Will getting rid of all large diesel trucks lessen traffic congestions?

[Ferzerp]

I think if we get rid of all bus lanes that would be a start.


funny thing is I am wearing jeans and a dress shirt


/jezza

HOV lanes are the most asinine idea in the world. Let us take the busiest travel times, and artificially reduce our highway capacity. Whoever thought that was good planning was just silly.

 

[jlee]

HOV lanes are the most asinine idea in the world. Let us take the busiest travel times, and artificially reduce our highway capacity. Whoever thought that was good planning was just silly.

It's nice having a motorcycle.

 

[Ferzerp]

When I had to commute with HOV lanes (I now have a 3 mile, secondary street commute), I just ignored them. The cost to me was a whopping $60 for 2-3 years of HOV lane usage. Around here, they get ignored, and you end up with herd protection. Like a tightly packed school of fish, each individual driver knows that the chance of being stopped is so low as to be well worth the risk of a very cheap ticket in order to not allow backwards regulations to make everyone spend yet more time commuting.


edit: The fine doesn't even seem high enough that they can use it as a revenue stream either. $60 for the policeman's time, vehicle wear, processing, etc. If they do make money off it, it surely isn't much.

 

[DominionSeraph]

HOV lanes are the most asinine idea in the world. Let us take the busiest travel times, and artificially reduce our highway capacity. Whoever thought that was good planning was just silly.

The extra lanes are purchased with the hopes of changing commuter behavior to make ALL lanes more efficient, thus making the purchase/upkeep of the transportation infrastructure get more value for the dollar. Highways don't infinitely scale unto themselves; they dump into surface streets and, if those streets can't handle the traffic, the highway's gonna get backed up no matter what its capacity. Upgrading surface streets tends to be an urban planning nightmare. It doesn't help that nobody ever wants to pay for future needs so upgrades are only done to barely handle current traffic.
HOV lanes strive to cut down on the number of large passenger vehicles carrying only a single passenger, and their presence gives municipalities the opportunity to implement mass transit: A bus isn't attractive to passengers if it is stuck in traffic with everyone else, but give it a priority bus lane on surface streets and an HOV lane on the highways and suddenly it starts to look pretty attractive compared to being stuck in the prison of bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours every day.

 

[Ferzerp]

There was no purchase of extra lanes. Existing, full lanes, just had the stupid diamond painted on them and those signs put up.

Nice dream world pictures that in no way reflect the way the world works with the sprawl that is the USA population. You've posted the justification, but not the actual result.

Even where new lanes are built, they just *do not work*. You can't alter behavior through legislation like that.

Your picture is a dream world. What's more, gasoline taxes are collected to build the roads, more traffic, means more revenue, which means more money for roads.

 

[Railgun]

Cal Trans just opened up 2 HOV/Carpool lanes on the 15 freeway
Now if they would only expand the 78 freeway...

Just? Wow...

I used to live in Oceanside back in 96-98 and pool lanes on the 5 didn't seem to do squat. The few times I did pop on the 15 didn't seem so bad, but that was 15 years ago now so....

As far as truck traffic...I don't think it's going to really matter. I'd say the vast majority of them at least stick to the right, and get back to the right if they do pass. In cities like Chicago, they ban most/all truck traffic on some of the thoroughfares into the city (LSD for example).

I also don't think that banning cell phones are going to mean squat. Illinois already has...no change.

People simply not following common sense rules of the road..IE keeping their collective arses to the right are the main issue. How many times do you see someone with about 100 car lengths in front with three right lanes open parked in the left? More often than not I'd bet.

Secondly, how many congested off ramps do you pass where you see someone in the left lane or two trying to get around all that, then try to squeeze in at the last min and then block said lane or two?

Open road tolls for those that are toll roads is one answer.

Better on/off ramps. Everyone ever been through the circle interchange in Chicago? Enough said. Or how about the Hillside strangler?

More lanes. It's as simple as that. All the construction that Chicago has done and it really didn't do all that much. Yeah, the Ryan is a bit better, but not THAT much. 294 IS however better in most cases, though through Willow Springs it was still a bear.

I can only speak for Chicago (don't even get me started on London). Other cities I haven't been to in a LONG time so I have no idea what their traffic is like these days.

 

[DominionSeraph]

There was no purchase of extra lanes. Existing, full lanes, just had the stupid diamond painted on them and those signs put up.

Your personal problems are your own.
HOV implementation is usually a part of a highway widening project as most highways are simply too small to have an HOV lane. I don't think I've ever seen one on less than a four-lane highway.

There's no need for the personal attack.

Zenmervolt - AnandTech Moderator

 

[Ferzerp]

Your personal problems are your own.

We tend to treat one another with a bit more respect here and avoid throwing insults about as if they're relevant to the conversation.

 

[bobdole369]

HOV lanes are sort of like parking meters in a city. They place a cost on using limited resources. The idea is NOT to make traffic for everyone better, it is to help a number of people willing to pay more get through the snot. In this case the paying more is to ensure you have 2 people or 3 or whatever in the car. If each car has 1 person, but those wishing to use the lanes carpool, than that is 1 car not on the freeway. A side effect is to ever so slightly lessen the snot.

I-95 in Miami instituted paid express lanes that cost based on traffic flow. They took 5 lanes of travel, reduced it to either 4 or 3 free lanes and 1 or 2 express lanes. The cost is anywhere from a quarter up past $10. The side effect is that by dividing the lanes individual cars have less lanes to move around and potentially cause accidents. This has actually reduced the accident rate. Also the average speed during rush hour went from 27mph up past 45mph. So it does seem to work.

 

[bobdole369]

I have always been a proponent of the obviously ludicrous idea that trucks and busses need to have their own freeways. I also think that bridges with exits before and after should exist instead of traffic lights for major avenues.

 

[Doppel]

The number of highway clusterf*cks that I've seen from trucks is ridiculously small; far smaller proportionally than the number of trucks on the road.

The problem isn't the semis, the problem is idiots in cars.

ZV

Agree, i think truckers in general are far better drivers than the average automobile driver. Really this goes for any professional driver, they have to be. if they suck and are causing an accident every 50-100k miles of driving they'll be out of work very quickly.

 

[KeithP]

The extra lanes are purchased with the hopes of changing commuter behavior to make ALL lanes more efficient, thus making the purchase/upkeep of the transportation infrastructure get more value for the dollar.

The logic behind HOV is unbelievably flawed. The idea is to get people to commute together so they can use a lane that is less crowded. However, if a large number of people actually did this the HOV lane would become clogged, even more so than the regular traffic lanes, and if that happened there would be no reason to use them.

So this means that HOV lanes only work as an incentive to carpool as long as nobody actually does it in large enough numbers that would be the idea useful. HOV lanes are the poster child for stupid government programs that hurt more than they help.

-KeithP

 

[Dr. Detroit]

I would like to see restrictions put in for urban areas with massive traffic congestion.

Port of Oakland container shipping trucks trying to get out to/from the central valley by way of I-880, 238,580,205, I-5.

Why not restrict them for 6hrs a day. 6:30am - 9:30am and 4pm - 7pm.

Smaller delivery trucks are fine.

 

[Ferzerp]

The logic behind HOV is unbelievably flawed. The idea is to get people to commute together so they can use a lane that is less crowded. However, if a large number of people actually did this the HOV lane would become clogged, even more so than the regular traffic lanes, and if that happened there would be no reason to use them.

So this means that HOV lanes only work as an incentive to carpool as long as nobody actually does it in large enough numbers that would be the idea useful. HOV lanes are the poster child for stupid government programs that hurt more than they help.

-KeithP

Plus the tax revenue would go down, so the existing infrastructure couldn't be maintained, so they would have to shrink the roads and we'd be back where we started.

 

[soccerballtux]

[p&n]Which would require massive amounts of locally sourced materials, and provide massive amounts of jobs, lets spend the money on bank bailouts and questionable wars instead.[/p&n] Oh yeah, and lets close thousands of bridges because we can't afford to maintain/repair them.

Either way, the driver is the most dangerous variable in the equation and will continue to be while it is so stinking easy to get a license. As pointed out above, CDL requirements are more stringent than a regular license, more expensive and harder to renew.

Ferzerp, the truckers you describe are pretty rare in my experience, do you live near the west coast? I definitely saw this more frequently when I lived in New Mexico, but traffic density was so low most of the time it didn't matter as much. I almost always see trucks driving pretty well around here on the major interstates, and we have a notoriously fucked I70-I71 interchange around here. All of this applies to off-peak times, at rush hour it is cut-throat driving all around, but actually works pretty well, IMO.

lol last time people talked about these massive amounts of jobs, less than 0.5% of the stimulus was spent on these so called massive amounts of infrastructure jobs.

 

[uli2000]

Sure, ban the trucks. Just get used to paying 4x what you do now for goods since there won't be an effective way to transport them. What will you replace them with? Pickups. Yeah, like the 100 pickups it will take to transport the load of 1 semi will be better for traffic. And don't say trains or ships because 99% of businesses still would need to transport goods from the railyard/dock.

 

[RU482]

I'd prefer 3 lane highways where semis were prohibited from using the leftmost lane, but that requires massive infrastructure upgrades.

I honestly don't understand why big rigs bother getting into the left lane on a 2-lane freeway. The logistical equipment (engine management + GPS tracking with real time cellular feedback to the home base) that the drivers are bound by limits the speed, RPMs, and Gs so much, why bother dicking around passing another rig to go 1MPH faster?

 

[Railgun]

I honestly don't understand why big rigs bother getting into the left lane on a 2-lane freeway. The logistical equipment (engine management + GPS tracking with real time cellular feedback to the home base) that the drivers are bound by limits the speed, RPMs, and Gs so much, why bother dicking around passing another rig to go 1MPH faster?

For most logistical companies, Allied, JB Hunt, etc, sure. For the many independant owners or some smaller organizations not so much.

For local haulers they don't have anything either.

Plenty of times out in the middle of nowhere did I see a rig doing a good 10-15, maybe even 20 over depending on what the limit was.

 

[Jeffg010]

My only problem with trucks is the idiots that drive in PA. In PA we have lots of hills so the truck drivers will gun it down the hill to get up the next hill. I have been blown by them at over 90 on a 55. You better not be in front of them if you are going down a hill. They will ride your ass even if you can't move out of the way they are looking to get that speed to get up the next hill. Just take a ride on interstate 79 and 80 in PA and you will know what I'm talking about.

 

[RU482]

For most logistical companies, Allied, JB Hunt, etc, sure. For the many independant owners or some smaller organizations not so much.

For local haulers they don't have anything either.

Plenty of times out in the middle of nowhere did I see a rig doing a good 10-15, maybe even 20 over depending on what the limit was.

I guess I'm thinking of the asshat truck drivers that play leepfrog, and take 5 minutes to pass because they are going a fraction of a mile per hour faster than the truck they are passing.

 

[Kelvrick]

Looks like a big rig rolled over on I5 in Sacramento today. Completely destroyed the freeways going north into downtown. Reminds me of last year when one going southbound skipped over the barrier and ended up on the northbound side. Once again screwing over northbound traffic into downtown in the morning.

I think it took me 2 hours stuck in the freeway that morning.