Fewer Roads, Less Congestion

worldchanging.com

15 points·bootload··5 comments

I'm reading "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. It's about Robert Moses, who was responsible for building much of the road infrastructure around NYC, and many of the bridges into and between the boroughs.

Several of the bridges he built were done so to alleviate traffic, but traffic was always worse after the bridge opened up. There were two main problems: more people wanted to use the "fast" routes, and the total volume of traffic increased.

Wireless routing advice to individual vehicles and/or dynamic tolls (or other 'soft walls') can probably achieve optimality without blocking any roads.

it didn't work like this in SimCity.

Actually, in Simcity 4, with the patch that improved pathfinding, with elongated blocks, and one way roads that inhibited stoplights, congestion measurably decreased for I and the other urban planning nerds at simtropolis who were odd enough to measure it.

Christopher Alexander mentioned an effect similar to this in "A Pattern Language". The result is due to something different though: less stoplights, less stops! In this case the problem is related to edge network flow.

Interesting. I did buy SimCity 4 and attempted to get a city going. However, it was so different from SimCity 2000 that I had some problems with infrastruture not working right and other stuff. Mostly I think I was just burned out!

I do like the idea of narrower streets to slow people down rather than using stoplights and stop signs. This also increases the ability for pedestrians and cyclists to feel that they are welcome, rather than an afterthought.

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