I actually had a whole paragraph about junctions being a limit and then deleted it since i didn’t feel like it added to my point. I also was going to add a point about how much space the lanes take up and that even if more lanes added capacity, it didn’t necessarily mean they were the right option.
yeah see what’s happening here is that you’re completely ignoring junctions: even in the ideal case of a completely straight road you still need junctions to get on and off the road, which will put a hard limit on throughput.
This is why traffic in america is miserable, the traffic engineers fail to recognize that you can’t just put businesses right next to roads as that will cause stupendous amounts of choking every time someone wants to pop in for some mcdonalds.
3 lanes in each direction is about the most you’ll ever need, which is what you’ll tend to see on big highways in europe. And really most of the time you’ll do just fine with 2 lanes.
stankmut@lemmy.world 8 months ago
SwampYankee@mander.xyz 8 months ago
Yeah, fuckin’ Americans, putting their McDonald’s right next to roads… I mean, just look at this. What a disgrace.
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Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
yeah uh, you do realize stockholm is infamous for having shit traffic, right? Precisely because it took a lot of the road design from the US.
Your example only proves my point.
SwampYankee@mander.xyz 8 months ago
I’m just struggling to imagine where you would put a business except for next to a road, regardless of whether there are cars on that road or not.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
there’s a difference between a road and a street, a road is meant for quick throughfare and streets are destinations.
what happens a lot especially in america is trying to do both at once, which results in a street that is incredibly stressful to try and enter/leave and is miserable to be near outside of a car, and yet doesn’t allow traffic to flow smoothly and quickly.
These are commonly referred to as “stroads”, and the solution is to decide whether you want a street or a road and design it as such. In dense areas this means you have to bite the sour apple and accept that not everything can be a dedicated throughfare, the best solution is a backbone network of throughfares with streets branching off.
In less dense areas you can have the best of both worlds by simply putting a street on the side of the road, with some greenery between them so people have somewhat of an enjoyable view, and then connect the streets to the road at either end.