405 traffic: A little slower after $1 billion upgrade
Transit agencies spent five years and more than a billion dollars improving a stretch of the 405 freeway, in a massive project that gave us the term “Carmageddon” as crews shut down the freeway to complete upgrades. But now, after opening one of the main achievements – a ten-mile carpool lane – it doesn’t appear that traffic is moving any faster during rush hour. In fact, one study suggests travel times have slowed a bit following all of the construction – by about a minute.
INRIX, a traffic analysis firm, examined the Northbound 405 between the 10 and 101 freeways, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The study compared travel times from the middle two weeks of September, 2013 (with only a 1.7 mile stretch of the carpool lane open) to the same period this year (with the full 10-mile carpool lane in service for nearly five months.) The average travel time this September was 35 minutes, roughly a minute slower than last September.
There was some good news from INRIX. The worst congestion of rush hour appears to be ending earlier. A year ago, the average travel time from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the northbound stretch was 28 minutes. Now, it’s down to 22 minutes, according to Jim Bak, a director of INRIX in Kirkland, Washington.
“While travel times in the peak of rush hour – 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. have not gotten better or marginally worse, we are seeing travel times getting better towards the tail end of the rush hour period,” Bak told KPCC.
For Bak, the early data does not suggest that the carpool lane was a waste of money, but a reminder that there is no silver bullet solution to traffic congestion. He also sees a link between increased congestion and improvement in the economy.
— source scpr.org
Yeah, it actually does need to be said. Folks with an investment in expanding highway infrastructure like to act as though the only way to relieve congestion is to build more roads for those cars to ride on. But a soon-to-be-published study shows that traffic expands to fill the space allotted. More roads don’t mean more room — they mean more cars.
There are a few reasons for this, but mainly it’s that people drive more when it’s easier. It’s not that we need to have a certain number of cars on the road, and that number just happens to be a little more than what our current highway system can support. It’s that people basically drive until the available roads are hideously congested, then stop. Building more roads to relieve congestion is like suggesting that a blood pressure patient should keep eating fried chicken (or whatever), but surgically add a few yards of arteries. It’ll work for a little while, but those are just gonna get clogged too. And in the meantime, you’re walking around with extra arteries draped all over you. Unsightly!
— source grist.org