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Found this article in the Atlanta thread. Very interesting read. Since most people here seem to complain about traffic more than anything else, I thought it would be cool to share this and get thoughts.
Those are definitely tired myths. I'd add another very common myth:
My commute isn't causing congestion for everybody else.
It's amazing to me how many people choose to live 10 or 15 miles from work and then complain about traffic. Of course sometimes living far from work is unavoidable, but more often it is a choice.
Many people see the congestion around them without ever considering if their lifestyle choice is part of the problem.
Adding roads is not a myth. This is in eyes of the Atlanta area which can and has traffic 2:00am on any given day. And a millions of more people than here. Here outside of rush hour traffic moves pretty good.99% of the people cant change the times they work so they have to be on the road 6am7am and off 5pm6pm which is when traffic is slow. Once a city gets to atlanta size then adding roads wont work. Thats when you result to investing major money in pulbic transportation which sucks by the way in atlanta. So this is not what the charleston area needs.. to follow cities like altanta/charlotte but be better
Adding and widening roads obviously reduces congestion, exactly the same way that adding more bandwidth reduces data congestion. However, it cannot be done haphazardly just by addressing it one road at a time when traffic becomes too much on that road, it is only effective when done holistically as part of a city wide road plan (and hopefully transportation plan which also includes public transport and bike lanes), because just like any congestion remedy, it is only as effective as its weakest choke point.
For example you can add as many lanes as you want on either side of John's island, but if you don't add bridges and widen the ones that are there the problem will persist ... but there is zero doubt that adding more access points to and from John's island would dramatically improve local traffic conditions. It will however push that better flowing traffic onto other parts of Charleston and create new choke points. And that's why it has to be done as part of a greater plan.
However all this is a pipe dream because that's not how municipal governments operate. They do patchwork solutions pushing traffic around in different areas depending on short term budget considerations and things spiral out of control until there's no real solution available. So you get terrible results such as in cities like Atlanta, DC, where they just do the best they can working around some of the mistakes they made in the past with their short term thinking. Eventually it'll all lead to what they had to do in many European cities where they just close entire sections of cities to private cars. NYC will probably be the first to do this. I don't think this is a consideration in Charleston for a very long time to come, if ever because we're talking about major metro areas here, we'd have to have our population explode to probably ten times what it is now for such draconian measures to be considered, and that sort of population expansion would probably take more than 100 years to unfold, if not much more.
Charleston at its current size does have the opportunity to be ahead of the curve in regards to a comprehensive transportation plan that would mitigate future traffic congestion ... but like I said, I doubt that they have either the money or political will to do it, cause no voter wants to see their money spent on something that will benefit someone else down the line. In short, get used to complaining more about it.
Thats true. Goverment likes to save money for themselfs for random things If any city were to get new roads it would be columbia first because its the capital. Most of all capital cities gets things before anywhere else. Look at charlotte/Raleigh. Charlotte is alot bigger but goverment was focused on raleigh area, improving things around raleigh before charlotte even though charlotte was bigger and been in need of mew roads. 485 should of been complete years ago. Independence road should have been upgraded years ago. Light rail should have been done. Government operates the same way in every state. The only States i dont see this is California,texas, and Florida
Charleston needs to improve its road and street signage big time. Guiding motorists early and clearly to where they want to go would cut out a lot of last-second lane changes that cause kinks in traffic flow and even accidents.
Charleston needs to improve its road and street signage big time. Guiding motorists early and clearly to where they want to go would cut out a lot of last-second lane changes that cause kinks in traffic flow and even accidents.
I agree. As a native, I usually know where I'm going, but when traveling with someone from out of town, it always strikes me how bad our signage is. Of course, our streets downtown are peculiar anyway. You can tell who knows Charleston and who doesn't by how they change lanes on Calhoun Street in advance of the turn lanes and parked cars.
Ehh.
The I-26/526 thing can be a piece of cake, compared to even getting to it in Summerville.
I only live 3.5 miles from 26, and often it takes longer to get there than it does the rest of the trip into/out of Charleston, MtP, the airport or wherever.
Last edited by MinkeyM; 01-03-2016 at 09:51 PM..
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