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Getting Rid of Carpool Lanes Could Double Travel Times (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Eliminating carpool lanes could almost double drivers' traveling times, according to a new study. The findings come thanks to an unusual decision made by the government of Jakarta last year. Following allegations that drugged babies from poor households were being used as "jockeys," or passengers for hire, Indonesian lawmakers repealed the so-called three-in-one restriction. The law had required cars driving on the business district's main roads to carry at least three passengers during rush hours. To determine the impact on the city's drivers, Benjamin Olken, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and colleagues queried Google Maps for real-time driving-speed data before and after the new policy went into effect. Following the policy lift, travel delays, defined as the time it takes to travel 1 kilometer, increased by 46% in the morning and almost 90% in the evening, the team reports today in Science. But the most startling result is that phasing out the three-in-one policy led to worse traffic during times of the day and on roads where there had never been restrictions in place, Olken says. One possible explanation, he says, is that the three-in-one restriction led fewer people to drive into the city. "Maybe they carpooled, took public transit, or worked from home."
The only thing that matters is ELON MUSK'S PRIVATE TUNNEL.
The rest of you fucking plebs can GET FUCKED.
That has proven to be a good thing since only the wealthy have someone to ride with.
ALL lanes must become carpool lanes to optimize travel times.
In the USA they take away "free" travel lanes, then sell them back to you as carpool/HOV/HOT lanes. This creates scarcity and increases congestion in the existing lanes and makes the relatively quicker toll lanes more appealing, which fills up the government coffers. Sweet little scam.
So it's doubtful that getting rid of toll lanes would increase congestion, rather it would restore highway capacity so traffic should flow better.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
So you have a lane that has a forced capacity of 3 travellers. You remove this limit and people are not forced to travel together and at the same time. The expected result would be more traffic over a broader period therefore increasing congestion and travel times.
It's not clear that a study based on HOV with 3+ occupants would be relevant to cities with a 2+ occupant HOV.
Heck, I wish they'd get real Traffic Engineers that knew what they were doing. I learned to drive and spent the first 16 years of my driving life in California. What passes for traffic engineering here is a joke.
I think there are still many variables that not included in the article.
1. The carpool It is not completely removed, but it is change of policy based now looking at registered car number rather than number of passengers. The idea is "In odd date, only car with odd number can pass the designated road. Vice versa".
2. I think this is the actual major problem: In the same time with the policy change, there are big road-interchange extension construction happen. Also they are creating first Metro lines that will run just below the main road. For the excavation, current main road became smaller like 50%. All of this construction happened at the same time, which of course increase the commute time.
Its possible that Braess's Paradox is to blame here also?
In a nutshell, it can be that if people are given too much license to make "selfish' decisions, it can actually increase travel times across the system. (E.g. if people keep changing lanes to get ahead but cause others to slow down resulting in a net negative to the system).
There are examples of this occuring when new "improvements" to motorways added to a system actually caused traffic delays, which only went away when the new road was closed.
So they implement a policy that cars must have passengers to use main roads. So people "hire" (that word used in the articles) passengers to get around the law. Since screaming kids is not something people are willing to pay for the kids are drugged to stay quiet.
So, they can choose seeing kids drugged or they can choose longer commutes. They chose longer commutes.
Who was it that said for every problem there is a fix that is easy, simple, and wrong? I believe that applies here.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
In California they have carpool lanes that have variable pricing depending on the time of day and the congestion on the road at that time. Similar and probably the inspiration for Uber's "Surge Pricing".
The point of lifting the restriction isn't about travel times. It's about removing the unforeseen incentive to drug kids.
Of course I didn't read the article. Who does?
another way is that toll roads exist to force the poor to use slower, crappier modes of transit. Hell, our entire car based society exists for that. We all suffer through wars, air pollution and an overall lower standard of living save for a few so well off they can stand above it. And most of them still spend 90 minutes a day commuting. And even if we ignore all that toll lanes are still a regressive tax, disproportionately hurting lower wage earners for whom the tolls represent a larger percentage of their income.
Oh, and can you at least RTFS? The entire point of the article is that they found getting rid of HOV lanes increased congestion. Even in a system where the majority of folks were abusing the system (Jakarta). I suppose you might have a point about toll lanes, but that's not what anyone was talking about.
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for the well to do. Tolls, like sales tax, are a regressive taxation. They're meant to let the rich have services but put most of the cost of those services on the working class. They didn't get rich by spending money ya know.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Following allegations that drugged babies from poor households were being used as "jockeys," or passengers for hire
Holy crap, if this is true I would think that congestion traffic is the least of your worries...
Sounds like the study's author is a bit too chummy with HOT/HOV lanes.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Toll lanes have no place in a city, especially ones with mixed income.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Unless you're well-heeled, they want you to suffer.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Remove the shackles on the roads, add more lanes, and end the complaints.
No need to make the roads a place for the well-heeled.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Besides the misleading representations in TFS, drivers cooperate (or not) differently in different locales for various reasons. While here in Arizona, drivers can merge through a lane drop at speed, in Massachusetts a lane drop on a highway can and does regularly backup traffic for six miles under less loaded conditions.
They're about people that hate regular people having cars, or love unchecked revenue enhancement.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Even if the allegation were true, the increased freedom and reduced abuse is worth more than the supposed "reduction".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
> No need to make the roads a place for the well-heeled.
Carpooling is for the rich!
I'm sorry but your ideology got in my peanut butter and it is not a great flavor.
Were any significant number of kids actually being drugged or was this just yet another moral panic spurred on by people with a bug up their ass about "cheaters" making a "think of the children" play to justify themselves?
http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~varaiya/papers_ps.dir/HOV-TRBv7.pdf
July 11, 2005
ABSTRACT
The San Francisco Bay Area is well-suited for studying the effectiveness of high occupancy
vehicle (HOV) lanes because the HOV restrictions are time-actuated: lane 1 is restricted to 2+ or
3+ vehicles on weekdays, 5-9 AM and 4-7 PM; at other times it is a general purpose lane. Thus
traffic on the same lane can be compared with and without the HOV restriction. Analysis of the
data for 2001-2005 shows: (1) HOV actuation imposes a 20% capacity penalty: the maximum
flow at 60 mph on an HOV-actuated lane is 1,600 vehicles/hour, compared with 2,000
vehicles/hour when it is not HOV-actuated; (2) The HOV restriction significantly increases
demand on the other lanes causing a net increase in overall congestion delay; (3) HOV actuation
does not significantly increase person throughput; and (4) Both short-term (daily) and long-term
(yearly) carpooling responses are insensitive to travel-time savings. The first conclusion implies
that although HOV lanes will seem underutilized, there is little ‘excess capacity’ to permit tollpaying
or hybrid vehicles access to HOV lanes in order to raise revenue or promote fuel
efficiency. The fourth conclusion implies that HOV use will not increase as congestion worsens.
Together, these conclusions threaten belief in the effectiveness of HOV lanes as a means to
mitigate congestion or reduce pollution in the Bay Area
The governments' wars against freedom and independent transportation carry on. It won't be much longer before you have to call the government and get a permit before you can leave your house. Once they control your very movement, you won't be able to do anything without government approval, and the oppression and corruption will never end.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, the workers smash YOU!
What a country!
Another problem is the total lack of enforcement of the laws prohibiting tailgating and left lane camping. Whenever traffic drops below 60 mph on the freeway due to congestion or whatever, people bunch up into lines of literally dozens of cars all driving 10 feet or so from each other, which makes it impossible for anyone to merge or change lanes. Add to that people who utterly refuse to pass and will drive for miles next to (or, often, in the blind spot of) other drivers, which not only creates a backup behind them but in the other lanes too as people try to speed around them.
But hey, at least we finally stopped the scourge of people texting at red lights, right?
The thing I don't understand is that they aren't really carpool lanes. They are party car lanes. If you bring extra bodies you go faster. So you get people trying to convince their friends and family to go with them instead of going alone. The additional weight in the vehicle burns more gas but you get where you want to go faster so it's probably worth it even to poor Indonesians. Still it must waste and burn a lot of extra fuel.
The whole idea of carpooling is kind of ridiculous. Most neighbors don't have the same travel destination at the same time. That is not our world. Carpooling is not a solution to anything and certainly won't help solve traffic problems. An easy fix to traffic problems in places like Indonesia is just to ban cars at peak times. Only allow motorcycles and buses. Actually turning some lanes into motorcycle only lanes could be a middle ground.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
getting rid of law enforcement could double crime. again, can we say "duh".
In communism, all is done for the benefit of man.
The key to success is being that man.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Government should institute congestion pricing for such districts . Vaguely recall London does this. If people are paying for passengers or renting drugged baby (just one case, despite the prominent mention in the summary) they would pay the tolls. Impose the toll on vehicle not on number of passengers. Keep raising it till employees refuse to drive to work or demand compensation from their employers. The company will pay the toll for top executives and they would never see any reason to move out of a prestigious address. If they end up paying for all employees, then it might hurt the bottom line and they will move out of the congested districts and over time the traffic problems will ease.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's not just you motorcycle riders who have problems. I had a blue Nissan Leaf that I leased and was using to drive to work. My distance from home to work is just under 22 miles each way and I had an older, gasoline powered car that was not doing well in the stop and go traffic and was not getting good gas mileage either, so I got the Leaf. I liked the Leaf but what I didn't like was having a large number of close calls driving it because people seemed to be unable to see it and would start getting over right into where my car was or would turn right in front of me from the opposite side of the road like I wasn't even there. I talked to a few other Leaf drivers and have heard similar stories. The Leaf is not unusually small, the design isn't strange, and there was nothing about the blue color mine had that was different from blues used by other car manufacturers, but I had a lot of incidents where people seemed completely unable to see the car. I don't have the Leaf any more and while I liked driving it, I admit to feeling a bit safer without it.
People are just pretty bad drivers in general. I am always seeing people make very risky left turns right in front of oncoming traffic rather than wait for a break in traffic where it's safer. In my state improper left turns seem to be the cause of the majority of accidents. By our state law, left turn has to yield to oncoming traffic, but you would really be surprised at how many people seem to think that oncoming traffic has to yield to all left turns.
You can't increase capacity on the road network and expect less congestion in any reasonable way.
While there is a threshold above which congestion indeed does decrease, until you reach that threshold every attempt at increasing capacity will result in more cars on the roads. This is called induced traffic. I think the current scientific consensus is that the capacity needs to increase beyond a reasonable amount for this to work, and the result will still only be that you've made more people drive.
The law had required cars driving on the business district's main roads to carry at least three passengers during rush hours.
The gov't eliminated the requirement that ALL cars driving on certain roads needed to carry 3 or more passengers, it didn't remove carpool lanes along those roads.
Under the old law EVERY CAR on certain roads were required to carry at least three passengers, cars with fewer passengers were prohibited. Once the "three or more" requirement was lifted, the streets in question were, as one would reasonably expect, flooded with more cars.
Ken
I wonder how many more people went to town? Wouldn't that be an economic benefit?
Remove the shackles on the roads, add more lanes, and end the complaints.
No need to make the roads a place for the well-heeled.
What's that saying about "simple" and "clear" solutions often being wrong?
They tried your idea in Texas and added so many more lanes that they now have an Interstate road with 26 lanes! https://en.m.wikipedia./wiki/Interstate_10_in_Texas
And they still suffer congestion. You cannot fix congestion purely by adding lanes.
Relevant to US & Canada:
Our HOV lanes in Ontario are on the left side of the highways - ideally, left lane should be higher-speed passing lanes, and slower drivers on the right.
Instead of HOV lanes, they should make the leftmost, separated lane as a 'High Speed' lane (HSL) where the speed limit is increased, perhaps 120km/h instead of 100km/h, but you need a special permit which could include annual advanced driver testing and annual vehice inspection/safety-certification.
IMHO, this would give higher throughput on the highways and incentivise driver training/education and vehicle mechanical conditions. This would also remove the current trouble wherein slower drivers have to merge fully left into the HOV then back over to the right when exiting the highway.
If carpool lanes went away in California, the traffic would remain constant.
Thought the sales of Electric Vehicles would drop.
I regularly travel all around southern california and the HOV lanes are always always slower than the regular lanes. What's worse is having to stop in a HOV lane while regular traffic lanes keep moving. This is compounded by idiots who insist on going exactly 65mph (or worse 55-60 because muh fuel economy) instead of the speed of traffic which regularly hits 76-78.
What they need to do is set the speed limit in HOV lanes to 80mph and set a minimum speed of70mph (enforced by camera). That would solve the slow poke problem and encourage car pooling by speeding up travel time.
UK study show that having traffic driving to destination on left side of the road double productivity. USA study show that having traffic driving to destination on right side of the road also double productivity. Therefore we go one better and let traffic going to destination drive on both left and right side of road.
Possibly more people are able to DRIVE to the city now, not GO in the general sense.
I thought the only way to go at all on certain days of the week was to drive, as public transportation systems in many cities tend to shut down entirely on the least busy days. In a plurality-Christian country, this is Sunday (source; source), but I don't know which day of the week would be the victim in a majority-Muslim country.
Surely there are plenty of consenting adults who are willing to take drugs and ride around in a car all day. Some of them will even offer to do the driving.
Actually, it's 12 regular lanes, 6 toll lanes.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
In communism, all is done for the benefit of man.
The key to success is being that man.
No shit.
Just about every remaining rich person in Venezuela is a relative or friend of Hugo Chavez.
Some of the richest reserves of natural resources in the world, and the Communists have run the country into the ground while enriching themselves - and fooling the useful idiots.
The correct solution would have been to keep the carpool lanes running, find anyone drugging babies or using drugged babies to carpool, and sterilizing or executing every party involved.
Especially the drugged babies. They're already on drugs and they're masterminding these schemes to circumvent the law!
Instead of minutes/kilometer (with an implied 'per vehecle'), how about minutes/kilometer/person?
All you need is one bonehead in HOV lane doing exactly the speed limit -- or worse, less than the speed limit -- and suddenly everyone in the HOV lane is forced down to that speed. We all need a SECOND lane so that we can pass those slowpoke HOV lane hoggers.