Full Version: Highway bottlenecks costing BIG money
Study Lists Nation's Worst Bottlenecks
Trucks idled for more than 243 million hours on bottlenecked U.S. highways in 2004, costing trucking companies $7.8 billion, according to a study prepared for the Federal Highway Administration. ...
Bottlenecks account for 40 percent of vehicle delays, with the balance caused by construction work zones, crashes, breakdowns, bad weather and poor signal timing, the study said.
“All levels of government are failing to focus their resources on the efficient movement of goods,” said Greg Cohen, president and CEO of the American Highway Users Alliance. “Yet the societal benefits of a national plan to fix the worst freight chokepoints would be astounding. Not only money, time, and hundreds of millions of gallons in diesel fuel would be saved, but roads would be safer, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions would decrease dramatically.”
The article lists the 20 top bottlenecks for 2004, along with the hours wasted. Note that the interdiction of I-10 that Katrina has brought isn't on this list, which might very well catapult the highways down there onto the list. Unfortunately, as I've seen here in my neck of the woods, often the organizations you would think would be most inclined to get behind eliminating bottlenecks are some of the most obstructionist. The Sierra Club in its constant fights to prevent widening of highways is the highest profile.
So, questions for debate:
1) How much of a priority should we put on eliminating these bottlenecks?
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
Trucks idled for more than 243 million hours on bottlenecked U.S. highways in 2004, costing trucking companies $7.8 billion, according to a study prepared for the Federal Highway Administration. ...
Bottlenecks account for 40 percent of vehicle delays, with the balance caused by construction work zones, crashes, breakdowns, bad weather and poor signal timing, the study said.
“All levels of government are failing to focus their resources on the efficient movement of goods,” said Greg Cohen, president and CEO of the American Highway Users Alliance. “Yet the societal benefits of a national plan to fix the worst freight chokepoints would be astounding. Not only money, time, and hundreds of millions of gallons in diesel fuel would be saved, but roads would be safer, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions would decrease dramatically.”
The article lists the 20 top bottlenecks for 2004, along with the hours wasted. Note that the interdiction of I-10 that Katrina has brought isn't on this list, which might very well catapult the highways down there onto the list. Unfortunately, as I've seen here in my neck of the woods, often the organizations you would think would be most inclined to get behind eliminating bottlenecks are some of the most obstructionist. The Sierra Club in its constant fights to prevent widening of highways is the highest profile.
So, questions for debate:
1) How much of a priority should we put on eliminating these bottlenecks?
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
1) How much of a priority should we put on eliminating these bottlenecks?
First, the reason to do so has nothing to do with truckers. The amount of time commuters waste in traffic dwarfs the figure given here for truckers. However....
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
The fact that it simply cannot be done. Why? Because as you eliminate bottlenecks, you create incentive for additional traffic, recreating the bottleneck. It is an unending problem....which would therefore require limitless spending to resolve. Which isn't to say it couldn't be selectively reduced. To do this, I would recommend toll roads, each individually funded. This is the best way to ensure each project is self justified, and also to make sure it is those who actually benefit are the ones paying for it.
First, the reason to do so has nothing to do with truckers. The amount of time commuters waste in traffic dwarfs the figure given here for truckers. However....
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
The fact that it simply cannot be done. Why? Because as you eliminate bottlenecks, you create incentive for additional traffic, recreating the bottleneck. It is an unending problem....which would therefore require limitless spending to resolve. Which isn't to say it couldn't be selectively reduced. To do this, I would recommend toll roads, each individually funded. This is the best way to ensure each project is self justified, and also to make sure it is those who actually benefit are the ones paying for it.
QUOTE(Bikerdad @ Feb 2 2006, 09:04 PM)
The article lists the 20 top bottlenecks for 2004, along with the hours wasted. Note that the interdiction of I-10 that Katrina has brought isn't on this list, which might very well catapult the highways down there onto the list. Unfortunately, as I've seen here in my neck of the woods, often the organizations you would think would be most inclined to get behind eliminating bottlenecks are some of the most obstructionist. The Sierra Club in its constant fights to prevent widening of highways is the highest profile.
Hobbes is dead on. I think anyone with even the most basic understanding of how Sprawl works should understand why environmental groups generally oppose widening highways, and it has nothing to do with another 100 feet of wilderness getting wiped out.
It's because it solves absolutely nothing. In LA, our primary commuting Road, the 405, is so congested that it generally takes an hour to go aproximately 15 miles. Every morning. When the 405 South added a commuter lane, it reduced traffic significantly for carpoolers for about 6 months. Now, if you go out there, taking the commuter lane is marginally faster than the regular lanes because so many people switched over to carpooling. Meanwhile the 405 gets heavier and heavier traffic, because the city continues to Sprawl northward making more and more people have to travel the 405 everyday on the way into work.
There are two signficant ways to combat these types of Bottlenecks (i.e. around cities). Build the city up (which you can do in LA, despite the common misconception that this is impossible), and build public transport aimed at getting daily commuters off the roads. Our current train system is laughable; providing an alternative only really to people commuting from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach or Downtown. The MTA (which I rode on for 4 years, I just recently purchased a car) is only used by extremely poor individuals, minorities, and students. It is underfunded and generally an overpriced and slow alternative to a personal car commute.
When we're talking about bottlenecks related to lane merge between interstates and exit ramps, then yes, as long as these issues are occurring outside of a metropolitan area redesigning bottlenecked areas is a good idea. In-city it's a perpetual problem, it doesn't matter if you make the 405 20 lanes wide (it's already 10), in 1,2, maybe 5 years it's going to be just as congested as workers move out of the urban areas and into sprawl.
So, questions for debate:
1) How much of a priority should we put on eliminating these bottlenecks?
A lot if we are serious about reducing out dependence on foreign oil and continuing the increases in productivity that seems to have stalled in the 4th quarter of last year. I find it odd that people would be content with hammering the auto companies to give us better mileage (which we should do) then allow all those nice high milege cars to sit in endless traffic jams getting 2 mpg!
Co-authors Tim Lomax and David Schrank used data from 1982 to 2003 to assess just how bad congestion is in the USA. They found that the number of cities where commuters were stuck in traffic for more than 20 hours a year grew from five in 1982 to 51 in 2003; among the cities making that list for the first time in 2003 were Charleston, S.C.; New Haven, Conn.; Salt Lake City; and Cincinnati.
The annual amount of time the average urban commuter spent in traffic delays increased from 16 hours in 1982 to 47 in 2003.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-0...fic-study_x.htm
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
The problem is more than a little complex. Many now believe that the common practice of following too closely to the car in front is a major cause of traffic jams.
Physicists are exploring whether adaptive cruise control can prevent this. In ACC, a radar sensor gauges the distance between cars, automatically adjusting speed to maintain a safe distance. Because ACC, which has become standard on some luxury vehicles, can adapt instantly if the lead car brakes (humans take about 0.75 second to react), cars can tailgate safely. ACC can therefore pack more cars into a mile of highway, increasing a road's de facto capacity.
IMO other causes are the poorly maintained roads in this country and a road building mentality that does NOT consider the COST to drivers and the Country for slowdowns and traffic jams caused by periodic road repair. If you ask a civil engineer he will tell you these costs are NEVER even considered in road construction. ONLY lowest cost/mile. So, as we all have experienced every summer, as soon as we get on the road we see the numerous road repair crews out fixing the roads! If you go to Germany what you find are roads built to last 25-50 years without significant repairs. AND they prohibit tailgating. What we need is a national study and then the passage of some LAWS requiring roads that are built better and things like more timed signals. Until we do this we are just going down hill. Savings realized by hybrid and other high milage vehicles are just wasted.
Better public transit would help but the idiots that plan cities have no clue or are unwilling to spend the money. Most systems cannot deal with the thousands of places people work in cities and suburbs. A hopeless mess.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...0917EDT0043.DTL
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html
1) How much of a priority should we put on eliminating these bottlenecks?
A lot if we are serious about reducing out dependence on foreign oil and continuing the increases in productivity that seems to have stalled in the 4th quarter of last year. I find it odd that people would be content with hammering the auto companies to give us better mileage (which we should do) then allow all those nice high milege cars to sit in endless traffic jams getting 2 mpg!
Co-authors Tim Lomax and David Schrank used data from 1982 to 2003 to assess just how bad congestion is in the USA. They found that the number of cities where commuters were stuck in traffic for more than 20 hours a year grew from five in 1982 to 51 in 2003; among the cities making that list for the first time in 2003 were Charleston, S.C.; New Haven, Conn.; Salt Lake City; and Cincinnati.
The annual amount of time the average urban commuter spent in traffic delays increased from 16 hours in 1982 to 47 in 2003.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-0...fic-study_x.htm
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
The problem is more than a little complex. Many now believe that the common practice of following too closely to the car in front is a major cause of traffic jams.
Physicists are exploring whether adaptive cruise control can prevent this. In ACC, a radar sensor gauges the distance between cars, automatically adjusting speed to maintain a safe distance. Because ACC, which has become standard on some luxury vehicles, can adapt instantly if the lead car brakes (humans take about 0.75 second to react), cars can tailgate safely. ACC can therefore pack more cars into a mile of highway, increasing a road's de facto capacity.
IMO other causes are the poorly maintained roads in this country and a road building mentality that does NOT consider the COST to drivers and the Country for slowdowns and traffic jams caused by periodic road repair. If you ask a civil engineer he will tell you these costs are NEVER even considered in road construction. ONLY lowest cost/mile. So, as we all have experienced every summer, as soon as we get on the road we see the numerous road repair crews out fixing the roads! If you go to Germany what you find are roads built to last 25-50 years without significant repairs. AND they prohibit tailgating. What we need is a national study and then the passage of some LAWS requiring roads that are built better and things like more timed signals. Until we do this we are just going down hill. Savings realized by hybrid and other high milage vehicles are just wasted.
Better public transit would help but the idiots that plan cities have no clue or are unwilling to spend the money. Most systems cannot deal with the thousands of places people work in cities and suburbs. A hopeless mess.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...0917EDT0043.DTL
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html
1) How much of a priority should we put on eliminating these bottlenecks?
This should be a top priority. It is a major problem in terms of economic productivity and resources lost and the general well being of the populous. I live in the Washington, DC area where traffic is horrible and there are no signs of improvement.
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
I agree with what has been said regarding the ineffective solution of widening roads. We need more and better public transportation options and other innovative ideas. Washington, DC has one of the better metro systems (still riddled with problems) and even with many people using public transportation the traffic here is in the top 5 worst places in the country. Every time I leave the city on interstate 95 South there is stop and go traffic for fifty miles until Fredericksburg.
I don't understand how a ten mile backup can begin when people see a police officer on the side of the road and decide to slwo down to fifteen miles under the speed limit. In addition to better infrastructure, we need better drivers (which won't happen).
There are numerous political challenges and even when the money is procured for widening highways it takes ten years to complete the project. We need long-term solutions and steady funding to implement them. In Northern VA a few years back there was a regional ballot initiative to raise taxes for transportation and it was defeated. People aren't willing to pay more to solve the problem so I don't know how anything will get done around here. I imagine each locality with traffic problems has the same problem in getting state, federal funding. People statewide, nationwide are reluctant to pay for the traffic problems of other cities/areas to be fixed.
This should be a top priority. It is a major problem in terms of economic productivity and resources lost and the general well being of the populous. I live in the Washington, DC area where traffic is horrible and there are no signs of improvement.
2) What are the national and local challenges that you see in addressing these?
I agree with what has been said regarding the ineffective solution of widening roads. We need more and better public transportation options and other innovative ideas. Washington, DC has one of the better metro systems (still riddled with problems) and even with many people using public transportation the traffic here is in the top 5 worst places in the country. Every time I leave the city on interstate 95 South there is stop and go traffic for fifty miles until Fredericksburg.
I don't understand how a ten mile backup can begin when people see a police officer on the side of the road and decide to slwo down to fifteen miles under the speed limit. In addition to better infrastructure, we need better drivers (which won't happen).
There are numerous political challenges and even when the money is procured for widening highways it takes ten years to complete the project. We need long-term solutions and steady funding to implement them. In Northern VA a few years back there was a regional ballot initiative to raise taxes for transportation and it was defeated. People aren't willing to pay more to solve the problem so I don't know how anything will get done around here. I imagine each locality with traffic problems has the same problem in getting state, federal funding. People statewide, nationwide are reluctant to pay for the traffic problems of other cities/areas to be fixed.
Add a third lane to every single hiway in the US Interstate system, and to most of the 2 lane state hiways.
The third lane would be available for repairs whenever necessary, and available the high-use periods at all other times. For example Morning Rush Hours usually mean that lanes into the city are crowded -- use the extra lane.
Deer hunting season means that lanes out of Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Detroit etc are crowded -- use the thrid lane.
And every time repair is needed -- route traffic onto the third lane.
The third lane would be available for repairs whenever necessary, and available the high-use periods at all other times. For example Morning Rush Hours usually mean that lanes into the city are crowded -- use the extra lane.
Deer hunting season means that lanes out of Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Detroit etc are crowded -- use the thrid lane.
And every time repair is needed -- route traffic onto the third lane.
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