Posted on 06/30/2015 10:47:03 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The problem is clear: Traffic congestion will become significantly worse and more widespread without big changes in how people and products get around.
Build more roads. Build more public transit. Rely on new technology. The possible solutions are many, but none is easy or cheap.
A few ways to ease the nation's gridlock:
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PUBLIC TRANSIT RENAISSANCE
Ridership on public buses, trains and subways has reached its highest level nationally since the 1950s, and transit boosters cite this as evidence that expanded service and routes is a good investment.
The nation's driving capital, Los Angeles, is making a multibillion-dollar investment in building or extending five rail lines. Transit advocates say that should be a model: If LA can do it, any region can.
Skeptics point out that the record ridership still translates into just a fraction of all trips people take. They also make a bang-for-the-buck argument, saying big-ticket transit projects just don't make enough of a difference to justify their cost.
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TOLLS ARE 'HOT'
Driving is expected to remain the primary means of travel for most Americans. But finding the money to maintain aging highways, much less build more lanes, is increasingly difficult.
To help fund new construction, the Obama administration has proposed letting states toll federal interstates. That's been prohibited since the interstate system was launched in 1956, except for a few exceptions, including highways that already had tolls. Congress would have to approve the change.
One way to make existing highways more efficient is "high occupancy toll" (or HOT) lanes. The idea often involves converting carpool lanes that may be relatively car free into lanes that solo drivers can pay to use. Carpoolers typically travel for free...
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Deport the 10’s of millions of illegal aliens.
PING!
Too much money and effort has been direct to everything but roads. Bike paths, inner-city transit, green programs, high or low speed rail, carpool lanes actually do not remove congestion.
And get a lot of semis off the road by manufacturing goods closer to where they'll be consumed.
That’s too simple.
Now the car's are smaller and smaller each year, some not even 4x4's driving on 6 lanes already, and still congested?
Just crazy
Why not stagger starting times for people who work the usual 9-5? One batch starts at 9:05am, the next at 9:10am, etc. then on the way home, you leave at 5pm, 5:05 pm. 5:10pm, etc.?
You’d think the grave lack of jobs would have people driving less - but NOW, since jobs are scarce, people need to drive to 2 or sometimes 3 jobs in the course of a day.
Wonder if that’s factored in?
Make a law that road taxes “Will” be spent on roads under penalty of law. Let bicycles pay for their fair share. Let train and other public transportation pay their own way.
Here we go...
That might work, as long as everyone lives the exact same distance from work, and drives the exact same speed, and makes the exact same number of stops on their way to and from their jobs.
As traffic becomes worse an area becomes less desirable and people move elsewhere. Seems to me it regulates itself just kinda sucks for those who have a higher traffic tolerance level.
Choo choo!
The answer of course is simple, Flying Cars.
The SCOTUS should Rule that we have a Fundamental Right to own Flying Cars, paid for by The Government of course.
This is a long-standing problem that every urban area in the world has been trying to solve for decades. The answer? THERE IS NO ANSWER!
1. Build more roads
USE GAS TAXES FOR THIS instead of bike paths, light rail, and other horrendously expensive wastes of taxpayer money.
2. Build more public transit.
TOTALLY USELESS. spend billions to move a few hundred people from where few people live to where almost no one wants to go. Yep that will work.
3. New technology.
Possibilities, for those of us who work on computers all day long it could work. For those who actually have to be somewhere to do something it's a non-starter. UNLESS, technology is used to synchronize traffic flow and traffic engineers change their priorities from maximally impeding the flow of traffic to actually trying to work out ways to get it to move.
People driving too close to the cars in front of them is a major cause of congestion.
I’ve been seeing something lately that seems to really help.
It started with the big rigs.
They put about 8-10 car lengths between their front bumper and the car in front of them, and go a steady pace.
Other cars are doing this. It seems to keep the vehicles flowing at a continuous rate, while allowing the impatient drivers to merge safely in and out of lanes.
It also prevents the rear-end accidents that ALWAYS makes traffic come to a stop.
When I get behind other drivers who do this, I rarely hit my brakes. The only thing is that I’m driving (Not just sitting still) at 30 MPH instead of 65 MPH.
This is all part of the master plan - make it as difficult as possible for normal Americans to own/operate motor vehicles so that escape is hopeless, force us onto orc-filled buses and trains where diversity can be embraced to its fullest, shoe-horn everybody into “sustainable/walkable neighborhoods,” and, presto, fundamental transformation!!! Everyone is trapped in the same, leftwing rat hole. Bike fetishists claim a majority of Americans DEMAND more bike lanes and fewer lanes for motor vehicles, but it’s all nonsense - pure community organizing clap-trap fiction. I know this for a fact. These fascists poll themselves at bike riding events, and then claim the results are a scientific survey: “98 percent of Americans say they’d ride bikes everywhere, every day, if they just had the lanes to do so!” You’d get as legitimate a poll if you surveyed all the patrons of a San Francisco drag bar and asked if they support gay marriage.
Public Transit is highly subsidized in the range of $4-$7 per rider. I know of one transit provider that counts every rider as a new rider at each stop.
So if you get on at stop “A” and are going to stop “C” but the bus makes a stop at “B” you are counted twice. Each year that they report to the transit board at great fanfare how their ridership goes up and up. And the Board thinks this is great news. I tried to tell my elected official who I reported to, who sat on the transit board, how this scheme worked but he couldn’t or refused to do the math that I just explained.
Tank the economy so that no one has to go to work in the morning. Obama is working on the solution.
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