On a recent visit to Sarasota, Florida, I discovered multiple traffic circles on a major roadway (US-41):
I was not there at the busiest time of the day but it seemed that all the traffic was flowing fine through the roundabout. The biggest issue I could imagine for drivers is getting into the correct lane for where the driver wants to exit the traffic circle. For example, in the image above, to go straight, the driver could be in either lane but to go left or right, one has to pick the correct lane and then exit appropriately.
These were not the only traffic circles spotted in western Florida. I saw several under construction, both on existing roadways and along new roadways. The more constructed, the more familiar drivers will be with them.
One big advantage of these is that traffic can often keep moving rather than the stopping required by stop signs or traffic lights. If the driver has yielded, there is no need to stop if the coast is clear.
I do not know which American communities have more traffic circles than others but this could be an interesting way for places to distinguish themselves from others.
Whatever the outcome, Archer Heights and Joliet already illustrate one of the stark lessons of Chicago’s warehouse boom — that Americans can’t expect to enjoy the benefits of rapid, ever-growing freight shipments without paying for the necessary infrastructure and without encountering increasingly sophisticated demands from the towns being smothered by trucks.
Some of the listed negative consequences of all this trucking and shipping: traffic, noise, air pollution, extra stress on roads, and industrial neighbors for residents.
The primary positive consequences for a community: money from the land use and local jobs. The indirect consequence for many inside and outside the community: goods get to them faster.
Is it worth it? Would it work better to have giant shipping and trucking zones outside metropolitan areas where the pollution and noise and traffic could be minimized for nearby communities? This would require both foresight and resources. It reminds me of airports that are now surrounded by development or other major necessary infrastructure that is now folded into metropolitan landscapes.
Could one city or region figure this out? Imagine a special trucking and train zone outside of the metro region. The transportation actors get some tax breaks to locate there. The revenues from the land use are shared throughout the metropolitan region. Some current facilities are relocated to the new area.
Trucking may be essential to the American economy but it does not necessarily have to conflict with goals local residents and leaders have for their communities. It would require acting creatively and quickly to move shipping facilities away from people.
Under the plan, passenger car drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street during daytime hours would be charged $15 electronically, while the fee for small trucks would be $24 and large trucks would be charged $36.
Cities such as London and Stockholm have similar programs in place, but New York City is poised to become the first in the U.S.
Revenue from the tolls, projected to be roughly $1 billion annually, would be used to finance borrowing to upgrade the city’s mass transit systems…
Officials say that in addition to funding needed transit improvements, congestion pricing will result in improved air quality and reduced traffic…
“The Traffic Mobility Review Board’s recommended credit structure is wholly inadequate, especially the total lack of toll credits for the George Washington Bridge, which will lead to toll shopping, increased congestion in underserved communities, and excessive tolling at New Jersey crossings into Manhattan,” Murphy, who filed a federal lawsuit over congestion pricing in July, said in a statement.
In the US city with the highest rate of mass transit usage, this makes some sense. The roadways are crowded. Mass transit systems need money. At least some of the vehicles entering the city can afford the fee.
If this goes forward in Manhattan, how soon until it comes to other American cities? Those places may have fewer alternatives to driving but the revenue – and other benefits – might be hard for other places to pass up.
McDonald’s has several advantages in encouraging a smooth zipper merge process:
A shorter runway to merging. You often go around a turn, order, and immediately merge. In contrast, highway merges can sometimes be seen from a mile or more away and some want to block all that space.
A physical separation of the lanes before merging. The vehicles are ordering before merging and the need to have a display board and speaker means the lanes cannot be crossed into. Even if a driver wanted to block the other lane, the physical barriers make that difficult.
People want to get their food. While driving on the highway, the goal is to get somewhere quickly. Different motivations.
Might it matter that McDonald’s is private property while highways/roadways are more of open or public space?
Some of these principles could be applied to highways. Imagine temporary physical barriers between the lanes to force a merge closer to the end of the lanes. Or, reminders that blocking lanes has (legal?) consequences even though it is more public space.
The situation poses a commuting challenge that L.A. has not seen in years, with hundreds of thousands of commuters facing detours and heavier-than-normal traffic. Starting Monday, some worked from home and others took mass transit, but many simply endured the delays.
The closure caused gridlock in some areas, but there was general sentiment that L.A. survived the first morning and evening commute without too much chaos thanks in part to warnings sent to residents’ cellphones…
Federal, state and local agencies are scrambling to determine what happens next after the sudden closure of the mile-long section of the heavily trafficked freeway between Alameda Street and the East L.A interchange, a key east-west route through downtown. Mayor Karen Bass said that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg called and reassured her that federal officials were aware of the impact from closing one of the busiest freeway corridors in the country.
“Losing the stretch of the 10 Freeway will take time and money from people’s lives and businesses,” Bass said. “It’s disrupting in every way. Whether you were talking about traveling to and from work, or your child care plans, and the flow of goods and commerce, this will disrupt the lives of Angelenos.”
Los Angeles and the region depend heavily on highways. This is true of all metropolitan areas in the United States but Los Angeles is famous for its driving and its lack of mass transit within a sprawling region.
While I am sure the focus here will be on getting this highway going again as soon as possible, why not think as well as future transportation options? The initial Carmageddons in Los Angeles went rather smoothly but this is another chance to think about additional travel options and building an adaptable and redundant system. If for a variety of reasons residents of the region cannot drive to work or where they need to go, do they have viable alternatives? Fires like this are rare but individuals face all sorts of challenges in getting where they need to go.
More broadly, can more people in the region regularly shift their transportation away from driving alone to other options? As the population of the region grows, the traffic is not going away. Roads do need to be maintained. Accidents will happen on the roadways. When I rode the LA subway on a recent visit, it worked okay one-way (the return trip was derailed by a long delay that pushed me to walking several miles) but it had limited options of where I could go. Are many people willing to ride buses and other forms of mass transit when they might drive?
The highway detours will end at some point but will driving return to normal immediately? Probably yes…but there will likely be more opportunities to consider other transportation options in the years to come.
The Lake County Division of Transportation (LCDOT) closed Darrell, Neville and Case roads in Wauconda to through traffic for 110 days to construct a roundabout and realign the intersections…
This is the ninth roundabout in the Lake County Division of Transportation system. The $8.1 million project is the first of three roundabouts to be built as part of the Darrell Road corridor improvement.
Suburbanites are used to traffic lights and stop signs. Adding roundabouts or diamond interchanges presents a new dimension to driving. The roundabout offers the possibility of a smoother journey – if there is not too much traffic – but requires a different level of attention as there are multiple yield points.
Suburbanites can come to like roundabouts with experience. But, local drivers will likely need some time to get used to them. I am curious to see how many roundabouts will eventually populate the suburbs. They are likely not possible in many places due to existing land uses. However, if they help move traffic, are safe, and people can drive through them, we will probably see more of them in the Chicago region.
-The delayed start from a traffic light. Vehicles at the start of the line may not move for a few seconds after the light turns green, even when the path is clear. This slows down the rest of traffic, particularly when there are a lot of traffic lights in a row.
-The increased distance between vehicles. If drivers think they need more margin because they are not fully paying attention to the road, vehicles will be further spaced out.
-Not paying attention to directions or turns might mean people have to cut across lanes or make alternative paths.
Since traffic can act like waves, then even a slight disruption can have a ripple effect.
If all drivers took the “most efficient” or “fastest” routes according to their apps, would these hits to traffic be cancelled out?
It might also be worth remembering that one of the appeals of self-driving vehicles is that they could better address these issues. They could better safe themselves and adjust to changes in conditions around them.
In recently driving in and around several big cities, I was struck by what I could (and could not) see. I certainly observed a lot of motor vehicles on highways and roads.
It is long evident that Americans prioritize cars and trucks on their roads. There might be room for some pedestrians (be safe!), mass transit, and bicyclists and scooter users but these are not as numerous as all of the cars and trucks.
The range of vehicles really does run the gamut. On the same major roads, one can find all sorts of trucks (delivery trucks, dump trucks, tankers, car carriers, etc.) and cars ranging from expensive luxury models to those who look pieced together to newer electric vehicles. If I wanted to see what Americans are driving for personal and business trips, I would recommend driving some of the highways that go right through urban centers and one can observe a wide variety.
Even with at least some people working from home, there are plenty of vehicles at many hours of the day. For many residents and companies, it is easiest to go via vehicle than other option. Driving is still a preferred method, even in cities with busy roadways.
If a driver truly wanted to be safe and only focus on the road around them, there is plenty to see. On many of these busy roads, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of vehicles might pass by each day.
In most U.S. cities, traffic is less congested than it was in 2019, as fewer people commute to offices, according to mobility data company Inrix. In some Sunbelt cities, such as Miami, Nashville and Las Vegas, where the population has surged in recent years, it has become worse.
These cities also attracted more companies and tourists during the pandemic. Local roads, built decades ago for a much smaller population, are struggling to accommodate the new reality.
“They way underestimated their growth,” said Robert Cervero, professor emeritus of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, College of Environmental Design…
Sunbelt cities are particularly vulnerable to congestion because of poor public transit. Driving in New York City’s rush hour can be bumper-to-bumper, but many people take the subway. Most southern cities offer no such alternative…
For now, Sunbelt states are hoping to fight congestion by adding more roads and express lanes. Tennessee lawmakers are considering a proposal to add toll lanes on state roads. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently proposed spending more than $5 billion on highway construction and more than $800 million on rail and transit throughout the state.
Growth is good in the United States – until it threatens some of the attractive features of places that brought people there in the first place.
At what point do residents and businesses not move to growing regions because of congestion? These Sunbelt cities continue to have numerous attractive features even if they have more traffic.
Adding lanes to roads may appear proactive but it can lead to more attractive as more drivers think there is capacity. Considering mass transit is necessary but complicated by suburbanites who do not necessarily want transit to reach them, high costs to get basic mass transit in place (though this could help save money down the road), and limited interest in denser development.
Do smaller cities offer advantages here? I have heard this argument before: you can have more rural property conditions within a ten to twenty minute drive of the main shopping areas or the downtown. Achieving this is more difficult in a more populous area where there is more competition for land.
Gen Zers point to many reasons they are turning their backs on cars: anxiety, finances, environmental concern.Many members of Gen Z say they haven’t gotten licensed because they’re afraid of getting into accidents — or of driving itself. Madison Morgan, a 23-year-old from Kennewick, Wash., had multiple high school classmates pass away in driving accidents. Those memories loomed over her whenever she was behind the wheel…
Others point to driving’s high cost. Car insurance has skyrocketed in price in recent years, increasing nearly 14 percent between 2022 and 2023. (The average American now spends around 3 percent of their yearly income on car insurance.) Used and new car prices have also soared in the last few years, thanks to a combination of supply chain disruptions and high inflation…
E-scooters, e-bikes and ride-sharing also provideGen Zers optionsthat weren’t available to earlier generations. (Half of ride-sharing users are between the ages of 18 and 29, according to a poll from 2019.) And Gen Zers have the ability to do things online — hang out with friends, take classes, play games — which used to be available only in person…
But, he added, data has shown that U.S. car culture isn’t as strong as it once was. “Up through the baby boom generation, every generation drove more than the last,” Dutzik said. Forecasters expected that trend to continue, with driving continuing to skyrocket well into the 2030s. “But what we saw with millennials, I think very clearly, is that trend stopped,” Dutzik said.
Is less need for driving causing this or is driving viewed as less enjoyable and even reprehensible (climate change concerns)?
While per capita driving has plateaued, have other driving activities increased driving and traffic? For example, the number of deliveries from Amazon and similar companies did not exist in the same way nor did ride-sharing. Younger adults are driving less than older Americans but the world today depends on driving more than ever?
The last paragraph of the article emphasizes how planning could change based on less interest for driving. It would be interesting to see how planners and others work with both populations – younger Americans who do not drive as much and older Americans who drive a lot – to reach possible solutions.
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