Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > North Carolina > Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary
 [Register]
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary The Triangle Area
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 09-27-2017, 12:56 PM
 
2,819 posts, read 2,570,202 times
Reputation: 3554

Advertisements

Falls was bad again this morning. So far both mornings ah e doubled my usual commute time because of how backed up Falls was. No major difference once on 540 either. Still trying to be optimistic but starting to look at options other than 540.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 09-27-2017, 03:14 PM
rfb
 
Location: Raleigh, NC
2,593 posts, read 6,334,764 times
Reputation: 2822
Quote:
Originally Posted by annabanana123 View Post
Falls was bad again this morning. So far both mornings ah e doubled my usual commute time because of how backed up Falls was. No major difference once on 540 either. Still trying to be optimistic but starting to look at options other than 540.
If enough drivers find alternatives to 540 for their commutes, traffic on 540 will be reduced and therefore more free-flowing, and the traffic planners can claim success
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 03:38 PM
 
2,819 posts, read 2,570,202 times
Reputation: 3554
Yeah...the problem really is that they need to widen it again. Perhaps the city could try to use foresight and add two lanes this time! (Oh wait, it's raleigh...they don't plan ahead).

While I'd feel bad for property owners who may lose some land in the deal if you own property near a major road or highway that is a risk you take when you purchase it. Any realtor worth their commission would point that out in the transaction.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 03:56 PM
 
Location: Raleigh, NC
6,650 posts, read 5,553,233 times
Reputation: 5517
Quote:
Originally Posted by annabanana123 View Post
Yeah...the problem really is that they need to widen it again. Perhaps the city could try to use foresight and add two lanes this time! (Oh wait, it's raleigh...they don't plan ahead).

While I'd feel bad for property owners who may lose some land in the deal if you own property near a major road or highway that is a risk you take when you purchase it. Any realtor worth their commission would point that out in the transaction.
I'm totally fine with making attempts to optimize travel with the roads/lanes that are out there already. Widening projects come with significant impacts, take time & money, so it should really be a last resort.

It's also been shown that new lanes will increase traffic at a faster rate than if the new lanes weren't added so you'll continually need to widen just to keep pace (how many lanes do you want 540 to be? 10? 15?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
Induced demand, or latent demand, is the phenomenon that after supply increases, more of a good is consumed. This is entirely consistent with the economic theory of supply and demand; however, this idea has become important in the debate over the expansion of transportation systems, and is often used as an argument against increasing roadway traffic capacity as a cure for congestion. This phenomenon, called induced traffic, is a contributing factor to urban sprawl. City planner Jeff Speck has called induced demand "the great intellectual black hole in city planning, the one professional certainty that everyone thoughtful seems to acknowledge, yet almost no one is willing to act upon.
(Side note, also interesting to note that the reverse is true - typically people hate when cities do road diets or reduce lanes because they think traffic will get worse, but actually there rarely are negative impacts because fewer people will end up using the road - see the Reduced Demand section of that Wikipedia page)

Also, 540 is a NCDOT road so NCDOT is responsible, not the City.

I'm sure any widening of 540 will be toll lanes in the future (since that seems to be the trend in NC).
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 04:17 PM
DPK
 
4,594 posts, read 5,700,879 times
Reputation: 6220
Quote:
Originally Posted by annabanana123 View Post
Yeah...the problem really is that they need to widen it again. Perhaps the city could try to use foresight and add two lanes this time! (Oh wait, it's raleigh...they don't plan ahead).

While I'd feel bad for property owners who may lose some land in the deal if you own property near a major road or highway that is a risk you take when you purchase it. Any realtor worth their commission would point that out in the transaction.
No they don't need to keep widening it -- it's already ridiculous, we can't widen it forever. We need to invest in HOT lanes or better public transit centers that actually take commuters from point A to B in a timely fashion.

It's also not really the cities fault for this, outside of allowing continuous unmitigated sprawl. 540 is a state maintained road, ie: NCDOT.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 05:06 PM
 
127 posts, read 134,676 times
Reputation: 131
There's too many employment centers, and traffic isn't bad enough to really see mass transit as viable here.
Hard to see ramp lights helping. People here already merge immediately as entering, and ones on the highway just brake instead of getting out of the right lane. Which just drags the right lane to an immediate stop, and then those people jump into the middle lane without being up to speed, dragging that one to a stop.

With these lights do people use more of the lane, or do they still immediately merge regardless of whether they are speed matching the right lane?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 05:23 PM
 
4,255 posts, read 4,676,163 times
Reputation: 4068
NCDOT certainly has the intent, if not an actual plan, to widen the original 540 between RTP and Falls of Neuse. New lanes would be high-occupancy, variable pricing, or both.

Traffic on the original 540 is the direct consequence of a decision 60 years ago to found RTP. Without RTP this area would probably still be a backwater, albeit with a state capital and a few universities.

Because of the deliberately spread-out nature of RTP and the surrounding office parks, mass transit will never help much with existing traffic. However, if Amazon HQ2 were to be built along the RR corridor through RTP, mass transit could prevent the traffic problem from geting a lot worse.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 07:15 PM
 
127 posts, read 134,676 times
Reputation: 131
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard-xyzzy View Post
NCDOT certainly has the intent, if not an actual plan, to widen the original 540 between RTP and Falls of Neuse. New lanes would be high-occupancy, variable pricing, or both.

Traffic on the original 540 is the direct consequence of a decision 60 years ago to found RTP. Without RTP this area would probably still be a backwater, albeit with a state capital and a few universities.

Because of the deliberately spread-out nature of RTP and the surrounding office parks, mass transit will never help much with existing traffic. However, if Amazon HQ2 were to be built along the RR corridor through RTP, mass transit could prevent the traffic problem from geting a lot worse.
You got it.
HQ2 could be a real game changer for any city, but only IF their employment projections are true (I won't hold my breath). They are estimating up to 50,000, for reference the largest employers in RTP right now are IBM(10K), Cisco(5K), and Fidelity(3K)

The problem with RTP was that they have targeted all these secluded corporate campuses, and made no attempt for higher density, and keeping workers close. RTP is a ghost town after 6pm. Forget mass transit, the best thing that you could have done, and still can do is keeping workers close to where they work.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 07:51 PM
 
Location: Raleigh NC
3,644 posts, read 8,558,701 times
Reputation: 4505
From what I saw 540 was flowing smoothly. That is the purpose of the ramp meters. They work plain and simple.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 09-27-2017, 08:01 PM
rfb
 
Location: Raleigh, NC
2,593 posts, read 6,334,764 times
Reputation: 2822
Quote:
Originally Posted by underPSI View Post
From what I saw 540 was flowing smoothly. That is the purpose of the ramp meters. They work plain and simple.
Yes and no. Flowing smoothly was a goal, but not at the expense of merging traffic spending an inordinate amount of time waiting to get onto I-540. Maybe they'll figure out a good balance going forward, maybe not.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:



Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > North Carolina > Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 04:53 AM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top