a bypass to go round a town for example, the traffic going through the town is reduced - the net effect is the same level of overall traffic but the new route looks very busy.

Unfortunately again the UKs transport policy is constructed by people living in 2 square miles of West London - which of course has well connected public transport. Whereas the rest of the country does not, as they are sometimes shocked to find out...

I know- just keep increasing the population until a certain discomfort level is attained, no matter how many millions of miles of new blacktop are added. Or.... not. :rolleyes:

we should just pave the whole state of oklahoma