More Lanes are (Still) a Bad Thing

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Fact: 90% of city planners quit one lane before they finally fix traffic for real!!!

“just one more lane bro. i promise just one more lane and it’ll fix everything bro. bro. just one more lane. please just one more. one more lane and we can fix this whole problem bro. bro cmon just give me one more lane i promise bro. bro bro please i just need one more lane bro”

Less lanes also means less people slingshotting across multiple lanes because they realized their next turn is on the other side of the road.

Hello!! Transit planner for Arlington, Virginia here!! SO HAPPY to see us mentioned in this video!! Actually, when building the Arlington portion of the Washington DC metro system, the original plan was to run it in the median of interstate 66 in North Arlignton. The planners for Arlignton County actually convinced them to instead run it underground and underneath the local roads instead, and used the opportunity to begin it's aggressive transit oriented development that has made Arlington such a wonderful place to live. It's one of the few rare examples of planning done right in post-WW2 America. I live in Arlington completely car-free and it is cheap, convenient, and easy to do so!

What's especially crazy about the money people spend on more lanes is they then turn around and say they don't have money for public transit.

We just need a lane for every individual car on the road

I keep seeing videos about why many Americans will continue to live abroad rather than returning to the states and about 85% to 90% say they don't own a car and feel happy about it

I always remind my friends that complain about being stuck in traffic, "You are never IN traffic, you always ARE traffic.". You and everyone else is on this road / highway because there aren't enough alternatives to get some of these drivers to take them. Great video

The most baffling part is why two of those 10 lanes couldn't have been dedicated bus lanes. Literally put some barriers in between and markings there and increase the frequency of the bus service. Those things bypassing all the traffic jams could convince a lot of people.

Did you know there is no solution to car traffic except viable alternative to driving?

One of the most depressed I've been was when I was laid off from my job, single (I still am), and living in a suburb. It was in a beautiful newly built neighbourhood, but yet the isolation was unbearable. I was only 20-30 minutes outside the city, but because of traffic the trip took 1-2 hours during rush hour. That meant I had zero incentive to go into the city and socialize or visit my friends. Yeah, that was a depressing time. Anyway, grateful for these videos and community that would understand the frustration. Many North Americans just don't get it.

I moved to within 1.5 miles of my job. I ride my bike daily. I live two blocks away from my best friend and two blocks away from a grocery store. It's wonderful

public transit has another immense advantage: its no lost time. you can use the time to read, play a game on your phone or do other smaller tasks or activities, making the time the trip takes feel much shorter and pleasant

it's certainly beautiful to see a city with people in it, and not just hundreds of cars and desolate buildings

I live in the suburbs of Chicago where the village is trying to widen a two lane (one lane each way) to a four lane road to reduce congestion. There is congestion for 30 minutes during the morning, and that is because the road passes by a SCHOOL where the kids walk by, crosses the street, and the school buses drop kids off. By widening that road, the road will be MUCH MORE dangerous for the kids to walk across. I'm not sure what the village is thinking. All the residents - especially the parents of the kids from the school and collecting signatures to oppose the road construction.

I love the public transportation system here in Aachen (Germany). I live some 30 kilometers away from my job, an I could take my car to drive this way every workday. This would take about 45 minutes per direction. - I could. - But I don't. In Winter time I take my car to go about 5 kilometers to a park + ride (in summer time I do this by bike), there I hop on an express bus and ride down to Aachen in about 60 minutes. Oh, g'dam - this is 15 minutes more than driving myself? But wait - It's the time from door to door! And in this time I sit comfortably in that bus, got my headphones in my ears, my e-book reader in my one hand and a cup of tea in the other and enjoy the trip with drinking, reading and listening to the music. When I enter my office door, I am fresh and relaxed, ready to do my daily work - and when I come back home, I am fresh enough to take care about the kids, of the home, I can do whatever I want and I am not a little bit stressed at all. Yeah, I could be one of those for whom the roads and streets have to be widened, who need more parking lots, who are responsible for tha traffic congestion we all are so sick of - but hey: I am not.

"The difference between induced demand for cars and induced demand for other modes of travel is that cars are extremely space inefficient." I think this is the most important sentence of this video. In debates about transport policy in urban areas, I am often accused of being downright anti-car and that it should be about good coexistence in traffic. When I then argue that good coexistence can only work if cars have to give up traffic space, I am often met with a lack of understanding. People have no idea how bad the car is in terms of space consumption.

You touched on something that a lot of people forget: Cars are not the goal. We don't build roads to move *cars*, we build roads to move *people*. Cars are just one way that people navigate those roads. Sometimes advocates against traffic calming or removing on-street parking from a downtown area will argue that it will kill shops. As if the cars were going to spend money. But cars don't spend money. People spend money. Cars are just one way that people get places.

One small nitpick at 20:00: It wasn't really the center-left majority in 2015 that lead to massive mobility improvements, it was the inclusion of the Greens within the governing coalition. The center-left had been in power before (without the Greens) and done diddly squat.