Traffic Engineering: a help from Italy
Traffic Engineering: a help from Italy
Good morning, I write from Italy and here, where I live, but it is not only here the problem, are launched public roads projects that are breathtakingly bad and obsolete. I am no expert, I just think to have a minimum of good sense to understand that projects that are raping the countryside to build streets and welcome the circulations of more cars, more pollution and that conceive human beings like automatons that are staring the tv, then the windshield and then again the monitor at work. Imagining human life this way, in 2023, is a bit of a nightmare. Thus I would like to educate myself on traffic egineering. Is there someone out there that can point me YT channels; podcasts or worth to read books about this subject? At least, when there will be a public meeting, a city hall pubblic assembly I can think of intervening and say that there's something better that just open roads after roads, after roads. Thank you
In addition to what was mentioned already, read Door to Door, and use this famous constant (by an Italian!) as a counter argument if the function of the road/project is to solve traffic.
If you really want to feel out: Braess's Paradox.
These are more "urbanism" themed channels but they do dive into traffic engineering regularly, check out:
Highways notoriously create more traffic , every time we expand a highway or create a new highway, traffic gets worse.
If you just search "highway creates worse traffic" or something similar, there are many, many videos that will give you very good information and statistics about how building roads does not help convenience traffic or a sense of narrow or broad community in most situations, and new roads or new highway lanes almost always create more traffic in urban situations like cities.
Thanks, but I'm also looking for vidoe, articles, divulgative materiel that show alternative sustainable solutions.
Not always the case, but you’re not wrong. Most of the times the new road or added lanes was needed because the traffic density had already increased. Kind of a chicken or the egg scenario. For a new road, well roads arent just built for no reason…obviously the road was needed, so now there will be traffic on it. Sometimes even just an influx of people using the new “alternative route” because they think no one will be on it from the old route, yet many other people had the same idea.
Exception to all this, however is evacuation routes. I grew up in the south, on the gulf of mexico. When hurricanes are coming and everyone is trying to leave, you need those huge highways. 30 years ago you would just have 1000s of people grid-locking 2 lane highways just trying to get anywhere away from the storm, and in some cases being stuck in their car for the storm. Now a lot of those highways are full-on 4 lanes with medians, huge shoulders, etc. These are everywhere across the south, more still being built. Even extra bridges built across bays and sounds that are largely unused (usually have high tolls). 99% of the time the big highways are mostly empty (which makes road trips super nice!) and someone not familiar would think it’s a huge waste. But come an emergency situation, and their purpose is served!
Exception to all this, however is evacuation routes.
An excellent point I hadn't considered!