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The 401 in Toronto has close to 35 miles of 14+ lanes with only a 1-2 mile break that has fewer lanes around the airport. It's not just the 401 that's very wide though. Much of the 427 is around 14 lanes, and the 403 and 409 have small sections that are 14+ lanes. You also have the 404 which is 12 lanes and the 400 which is 10 lanes. I guess after they decided not to build all the freeways headed into downtown, they had to widen the others instead.
but the NYC metro area doesn't have many many freeways (a term not used on the East Coast much) with lots of lanes; more than 3 lanes in each direction is rare.
Looking at all the horrific freeway images makes me very happy to live in a city (Pittsburgh) with highways that are at most three lanes wide each way and mostly only two. I'd shoot myself if I had to drive on those crazy 12 lane monstrosities on a daily basis.
I used to be a delivery driver in the Nashville area, and in some stretches the freeways might be five or six lanes in one direction, maybe more when there's a couple of lanes that are actually exits. But holy cow, some of the pictures in this thread are blowing my mind. 20+ lanes?! And it's only a matter of time before even a 20 lane freeway will be just as congested as it was when it was 18 lanes, or 16 lanes, etc. My home town experienced rapid growth throughout the 90s and still to this day. Often times there would be a section of road that was notorious for being a bottleneck, so they would widen it. At first it would help, but inevitably it would become a bottleneck again, and usually it didn't take long for that to happen.
I compare it to another phenomenon I've experienced several times. I worked in various warehouses for years, and they were always crowded with too many products. Often times we could rearrange things and create more space, but in no time at all that new space would be full and we'd be right back where we were. In one case, an entirely new building was constructed on the same lot, the exact same size as the old warehouse. So we suddenly had double the space, and at first it was wonderful. In fact, we almost had too much space. But after four years? Both warehouses were just as crowded as the first one was before. I guess the reasons are different, but it certainly reminded me of what seems to happen when roads are widened.
but the NYC metro area doesn't have many many freeways (a term not used on the East Coast much) with lots of lanes; more than 3 lanes in each direction is rare.
chicago dan ryan expressway has 9 lanes going each direction four on one side going north and 5 going north on the other side. We also have a train that runs in the median of our hyway. We also have tolls
One train used to capacity can take up to 600 cars off the road.
In Chicago alone, CTA gives more than 100,000 rides a day (i think this also includes buses, but I'm not entirely sure). That is 100,000 cars that aren't on the road.
I don't know about NYC's numbers, but it's considerably more.
So just imagine how terrible the gridlock would be if transit magically disappeared one day.
I still maintain that widening highways and building more of them does not make things better. Maybe temporarily, but then people decide to take the "new" or "widened" highway because it's "faster" and then you wind up back where you started.
Transit doesn't solve everything, but it does alleviate traffic.
The CTA provides way more rides than that. According to Wikipedia and the CTA website the CTA provides 1.7 million rides on an average weekday. 750,000 on the trains and 950,000 on the buses.
I absolutely hate driving. It just stresses me out. I would much rather take a train where I can read or do stuff on my phone (standing or sitting) and have a relatively predictable schedule of when I'll get to my destination (unless the trains are delayed).
Wasting my life sitting in a car and stuck on an expressway staring at the bumper stickers of the car in front of me sounds awful and unproductive. I hope I never have to live in a city where car ownership is a necessity ever again. That pretty much limits me to NYC & Chicago (I've heard you might be able to get by in Boston & San Francisco depending on where you live).
That pretty much limits me to NYC & Chicago (I've heard you might be able to get by in Boston & San Francisco depending on where you live).
And DC. The DC metro system gets a higher ridership than the Chicago L. Parts of Philly could be an option as well.
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