How to Fix Traffic Forever | Wendover Productions

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1:01All the features of Big Wireless Service for half the cost. Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply, standard rate applies at month 13. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. This video was made possible by Blue Apron. The first 100 people to sign up using the link in the description get three free delicious fresh meals from Blue Apron. In 2004, the American Highway Users Alliance published an article claiming that the Katie Freeway in Houston, Texas was the second most congested road in America. Driver spent a combined 25.4 million hours every year sitting in traffic on that road. That's 36 lifetimes worth. It was an absolute embarrassment of a road for Texas. So they decided to spend $2.8 billion to expand it to 28 lanes, making it the widest highway in the world. All this extra capacity would surely fix the problem. More lanes means more room for more cars which means shorter travel times, right?

2:03Unfortunately not. Between 2011 and 2014 alone, travel times on the Katie Freeway increased by up to 55%. It now takes an average of 64 minutes to drive the 28 miles between downtown Houston and Katie Land during the afternoon rush hour. That's up from 41 minutes in 2011. The problem with this project was that the solution violated the fundamental law of road congestion. More lanes mean more traffic. This probably seems counterintuitive. The more lanes there are, the higher the capacity a road has so cars should be able to drive faster. But that's a very narrow analysis of the problem. You can't just think about how this would work on one road. You have to think about it in the context of a whole city. Many people choose not to drive places because of how long it takes. If the traffic is bad, they can take public transit or wait until a less busy time or just not travel at all. When a road is expanded, travel times initially decrease. So all those people who chose not to drive or to take an alternate route or whatever

3:05decide to switch to using that newly expanded road. What's fascinating about roads is that this happens at a perfect one to one ratio. If the capacity of a road doubles, the amount of people using that road will also double. If it doubles again, the amount will again double. Of course, if you kept doing this over and over again, you would eventually build a big enough road that there wouldn't be any more cars to fill the road. But in the real world, where demand for roads far outstrips supply, drivers will adjust to any change in road capacity. So does that mean it's hopeless? Is there no way to solve traffic? No way to make our roads better and safer and more efficient? Well, no, there's plenty we can do. Here's the thing about traffic. It slows down exponentially. The 20,000th car on the road slows down traffic overall significantly more than the 5,000th car. This is a major driver for a lot of jams. A small addition of cars leads to a large addition in congestion. But it also makes solving traffic a bit easier since you only need to remove a small amount of cars

4:07from the road and that's just what ramp meters do. Ramp meters are set up on the on ramps of highways to restrict the amount of people getting on the highway. They usually let one car on every five or six seconds. Since the amount of cars actually on the highway is kept down, the highway stays at its most efficient speed. Minnesota did an experiment where they shut down their long used ramp meters for eight weeks in order to see if they actually worked. And they found that the highway capacity decreased by 9%, travel times increased by 22%, speed's dropped by 7%, and crashes increased by 26%. Stockholm Sweden used that exponential nature of traffic to decrease travel times by up to 40% in 2006. Stockholm is a city lies across 14 islands, which means that all the bridges act as huge choke points. Traffic, therefore, was historically horrible for this relatively small city. On January 3, 2006, Stockholm started to charge drivers who entered this central perimeter, the busiest area.

5:08The charge wasn't much between 10 and 20 Corona, the equivalent of one and two US dollars. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade Electrolites, Zero Sugar, and Vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolites. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox on a botch a line of talks in A,

6:09prevents headaches and adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. A lurcher doctor right away is difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. A lurchic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lugeric's disease, myasthenia-gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botch a line of toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxCronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. It was enough to persuade 20% of drivers to not enter the central perimeter. They either went downtown on public transport or walked or didn't go at all. These are the amounts of daily drivers

7:10in the perimeter in the years leading up to the charge. As soon as the charge was implemented in 2006, the daily amount dropped down to here. It wasn't a fluke. After the six-month initial trial period, driving in the central core became free again, and the amount of daily drivers increased to nearly the level it was before. When the charge became permanent in 2007, daily numbers once again plummeted. Even though the charge was minuscule, it was enough to dissuade tens of thousands of people from using those roads. There are really two costs of driving, the money and the time. When the time it takes to drive isn't enough of a cost to prevent people from driving. These charges increase the overall cost to a level where some people will decide not to drive. But what about safety? Roads are still unbelievably dangerous. In any given year, one out of every 10,000 people in the US die in a car accident. Just think about how high of a proportion that is. If you go to a Redskins game at FedEx Field near Washington, DC, eight of the people sitting

8:12in the stands with you will die in the next year in a car accident. It turns out one of the best ways to prevent accidents is with something you've almost certainly already seen or used the roundabout. There's a reason you see these more and more. Roundabouts reduce deaths in serious injuries by 90%. That is not an error. With roundabouts, there's almost no opportunity for the worst type of collision. The head-on, full-speed crash. In a traditional intersection, cars come within feet of each other while going at a relative speed of up to 100 miles per hour. A head-on crash at that speed is undoubtedly catastrophic. With roundabouts, cars naturally slow down to about 15 to 25 miles per hour since they're going around a curve. Also, if there were to be a collision, it would either be a side impact collision if a car failed to turn into the circle or a side to side collision if a car misjudged the curve. Both of these collisions happen at a low relative speed so fatalities are low. But what about capacity?

9:13Surely the lower speed roundabouts cause horrible traffic problems. Well, they don't. A single lane roundabout can handle a maximum of 1,800 vehicles per hour, which is exactly the same as a traditional two-lane-signaled intersection. While cars will move through a signaled intersection at a much higher speed, they have to wait both for the light to change and left turning cars. With roundabouts, you have a smooth, consistent, albeit slower flow. So what's the problem? Why haven't we replaced every intersection with roundabout? Well, there are disadvantages. They're more difficult for pedestrians, especially those who are deaf or blind, they require a larger footprint, they're more expensive to maintain. But the real reason roundabouts are not ubiquitous nowadays is because of the biggest fallacy in road design. That drivers need rules. Point in, just outside of Manchester, UK, used to have a typical, rather dreary intersection and nobody really liked it. Cars would back up for miles, pedestrians had to wait forever for the light to change, and it essentially split the town apart.

10:15So someone had the idea to remove the traffic lights, remove the zebra crossings, the curbs, remove almost every safety device in the intersection, and just set up two adjoining roundabouts. Surely this would wreak havoc. But it didn't. Turns out, when people are uncomfortable, when people aren't really sure what's going on, they pay more attention. The green light was a signal to people that the road was clear, that it was safe to speed, that they could let their guard down. But after the change, the cars were able to flow freely, albeit at a slow pace, instead of waiting for the lights to change. Pedestrian incidents went down, collisions went down, traffic flowed faster, and the city center finally had some character. So, all around the world, cities are replicating what pointin did. They're removing curbs. Propel fitness water. With Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins, propel hydrates better than water, to help you get the most out of your workout, and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes.

11:15When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at nnd.com slash podcast. That's nnd.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed sponsor jobs. Visible puts unlimited 5G data and hotspot in the palm of your hand, powered by Verizon's 5G network, with no contract holding you back. And for a limited time, you can get visible for just $19 a month for 12 months when you use promo code Save6. All the features of big wireless service, for half the cost. Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply, standard rate applies at month 13. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. Traffic lights and pedestrian crossings to make one shared space.

12:17All around the world, these streets are resulting in fewer accidents and more pedestrian space. Discomfort is saving lives. On a larger scale, there's one more innovative intersection design that's beginning to save lives, that diverging diamond interchange. This interchange is designed as a way to get more cars on and off the highways faster. After the on ramp to the right side, the road crosses over so cars never have to traverse active lanes to get onto the highway. A car heading north can effortlessly join the on ramp without crossing traffic, and a car heading south will cross over so it drives on the left side and can effortlessly join the on ramp to head south. Not only is this easier for drivers, it improves safety. The dangerousness of an intersection is often rated by determining the number of conflict points. Possible points where accidents could happen under normal circumstances. With a traditional on ramp intersection, there are 26. With a diverging diamond intersection, only 14. And they're faster too.

13:17The US Department of Transportation found in a study that universally, whether the traffic was light or heavy, diverging diamond interchanges let more cars through faster. It costs less too. A traditional on ramp intersection requires $11.3 million to build. A diverging diamond intersection, only $5.7 million. There are really no major disadvantages to this intersection. So nearly 100 of them have been built to date, and more and more are being installed each month. As good as these solutions sound, there's no one way to solve traffic. The difference between cities with chronic traffic problems and those without is a combination of smart policies and designs that mitigate the effects of having more road demand than supply. But traffic won't just fix itself. So until cities at least experiment with solutions, we're all condemned to traffic forever. Fixing traffic is all about saving time and improving the environment. And so is Blue Apron.

14:18They ship pre-apportioned meals straight to your doorstep, sourced directly from sustainable farms and fisheries. Blue Apron sent me a box to try out, and it was a fantastic meal. You're shipped the exact amount of everything you need so you don't have to do any measuring. Not only does this save time, it also minimizes food waste. They give you these clear concise instructions, so even the least experienced chefs can work with their recipes. So here's the meal I made. It was healthy, quick, filling, and delicious. And the good news is that you can get a meal just like this for free. Blue Apron is offering the first 100 Windover Productions viewers that sign up with the link in the description, three free meals so you can try Blue Apron. Not only will signing up support Windover Productions, you'll also get a chance to try these truly delicious meals. Aside from that, please be sure to check out my podcast Showmakers and subscribe to this channel to get all my future videos right when they come out. Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you in two weeks for another Windover Productions video.

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