Quote:
Originally Posted by craigs
I appreciate your skepticism given the context, but yes--the California Department of Transportation ("Caltrans") is reporting that count for the 60 freeway at Fairway Drive in the City of Industry for the year 2017 (newest available) on its website. Caltrans affirms that traffic counting is "generally performed by electronic counting instruments."
Go for the "by Webpage" option, as the Excel spreadsheet currently isn't available (because Caltrans). I chose the "Back AADT" count, rather than Ahead AADT, Back Peak Month or Ahead Peak Month, as it is in the middle of the pack. All counts for 60 @ Fairway range between 429,000 and 490,000.
Additionally, there is another stretch of the 60, at Nogales Street in Rowland Heights (about a mile from Fairway), with an Ahead AADT of 461,000--so either way, we have good reason to accept this is in fact the California freeway with the highest traffic counts.
But why? I am beginning to suspect this is not because of unusually heavy daytime volume, but rather, because of typically high (for LA) daytime volume plus relatively high overnight traffic counts. Wikipedia and the article I linked to and quoted above both note significant truck traffic between the massive LA/Long Beach port complex and railroad and truck distribution centers in the Inland Empire. Presumably, there are also a lot of trucks that just keep on truckin' out into a nation that is very hungry for Asian imports. A lot of truckers prefer to roll at night, when commuters are generally off the road. But that's just a theory, I could be completely wrong about why this is such a busy stretch of freeway. |
If you check the 2014 counts the numbers are much lower and more in line with what I would expect for an 8+2HOV highway. Nogales has a 231,000 count, conveniently almost exactly 1/2 of the 2017 numbers. Makes me think that there is an error in calculation. Could be wrong of course.. but a doubling of AADT in 3 years and just the general capacity of the highway makes me think 461,000 AADT isn't really possible.
An absolute maximum throughput of a vehicle lane is considered to be 1,800-1,900 vehicles an hour.. For an 8+2HOV configuration to accomodate 460,000 AADT, all 10 lanes would need to operate at 100% maximum capacity for 24 hours a day, and even then the aggressive 1,900 vehicles an hour number throughputs only 456,000 vehicles.
There are just too many things here pointing to it being an error.
I-405 between I-605 and State Highway 22 has an AADT of 377,000, and has 16 lanes, which makes that kind of throughput actually reasonably possible. My bet is that it is the busiest highway in LA.
As for the widest highway, I believe the 401 also claims that still in terms of "through" lanes, with 18 lanes between the 427 and 403/410. The Katy Highway uses it's service roads in it's lane counts, which aren't really "freeway" lanes. it has 4 HOV/Toll lanes, 10 general purpose lanes, and 6-8 service road lanes, which means it's really only a 14 lane freeway. Houston's planned re-configuring of it's downtown freeway loop would produce a 22 through lane wide highway though I believe, which would de-throne the 401.