Okay

This was 4 minutes ago? Man I’m a huge fan but even I have never been this early

Dang

Is there anything in the US that doesn’t have a racial angle?

Wait so if you guys got that wrong, where did the 62% reduction come from?

Auto manufacturers have lobbied so that public transportation doesn’t grow like it should

The problem is that in many cities these modes of transports are unsafe, especially for women at night due to a lack of police protection and or maintenance over time.

But what if THE POORS want to use them? Then THE POORS will be able to go ANYWHERE and not just their designated poor person areas.

Americans have a "ME FIRST" attitude. My car. My house. No sharing. Public trans is for the poor.

what if you are the poor?

Yes

in the future 20 + line or more maybe

... if you are annoyed by slow loading pages. (To finish your sentence.)

Oooohhhh that hit real hard.

It's like loosening your belt to stop an obesity related heart attack

it is funny because it is true

There is only so far over you can go before you have to get back over to the right lane for your exit.

*Unleashes the power of TM:PE*

I want them to use all the lanes but there so stubborn.

true

What’s stopping you from not driving?

@@UnkleGaga cause north American cities prioritize car travel so much that traveling on foot, bike, or bus takes hours longer

@@easyflamer Yes but also that's an incomplete answer. Because the obvious retort to that would be "well obviously driving is faster than travelling by bike or on foot, duh, that's why highways exist" (just playing devil's advocate here). So the more complete point would be that even for distances that could and should be well manageable on foot or on a bike, and that you would prefer to use for a variety of reasons (environmental concerns, not wanting to look for a parking spot, the traffic being too bad, whatever, you shouldn't really need a reason to want to have options), often in North America it's just plainly dangerous or extremely impractical to do it (because of stuff like pedestrian bridges that make you take a detour of a mile or something).

@@krystofdayne I'm literally 10 minutes from downtown. I can see the buildings from my neighborhood but I can't get there on foot or on bike because there are no bike lanes and no way to cross the highway. It's the only place we could afford to live.

@@UnkleGaga car centric infrastructure

this sums it up precisely. I wish more people were aware of this analogy by Mumford when it comes to highway expansion projects.

What a way to explain the congestion. We need to reduce traffic itself rather than allowing more space for traffic.

Couldnt say it better than that!!!

Wait, 1955? If this quote is real then we've known about this long before a lot of highway expansions were done

Until you loosen it to the point where the obesity suddenly disappears. If you build out an amount of highways and roads that exceeds the available demand, surely congestion won't be an issue anymore? Although I'm sure there are issues with cost and practicality to take into account.

The crying avatar is icing on the proverbial cake!

@@DeViceCrimsin_ Ironic

has*

Industrial area turns to spagity on ramp town

America should just install the TM:PE mod (And use more roundabouts)

that's facts right there

Towns were made bc of trains back in the years in the us

For THOUSANDS of years

Thats literally what should happen have houses and a little shop at the bottom ground flour for needs or whatever

Yeah, no kidding.

And for any Europeans visiting this after the fact, it is literally _anywhere._ Where I grew up I needed a car and at least 20 min to get to the nearest "convenience" store. When I moved to town it was still necessary to take a car because there were no sidewalks and bikes would (and _very_ often did) get run over, sometimes on purpose out of outrage that a bicycle had the audacity to use a car lane (even though that's the law).

You don't have to live like that though. I live in America and neither of my parents commute an hour to work, i can walk to school, my town center, walmart, and many other places easily. If you choose to live in a closed off subdivision, that's your fault.

​@@borahaeist3215ok now imagine if you lived in a rural area or the suburbs

Lane mathematics!

“Let’s put a roundabout in this intersection” -Biffa (every video, probably)

Hvordan har du det? (This is how you say it in Norwegian.)

Hahaha!!! The moment I saw this video I heard Biffa say “Lane mathematics”

@@ali-sxchtwithm6380 “Jeg har det bra. Hvordan har du det” (is this how you say it in Norwegian?)

This right here.

And you can basically go everywhere on public transport which are actually quick and reliable

I think it has a lot to do (especially with HK and Taiwan) with total landmass being really small, so they can't really afford space-eating highways. Take a look too at Singapore, where purchase of private vehicles is really controlled

@@AlizarineSilvermoon With HK and Taipei that might be true but he pointed out Shanghai which could have enough landmass for highways, but it doesn't use it for that. So some cities aren't limited by size, they just want to provide different modes of transport. The cities in the us can take a page from their book and see that most transit there works around the city and the metropolitan area.

@@AlizarineSilvermoon And because the landmass is small in those cities, they wouldn't need to build as many transit lines to serve the city because each line would be carrying a lot of people. Houston is very spread out, which means you would need a lot of transit lines to serve the city, and each line would not be carrying as many people because the population density is smaller.

Or just more types of people infrastructure instead of what's allowed car dominance that has obviously just made things worse for everyone XD (and don't anyone say "how are we gonna pay for it?" You do the changes each time the roads come up for maintenance and vote for leaders better than what we've got. Stop making the same old same old the only option)

A *proper*

With those billions of dollars they invested, they could have made thousands of miles of railway. Wayless than that is enough.

Not Amtrak lol

They would’ve have to uproot the city and build it all over again if they really wanted a train network… US suburbs are too sparse to support trains.

Sorry to hear that

yeah, I really think it's an unhealthy, time-consuming and unsustainable way of living

😢

I hope you can move to somewhere nice like a streetcar suburb or Europe, I hate how badly vision-limited people are treated in America, for all the blind-assistance infrastructure they built they forget about how their streets and roads are so anti-pedestrian and that seriously screws over people who can’t see to drive.

It's humiliating for so many people. I grew up in a toxic house, and I couldn't even get away from the house for a breather because there were no sidewalks, and the closest bus stop was 20 minutes away. Children can't learn independence. Teens can't do after-school clubs and such unless they're chauffeured around by their parents. Seniors can't get around once they're old enough to lose reaction time, vision, etc. Many people with disabilities can't drive, either. People say "driving is a privilege, not a right", but you have to wonder... Is it really okay that all the aforementioned groups literally can't "earn that privilege" to drive, all because of the infrastructure? It's heinous.

Why did John Culbertson deny Harris County to build a commuter rail?

@@Belioyt vested interests ofc.

How about "hanging lines" i.e. bridge over the road? Or, alternatively, "line reserved for public transit, police and special vehicles"? Step 1 - find factories and rail line construcors who may be in this Step 2 - find lobby potential (corruption potential) Step 3 - Lobby (corrupt) rail line (as bridge over all road or built-in like a tramway). I don't know how it is in US reality, but in soviet russia we're have another solution: - local transport for collecting and local delivery people - magistral transport for far transit. So, probably it's better to lobby special "A" line only for public transit, taxies and ambulances, police, etc with building "Bus terminals" with fast pass-trough stops for M-routes and roundabout for the local busses. Local transit is ok to have 1 run for 15 minutes, and ads like "ride over the city for price of a liter of gasoline!". But you're need to speed-up via pre-selling tikets to prevent queue at the station.

Katy is a place that I think a Park and Ride facility would work really well. Its far enough for the train to be quicker, and there is parking for all them suburban suvs

Cy-Fair boys wya

Houston*

“Huston”

Task Manager (Not Responding)

Don't forget traffic manager to change the lanes

Finally someone with common sense

Or just build such an excellent transit system that you don't have any congestion anyway. It works so well in Germany that the government has decided that it isn't worth it to enforce speed limits (and by that I mean there are none on large sections of the autobahn network)

Modern problems require modern solutions

26 lanes total, not each way!

Yeah, my first reaction was "Surely you'll run out of additional drivers eventually." But it turns out you may not get there even with a 26-lane highway. And money (including maintenance costs) and space to build aren't limitless, to say nothing of the potential for accidents when crossing up to 12 lanes of traffic to get to your exit.

and here i came to say “so in summary ‘if you build it they will come’”

i also should have waited to the end of the video

@@Plexdet Let us hope so

@@Plexdet This is always misquoted. It’s “if you build it, he will come”.

This made more sense than what she tried to explain

They won't come- they are building new malls and retail, and people aren't coming.

@@someotherdude minecraft?

@@someotherdude 😂

Yes, that’s what a closing statement does

Then we should build a bunch of interstate freeways in North Dakota alleviating congestion in places like Houston and LA. Brilliant.

Unlike Japan or France, the US is HUGE while the population is spread out. Its just not economically feasible

@@st3pn56 at least they can try to make rail network between Boston and Baltimore/DC

@@st3pn56 no I'm sorry but stop using the size card, that's not the real reason. For example, although France is smaller than the US, it's still massive and spread out. The US could connect some of the major cities in the Eastern region, and as long as it's done properly, it would work and would become financially feasible. How many domestic flights are currently made between those cities? Imagine having the option to take the train which may have a longer travel time, but with none of the faffing about with the airport. Do not dismissed high speed rail. Sure it's not going to be adequate between NY and LA, but for closer cities it's really a no brainer

@@SomeGuy-lw2po I don’t think that’s gonna improve the traffic my guy

@@tonyye8680 you're right, it absolutely wouldn't. That was just an argument showing the size is not an excuse. To fix traffic, you need the above, proper regional, suburban commuter rail. Then better transport in the cities, whether that's a great bus service (London busses), trams, metro, good walking routes.

Literalmente te veo comentando en todos los videos que veo???

Le gustan las trufas y los likes.

Totally agree Trufaman.

Mexicano aquí, la autopista que rodea el centro de la capital son 5 carriles por sentido y la que rodea toda la ciudad es igual pero con un "segundo piso" de cuota Jaja

Viva mi país 😎

Mexico have a solution for this. In Mexico the most common store is called Oxxo. They are very small stores with little inventory but they offer such a high convenience. They can be as high as 5 Oxxos between a 1 mile radius of every Mexican. They have all the basic items: cheese, eggs, tortillas, veggies, beans, jam but most importantly you can pay almost anything: light, water, internet, TV , taxes, school fees, mortgages, travel. Even electronic transfer from account to account. It's super convenient in one place you can do everything and it's very close to your home and work from all the country you can always find the same basic products.

@@no-one_nobody I think most of the world has this type of shops, we in Malaysia have local private businesses everywhere

@@brandonchan4537 True but I think that never in the massive scale on Mexico, Oxxos are in many countries of Latam

Both small stores and large stores are needed, just like big roads and small roads.

@@no-one_nobody I like your list of essential food items. Cheese, eggs, tortillas.

Basically so

so freaking trueeee. thats exactly what i did and created mumbai city.

@@HR15DE haha

I just put roundabouts everywhere!

That'd be true in real life too, vox has some videos on how the lack of signalization on roundabouts make drivers more careful

Texas is getting awful. I advocate for public transportation but it’s hard to with their mindset. Also, way too many cookie cutter, poor quality homes/neighborhoods being built. Looks disgusting.

@@zacharyg3366 Agreed!

Houston is probably one of the worst designed cities in all of the US, if you dont have a car youre basically on house arrest

This is due to a market failure when it comes to housing costs. Once people have families, a studio apartment ain't going to cut it anymore, and condo's and sfh's in the central cities are prohibitively expensive for the middle class and lower class due to supply and demand. No easy fix

@@FirebirdCamaro1220 Yes, there is an easy fix. Start building apartment buildings with shops on the ground floor, parks and public transport system and it will get fixed. Younger people will buy those small apartments, then move out to a bigger one or maybe a house when they have kids and then the new generation will move to the small apartments, etc. Build the houses close to the apartments and shops so they are walkable neighbourhoods and not isolated from everything. Another thing they should do is make homes smaller. In the US you have tiny apartments, big houses, then super highend multi million dollar homes. There is nothing in between. It's a cultural shift the US and Canada have to make to fight climate change and provide their population with a better quality of life.

And more roundabouts/diverging diamond interchanges

I think: "Invest into public transit instead into new roads" would make more sense.

Public transport? For poor people? In MY backyard????

@@colonelkush nope, cause thats just another form of induced car traffic.

@@Gummmibaer what exactly is inducing car traffic? I am for efficient / effective public transportation but also bring up the interchange due to the safety aspect they provide for drivers

Bear this mind when people suggest flying cars as solution: it will not solve it, it just expands the problem upwards.

Not only did we put it underground but in the process of doing so it made traffic terrible during its construction a nice quick 16 years

It's true. The Big Dig buried I-93 through central Boston, added cloverleafs on the West End, and added a new I-90 bridge over the inner harbor. The project had a cost overrun of about 190%. We shouldn't look to the Big Dig for inspiration in solving our freeway problems, except to see how much a city improves when you restore local pedestrian access and hide a blighted freeway.

@@nealehardt7957 agreed, I think South Korea highway removal is better example for this, they removed the highway on the river entirely and resulted in less traffic.

@@Banom7a That said, their urban development+mass transit are sensible too

I wish Rhode Island would spend money to revamp 95 through Providence. Traffic is horrendous due to the US 6 and RI 146 on/off ramps being so close to each other.

Or Portland OR

@@lawrencewilliams4829 portland also made a tunnel after the highway removal

Tunnels are just more expensive roads.

But people are leaving San Francisco because it costs too much to live there, and there are more options to work remotely, so you don't need to live near the tech capitols in California. And where are the largest number of the people moving. Texas, because the taxes are lower.

Yes. This video is a bit of a mess.

At least its not Fortnite. I'M A PROUD HATER!

Good

@@sandeegrey5977 so am I

Thank you for the warning, now atleast i know what these comments are referencing to

@@sandeegrey5977 so you're proud of being a hater

engineer gaming

You definitely need density for an ideal system but it can work without it, my town is pretty low density, less than half that of London but it’s still 3 times more than American suburbs, roughly 6000 people per square mile, and you regularly see buses moving between the neighbourhoods and destinations like the pedestrian mall in the centre, or the industrial estate, or the airport. If you have big destinations compacted together where you know people will want to go, then if you make bus routes frequent enough people will use them to travel, you just need to position the bus stops well enough that it’s never more than a 10 minute walk (ideally 5 minutes) from people’s houses.

@@justanotheryoutubechannel Broad density measurements may not accurately reflect the actual walkability. Los Angeles county is considered dense, but its almost uniformly sprawl. For most of it, its very hard to get around without a personal vehicle. Businesses and residences are also segregated which necessitates longer travel lengths. European towns are considered low density but much of the buildings are actually fairly concentrated (usually around a rail station). Walking is still fairly feasible. What makes it low density is that there are vast rural lands.

@@Basta11 That’s true. In my town though I can confirm it is mostly low density terraced housing, if it was all high rises it would have a huge population by comparison, and it is pretty walkable. But like you said it does have clusters around train stations, and compared to us towns it probably feels like being in an old city. Traditional “ideal” walkable neighbourhoods are usually dense city blocks built into 15-minute communities, but I think you can definitely have a less dense area than that which still works, especially if it has clusters of higher density areas connected via transit.

@Burt P Hard to recognize it for what it is when it's all you see and exposed to.

@@Calebakeenhughes agree, it’s the worst idea ever. People should live close to where they work.

Catchy, but the suburbs are simply the result of liberals making cities unlivable.

@Burt P no sir, I own my own home 5 mins from downtown.

@Burt P Houston isn’t a little city, also 5k sqft lots is plenty big for living in the city. I’m not Poor 🤷🏽‍♂️ since that’s what you’re implying.

Yeah this is why I am always skeptical of Vox videos. I also live in Boston and for them to miss such an important distinction is incredibly disappointing. The Big Dig improved a lot of things but we still have some of the worst traffic in nation even after all the work we've done.

They also built bypasses, other highways to carry much of the load the now-underground highway used to carry.

I don't think cities like Houston are going to build freeways underground. Not sure of the reason but might have something to do with water table and sea levels. That's also why our overpasses can seem like a roller coaster ride to some people. I've met people from Houston afraid of the heights so they avoid the freeways with high overpasses. Me when it rains heavy in Houston and water pours down from the overpasses: look at the beautiful waterfalls Houston has.

As cities skylines player you’ll be smart to use public transport,

At least in CS, building more roads doesn't incentify people to drive cars more. But yes, you're absolutely right.

Has Houston tried turning on de-spawning? 🤔

In City Skyline , it is also important to increase the funding! Funding will increase the amount of buses/trains/airplanes coming out. Try it in creative mod ( unlimited money) and thank me later :)

@@ericseventeen17 "Can't come to work today, boss, my car despawned again".

Making a bigger highway to make traffic better is like trying to speed up your Internet by opening more Google tabs

@@MustacheCashStash125um opening more tabs is like putting more cars on the road, complete opposite.

Or invest it

Where is this magical place you live in? ...... sounds rude as I'm typing this but I'm actually just curious

@@lecookie007 probably New York

@@lecookie007 These kind of city does exist in other country easily y'know? well not always within 1 miles (1.6 km) but I can get most of my needs within 2 km of my residence. Like veggies? there's a small grocery mom&pop store just 200 m away. Clothes? there's small boutique here, or I can go to larger store 1.5 km away. The farthest place I had was my workplace, about 3 km away since it's located near town center. Rather the american suburban +full zoning style is the rarer ones in the world. Like I get the reason to zone office+industrial (my country kinda did), but stuff like grocery stores and other daily needs shouldn't be 'zoned' hard, like by making a giant suburban that's consist of just housing, but make smaller ones so that there's place for stores, like grocery stores or smaller department stores for clothing to exist between housings.

Haha!! Talking about Singapore? Tbh I've never gotten the urge to own a car

To be fair, cities skylines makes it difficult to build a pedestrian focused city 😕

Hugo there, hugo there and hugo there.

@@mashisma Don't you mean SimsCity?

Hey, at least we get some more buses and trains!

Alexander nah, it’s opposite. If you don’t build American city with endless sprawling communities, relying on cars, but build a high density, full of ped. paths city with services near homes, then it’s much easier to make pedestrian oriented city

That's true. It's more healhty, more economic, more eco-friendly and more natural to humans who for most of their existens used their feet to travel.

Euclidean zoning is the worst thing to happen to urban planning.

Your professor is a whacked out lib who hates his own country.

Haha...in other words, have the building come to YOU. Genius !

Walkability ftw

It was first noticed in the 1700s in london lol.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing is going to get better, it's not.

You can skip high speed rail, and focus on reliable regional rail. At the very least regional trains must be a bit faster than car at freeway speed. Not the speed limit, the typical speed.

@@dbclass4075 Hmm... As a UK inhabitant myself, I'm going to say the UK can't skip high-speed rail, since our conventional rail system is at capacity, and we simply can't run any more trains. I don't claim to know what it's like in the US, but I do agree on the notion that commuter rail needs improving to replace cars, but high-speed rail also needs building to replace airplanes. That's why I think a HSR line between Los Angeles and either San Francisco, Las Vegas or San Diego are such good ideas, because they are the right distance to compete with some of the world's busiest air corridors.

@@mastertrams Regional rail will have less public resistance than high-speed rail. Perhaps regional rail first before high-speed rail.

I’m all for rail, but the premise of the video was that even adding public transport options doesn’t reduce demand. The whole idea is that the more transportation volume into a city, the more demand.

@@iismitch55 What? It does reduce demand *on roads*. Fundamentally, there's a minority of people who have to drive, (and a minority who can't drive), and everyone else is doing whatever's most convenient or whatever they're used to.

Yes, make more people stop driving and use public transport instead. Soon we will get to the point that even the rich would use take buses, trains and taxis.

I'd take the bus to work if the total trip time wasn't 1 hour and 30 minutes. Driving to work from home takes me 20 minutes.

Better reduce population

That is the problem with the US. The government made it a breeding ground for driving and made public/ alternative commutes impractical or impossible.

Have most people needs be local and have public transportation for when they're visiting someone or are going to work

Yes indeed

It's called queuing theory and it has a relationship to game theory

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing is going to get better, it's not.

Never thought to get to work on a different way? Or move.

..... because some liberal opposed the improvements that would have helped speed it up.

@@jankees4037 1:55 listen

@@someotherdude really it's a liberals fault? In texas? Okay guy. Liberals aren't in power there.

The US has such an intense car culture, and buses are generally seen as 'low class' forms of transportation, on top of many city governments being too cheap to build better infrastructure...I'm afraid the problem will stick around for a while.

in cities, there are good subway services and good amtrak service, even in rural areas. many americans dont consider public transportation because they think cars are better and faster when a lot of the time its the opposite

@@kevinolevino3190 we indonesian are all using motorcycles because its faster easier to drive it dont take so much space

Sadly the American belief that we have a superior way of thinking and a way of life is so ingrained into many Americans that they’ll dismiss ideas simply on the basis that it’s foreign and we need a “American solution”, if they even believe we need a solution at all.

I doubt that would work. America is too big of country for subways and bus networks. Freeways are needed in areas of low population density .

Can you tell the name of the game?

@@nandi7772 cities skylines

me

@@nandi7772 bruh

@@otisbodna3316 what happened? I am real civil engineer but I was unaware about the game.

The Big Deception is what it was honey

We should put are traffic underground

@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Are you kidding?? That's a terrible idea. What we should do is get rid of cars, ESPECIALLY in the big cities. There are a large number of ways to do that and to do that well.

@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 This isn't bad idea, but it ignores the problem for commuters. Alternative commuting methods are the better option, rather than hiding the problem in tunnels.

I'm glad someone said this, Boston didnt fix anything.

hi neighbor , I am not sure Malaysia the same or not, but they are building a highway through Sarawak & Sabah ,but tbh we need it as we only have small crumbling road before. My city of Kuching was planing to build a MRT but it was cancelled,traffic here is very very bad, atleast they are investing on bicycle lanes and free busses

Highway isn't inherently bad, and I think the induced demand is more of an American thing since every single person uses car.

@@brandonchan4537 I think your country's capital city, Kuala Lumpur, is without the shadow of a doubt a contestant for the most kilometers of highway per capita. In Google Earth when you turn on the Road option, the tangle of orange lanes (that means highway haha) looks a lot more of a spaghetti than most Spaghetti Junctions in the world.

Building highways are not bad. Just like other things, too much is inherently bad. Sekarang di sini transportasi publik sudah mulai digencarkan. Di Jawa udah enak ada KRL, di Denpasar sebelum Covid macet melulu pas jam sibuk karena gak ada pilihan lain selain lewat jalan raya.

@@govinlock8568 Kapan ya Bali punya kereta api sampe di seluruh bagian pulau ada

Analogies 😉.

As a texan, it is the worst

Hong Kongers: “Hold my curry fishballs”

@@CaptainM792 Ask an Indonesian who lives in Jakarta, s/he would tell you that a normal traffic jam would last for 2 hours.

Haha yes

Im an indonesian and i can sure that youre right

Thanks. Wiki also had more info about the so-called reduced congestion. Sigh...

That’s why it’s hard to take these videos at face value anymore 😢 we always have to take it with a grain of salt and do our own digging.

Thanks for the info. Some of the claims made in this video are pretty sus.

It reduced congestion at street level however - despite the fact that Downtown Boston was the destination for the majority of these people. The highway going THROUGH was moved underground, but the accesses (additional 2 lane flyovers, etc) that were dotted along the +1.5 mile stretch sent underground were severely reduced. At certain points, you had 2 and 3 lane access (!) lanes, now there is only a single entrance/exit (spread in different points) along the entire stretch. Additionally, the highway wasn't just the part sent underground - it was also the 8 lane avenue on the surface parallel to the entire length.

The video was made by Vox, so it's bullshat.

Mostly anyone west of East Coast, actually. More younger people are in favour of urban life today than our previous generation, so that is something.

I don't believe this is an issue of Americans being reluctant to *live* in more dense housing, it's a reluctance of entrenched residents to allow such housing to be built. Most US cities currently ban even duplexes on the vast majority of their residential land area.

@@degnaw At current housing market, those entrenched residents are more likely at least baby boomers' age, or very wealthy.

Failure to provide infrastructure and opportunity with that density also plays a role. Density much include "living" spaces such as parks, gardens, workshops...the kinds of things suburban and rural residents often have access to in their own homes, but that might be shareable and managed in cities. Of course, improved quality of life leads to the other deterrent to dense housing...cost.

Same LoL!

The way cities are built in the US, makes it difficult to dump the automobile culture.

@@champanzee6486 public transport...

Honestly having grown up in a small town in the UK with good public transport links everywhere, On my travels around the world I've always lowkey felt sorry for cities/areas that really aren't easily navigable by foot or easy public transport beyond busses. I get many parts are rural, But big built up cities & metropolitan areas have little excuses. The thought of spending hours driving from a suburb to a city or something along those lines has always terrified me, I know its not avoidable for everyone even some parts of the UK, But forever grateful that most of us at least have a choice with a wide reaching rail network/inner city trams/tubes.

@@champanzee6486 this exact sentiment is the very reason why US won't get any change. "Yeah we have been built that way", but the sunk cost of automobile culture is a more important factor now

Public transport will solve the US cities, sadly the US never invested in anything serious ever so far. So it all has to be done now. Maybe take an example on how China is solving this. They built a superior road and train network the last decades.

Not only that but they ADDED lanes, contrary to the point of this video.

Not ‘all’ they did, but extremely important, and it should’ve been said. A huge benefit of Boston’s plan was separating local traffic from regional traffic. A boulevard is better land use and can make the city tax revenue. Same thing happened with Seattle’s Viaduct. Turning a highway in a city into a tunnel is a good solution in car-centric America. But it costs a lot. San Francisco is case of a city only replacing the highway with a boulevard

That's vox for you. Any video here remotely related to politics is questionable at best

I laughed at that pretty hard. The idea that they just replaced the road with a tree-lined boulevard and everything just solved itself is pretty childish.

@@chrisf247 They're not wrong, they just picked a terrible example. The Embarcadero in San Fran is a real-world example of exactly what you cite.

Americans say no.

Cause we all agree that traffic lights are fair and balanced except when it’s 5am and there’s no one at an intersection with the light is red but you can see the cop in the shadows lurking waiting to pounce on the one to run it

Northern italy is switching to roundabouts, they started a while back

@@Big007Boss Most of Europe have gone over to roundabouts. They help with some issues when it comes to traffic flow. So is not odd that they are popular. And generally is more the flow then the capacity then help with. But one should not underestimate how much flow matter.

Roundabouts don’t work for highways, it’s only something for smaller roads that intersect without bridges etc.

Hi

Hi

I must say i'm a big fan

Very ;)

Can you fix my city mate because we’ve got an entire freeway going right thru it

America in general, but even the two way streets are wide as 💩. I've seen two way streets in japan that are what americans would call the shoulder of a road. Then again, Asia tends not to have monster trucks driving on all the roads.

i shouldn't laugh here, but i heard your electricity fallouts are also quite big Edit: SHOULDNT NOT SHOULD! 8 months and nobody told me, ahhhhh

except their power grid.

Traffic jams are indeed bigger. The brains in the counsel certainly aren't bigger.....

@@hopseshopsidis Yessir, and proud of it! Tell me of another grid that suffered as much of a catastrophic outage as us. Bet you can't name one!

That is basically the total reverse of highway expansion argument. Like all extremes, that is very negative.

You are saying this ironically but you are actually right. Amsterdam get rid of of several highways and future projects that american city planners wanted to implement in their city. Nowaways Amsterdam is famous for being the city of bicyclists and the traffic there is one of the best in the world.

Well may not help people get to their job initially but would encourage people to find another way to work that doesn't involve using their vehicles.

Can't have traffic if you don't have roads lol

It's like the "legalize all drugs" argument, both riddles with errors. You might as well make this a "roll safe" meme.

Exactly. I think more North American cities would benefit from having more public rail networks, connecting downtown to the edge of surburbs, at least.

@@patrickkotowski5780 Im not saying making roads bigger is wrong or unnecessary. But gentrification of cities and improving public transport is the real solution. Of course, that would mean ending suburbanization and its rac*st origin

Cost is another factor. Right now I have the option of using the local rail vs driving. I drive cause gas is cheaper.

@@uptorest True, but you also have to factor in the external costs...the car, maintenance, insurance, etc...Once accounted for, I suspect transit is more comparable than you think.

Sadly you can predict code but you can't predict people who drive the wrong way down a one-way road!!!! Like seriously how do people manage to do that!!!??

@@Ryan_Rail But one thing Cities have correct: Best way to reduce traffic jams is not to build more lanes per se, but to build more dedicated roads and alternative routes to get from point A to B. But that is not feasible in real life, because that would cost too much and also take up too much valuable real estate and/or industry space.

@@Wistbacka there are many causes and solutions to traffic jams, there is no silver bullet. But I think planning the zoning and flow of the city is by far one of the most important aspects when starting a new city, something that is difficult to do in existing metropolitans

Honestly and unfortunately, this is the typical "civil engineer" solution and it won't work. If you think about this, highway is like you get rid of all signal lights on a road but we still see congestion coming (like the ones shown in the video)

i have built the perfect indian utopia with no traffic lights and called it Mumbai. so this gave me a chuckle. it would work if cars could collide with eacher without crashing.

Even economics if you think about it 🤔

Math does eventually show that adding more lanes would relieve highway congestion, it just takes quite a few more. City populations are NOT infinite and eventually equilibrium would be reached.

@biffa plays inde games

Somone is a Biffa fan

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing is going to get better, it's not.

Clearly you've never commuted in London. It turns out, you can't all fit in one train.

@Joe Marley Corona is a temporary crisis. The conclusions of the studies are general and are not applicable during these extrordinary times.

@@roryhanlon927 Of course you can't. You need to either build more underground lines or invest in other modes of transport (i.e. bikes). But it still takes people off the streets. London is already a mess despite all its public transport and probably is always going to be like that due to its old, narrow, historical roads. But, imagine if each one of those people took their cars instead of the underground.... It would be quicker to walk from Croydon to Westminster than drive...

car is still more comfortable.

Is that what it was? I didn't know a servi....aaaaah. you mean congestion. I got all excited thinking there was an app that told you how to avoid driving

Go big or go home!

(did not occur to me at all) do admit. .. it's awesome to drive on that highway in the morning(late night) at 80mph, clear traffic. //Granted it forced me to get over my highest fears moving down to Houston where ppl drive 50mph even on the small small roads.

The Katy Freeway is nothing compared to the 401 through Mississauga. The 401 have lesser lanes than the Katy Freeway. The 401 through Mississauga have the widest point of 22 lanes.

Bigger and dumber, we've all seen Idiocracy

Bingo. I don't see this cited nearly often enough. All infrastructure built around private vehicles is inherently too low-capacity to handle travel in and around cities. There's a reason public transit used to be called "mass transit." It is able to move much larger numbers of people much faster than private vehicles can, as long as it's built right.

It is indeed make enough connecting roads as well. Finally any highway wider than like 2x5 roads is effective as the traffic on the left lanes have to cross so many lanes on the right to exit. Or for example a 2x4 divides into 2 times a 2x2 road that works alright.

I love it. You can walk around downtown Boston now and small businesses and restaurants have flourished. I commuted into Boston for years and never had to go through downtown. And then on weekends I would take the rail in and walk around. Downtown is like a a park now.

@GNR Forever Boston is a great city, you should definitely go to visit one day. I used to live in Lowell, MA but ironically ended up moving to Houston. It's hard to tell which has worse traffic.

We need more subways

I agree with your main point, but just to correct an incorrect part, big oil investors are actually pro buses and were actually one of their biggest advocates when they were first being invented. Since big car manufacturers are still the ones who make them, they are awarded massive government contracts to make a bunch of them, they use up significantly more fuel than a standard car, and typically they facilitate even more lobbying opportunities in the form of dedicated bus lanes. Big auto and oil companies actually killed wider adoption of public train networks by proposing buses since they would use the existing highways that they were also lobbying for, so big auto and oil companies are not anti-public transport, they are anti-public transport methods that don't net them any money, so they aren't actually against buses.

Not only because of the lobbyists but because the average american has grown too used to the comfort of a car. No matter how much you argue you have to admit that a car is way more comfortable than public transport. The biggest being you don't have to stick to a time table and can leave whenever you want.

@@waffle2434 this is complicated. I would still say they’re not pro public transit, they just realize they have to do something. Both of their efforts to support buses have ulterior motives, so I don’t know if you can call that a pure support for public transit. As you said in the 40s 50s and 60s, it was about getting rid of the street cars of other cars could move more freely and that the buses would use their oil. And today their efforts to support buses and bus lanes are so the developing countries don’t build subways and that these countries keep using their oil and cars.

@@anwitmondal6417 This really depends on where you live, in a big city absolutely not, as someone who lives in a big city with a highly developed train and subway network, I would attest that trains and subways (if done right) are significantly more comfortable than cars, because I never have to deal with traffic, trains, where I live, are never delayed, they come by every five minutes, and are significantly faster than any car I have ever been in. I can get from my job to my apartment in under 10 minutes during peak traffic because of trains, the same trip in a car would take at least 30 minutes because the roads are so congested during morning rush hour, I could walk to my job faster than driving there. On top of this, I do not have to worry about the hassles of driving, so I can actually be productive on my commute, and the yearly membership pass I pay to board the train every day is significantly cheaper than any car insurance or car payments I have ever seen. Don't get me wrong, I still think cars are indispensable and really the only means of transport in rural areas since there really is not an economical way to maintain public transport in low-density areas, but in big cities, there really is not a point to owning a car.

God bless Texas!!!

It's back to traffic congestion in my city. Home work was short lived.

For dense areas

I lived in Taipei, the place also has the good public transportations. But I moved to U.S., because I love driving and hate tiny roads in Taipei.

its easy when you have a small population and not that much land to manage

Paris or Amsterdam are pretty good as well.

@@Alaois we are talking about cities in the us too not the whole country

I don't get why everyone treats induced demand as a negative, the same principle applies to Public transport. They opened up a freeway bypass that connected a poor suburb to a local university in my area, enrollments for the poor suburb went up because what was a 90-minute bus trip turned into a 20-minute car or 30-minute bus trip.

@@raulandj The problem isn't induced demand in and of itself, but that the roads are overburdened partly _as a result of_ induced demand.

Shhhh... that doesn't fit the narrative!

Yeah, this is a horribly researched video. Also...the Katy Freeway remains heavily congested at peak hours, but overall, it's not *as* slow along the entire corridor as it was before it became one of the world's widest freeways. That, despite the corridor carrying a good 70,000-90,000 extra vehicles per day along any given point compared to a decade ago. Plus, weekend traffic congestion is most definitely lower than before it was reconstructed. I can actually list a lot of examples of reduced levels of congestion, after a corridor was widened. US 50 in the Sacramento foothills is a good example, where despite continued growth, the freeway still operates at faster speeds nearly two decades after HOV and truck climbing lanes were added.

For them to miss such a glaring distinction is incredibly disappointing. Boston has some of the worst traffic in the nation despite all the work we've done to try and fix things. Don't get me wrong, the Big Dig helped a lot but to say we got rid of our highways is just completely false. This is why I never trust Vox videos unless I double check the information myself.

hahahaa.. same. I was thinking about the same thing.

Lul

Cities Skylines traffic doesn't really work the same way. 99% of cars on the road are citizen-owned, and whether citizens drive depends on distance, speed limits, and whether they own a car. Plus, people in Cities Skylines cannot work from home! They must get to work somehow.

Yes it probably would. But it is the US they don't like smart things

In the long-term it is better to invest in autonomous driving, because traffic jams practically always happen because of small human behaviours on the road which AI driven cars won't mimic. CGP Grey has a good video on that.

@@jinjunliu2401 AVs are unproven technology that still requires 4000lb metal boxes to drive quickly in the same space as pedestrians and cyclists, and it still takes space to park those vehicles. All of that space for parking has forced the US to build things so far apart that you have to drive places. Removing cars means things can be built much closer together and cars are then no longer needed to go everywhere.

@@jinjunliu2401 No matter how clever your cars become, they still take up (including the gaps between cars) about fifteen square metres, and most likely will still carry only one or two people. Buses, trams, trains and bicycles are all far more space-efficient.

USA already had a vast railway. They just need to expand it to include passengers.