Quote:
Originally Posted by movebyleap
Odd. I guess it makes sense if there is an alternate route (bus etc) going in the same direction. There's nothing like it in Ottawa'a case.
Are you absolutely positive that they actually GET RID of a lane in Holland? Because I've read that in Britain and France they're coping with congestion by adding an extra lane "on the cheap" by narrowing the existing lanes.
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Yes, you're right, there has to be an equivalent investment in transit to avoid making things unbearable. We have a good trunk BRT but the rest of our regular routes could use higher frequencies. That's the Ottawa equivalent we'd need.
As for France and Britain, depends where. Most french cities have put in tram lines on congested corridors. The most recent example is the Parisian tram line on the Boulevard des Maréchaux. There are now 4 tram lines in Paris with plans for line extensions and new lines.
Adding lanes "on the cheap" can give you more capacity but will result in lower speeds. Your lateral comfort zone is smaller so you don't take as many chances. Also it's harder and takes longer to perform multiple lane changes when you need to turn.
The most extreme example I've seen of "adding lanes on the cheap" were in Cairo, Egypt. It's really interesting, their major arteries have
no lane markings on them at all. Cars behave as pedestrians, they just go where there is space, everything moves at about 20 km/h, there are very few signalized intersections and a lot of roundabouts, so things keep flowing, and everyone uses the horn all the time because cars have squeezed out as many lanes as traffic demands depending on the time of day and you have very little space between moving cars. Plus, every other car is a dented Fiat 1500 from about 1960.
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