Climate a missing piece in bike lane discussion

Of course it increases capacity.

Higher speed requires bigger distance between two cars. Higher speeds on two lanes lead to lane jumpers which leads to cut-in traffic, which leads to everyone hitting brake lights, which is leading to backups and congestion. This cannot be prevented, this leads to crashes, which lead to more congestion.

Road Diets and one lane traffic on the other hand pushes all cars into a very predictable and plannable pattern and lower speed, which allows higher capacity.

Urban capacity is NOT determined by the amount of lanes - it's determined by the traffic flow at intersections. That is why many road diets might be spreading out again into three lanes at the intersection.

If you want to understand the Braess' Paradox, remember the Carmaggadon in LA - when they threatened to take down a complete highway - and then it never happened.

Or when the Lord took down the famous Embarcadero Freeway because it was so ugly.

And nothing happened. It eventually led to better traffic everywhere in the area.

You sow lanes, you reap congestion.

You don't sow lanes, you breath fresh air.

Terence - the hair brained climatologists decided to hold the next top in Manaus, Brasil, which is inland on the Amazon River. A former rubber capital it is now choked with pollution. As there are few hotels, an entrepreneur has found a way to make big bucks by schlepping two giant cruise ships up the river and will be charging up to $10,000 per night for attendees. To give you some idea of the carbon footprint abuse, The Netherlands has decided to send only 100 bureaucrats for the two week event instead of the usual 200. That is just for the tiny Netherlands. One always wonders who is paying the tab and what gets accomplished there.

Two for one…

eGerd – TBot here. Of course it does not increase capacity. You can’t increase throughput on one lane unless you’re going to increase speeds to do so. As I’ve already explained a few times to your friend, joebob91, if you attempt to stuff the amount of traffic from two lanes into one lane there will be a slowdown/backup since each car takes up a finite amount of space and throughput has been cut in this case, by half. Resulting in slower speeds/more idling as traffic attempts to get through the bottleneck caused by a lane diet. As such, in addition to cars burning time as they take longer to sit/crawl through traffic they’ll also burn more carbon. Do you ever see traffic throughput increasing each time a lane is closed on a freeway? I think not. Instead, you’re likely to see more cars escape the lane restriction and this causes potential bottlenecks on other streets. Again, increasing carbon emissions. You put lanes on a diet, you reap congestion and idling times resulting in more emissions and less fresh air. BTW, what are you doing to reduce your carbon emissions? Or is your lack of response your answer?

Thanks, Dirk, for highlighting the location of the next climate conference. Folks around the world can take their 400+ private jets and who knows how many commercial jets to Manaus, Brazil. I don’t believe many flights fly directly into Manaus, which means less efficiency due to layovers and more carbon emissions while fuel is burned on more taxiing before takeoff and after landings. Hey eGerd, maybe we can run an experiment. Let’s restrict the number of flights and runways into Brazil and see if it increases capacity. I’m not sure how it works with Brazil air traffic control but I hope they don’t allow higher speed planes to cut in front of other planes. That’ll remove another of your concerns.