The future of traffic--and congestion
Date: 2002-09-03
"Since 1970, the population of the United States has grown by forty per cent, while the number of registered vehicles has increased by nearly a hundred per cent," writes John Seabrook in the September 2 issue of the New Yorker. During this period, he adds, road capacity increased by six per cent.
This trend towards traffic congestion has huge implications for the economy, and huge resources are being marshaled to fight it. The arsenal of tools being lined up for the battle include: technologies that provide information to drivers, enabling them to make better decisions about routes etc.; improving alternative means of transportation; better management of traffic with signals, signs and pavement markings; and increased management of traffic through restrictions such as limiting access, toll payments and even by prohibiting access by some vehicles at certain times.
The popular clamor for more roads, better roads is not likely to improve the situation, says Seabrook. "Increased road capacity alone can increase congestion, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as "Braess's paradox,' after a German mathematician named Dietrich Braess. In the twenty-three American cities that added the most new roads per person during the nineteen-nineties, traffic congestion rose by more than seventy per cent."
The future for drivers holds a dazzling but also ominous prospect of 'intelligent' vehicles, 'intelligent' roads, marvelous information technologies for the driver and, perhaps most ominous of all, a system of 'congestion pricing.' But perhaps the most difficult aspect of our driving future will be the intensifying political struggle over who can drive what and where, and at which times, and how the private automobile will fare in meeting transportation needs.
"Singapore and Oslo have built cordons (around their city centers), and they are planned for other European cities, including London. If Mayor Ken Livingstone has his way, beginning on February 17, 2003, any nonresident entering central London between 7 A.M. and 6:30 P.M., Monday to Friday, will have to pay a toll of five pounds per vehicle." Read the New Yorker article
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