Image transcript:

  • caption: “state DOTs presenting their groundbreaking solutions to traffic”
  • image: stock photo of people in business attire holding up a poster together with the text “just one more lane bro”
  • Chozo@kbin.social
    29·
    11 months ago

    I love this logic.

    How do we fix traffic in our city? Add another lane to the freeway. Okay, but to do that we’ll need to shut down 3 of the 4 existing lanes for traffic. During rush hour, of course. Yes, the traffic will be even worse during this time, but we’ll have the traffic fixed once the new lane opens up! We project that the construction will be finished in 5 years. But rest assured, it’ll take 10 years. And that new lane will be a toll lane, so nobody will even be using it.

    Austin is an absolutely terrible city when it comes to this sort of nonsense.

  • BeefPiano@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    11 months ago

    My state’s DOT measures success by Vehicle Miles Traveled. The more driving people do, the better the DOT is doing. Sprawl? Line goes up! One more lane? Line goes up!

    • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      16·
      11 months ago

      Honestly, that would explain a lot about why state DOTs are often so garbage. Sounds like a good example of Goodhart’s law:

      When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

      In this case, trying to use VMT as a measure of success just means they’ll favor projects that needlessly sprawl, instead of more compact or transit-oriented options.

  • Dozzi92@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    11 months ago

    They are in the process of doing this in NJ and it’s infuriating. The approach to the Holland Tunnel, which is busy (understatement), they’re adding another lane, as though that will somehow be the solution. And I can say with some authority that anyone who drives the Turnpike Extension through Jersey City, majority of those people are going to continue on if their destination is Manhattan. It is an absolutely boneheaded move, with plenty of public opposition, but they are chugging along. Smells like corruption to me.

    At the very least there are funds allocated and ground has broken building new train tunnels into NYC, but it’s bittersweet knowing billions are being wasted widening a road that doesn’t have a capacity problem so much as it has a 100 year old tunnel at its termination.

  • snekerpimp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    112·
    11 months ago

    “We’ll just put roundabouts instead of stop lights, it’s how Europe does it.”