ok so like, imagine if we had a form of transportation that let you put multiple trucks worth of cargo on a single vehicle all going the same way. oh wait. TRAINS.

Literally the only way to solve traffic is to build public transport.

Good to hear that finally traffic engineers search for solutions instead of bulldozing everything to build more lines.

Improved Public transit is 100% the answer

My biggest thing I’ve been saying for years is that trucking needs to be forced to work with rail companies. They should only be taking these goods the last 100 miles. By making them travel across the country and all around these cities we are causing so much traffic for no good reason.

So much of the congestion on the George is commuters from NJ who work in NYC. The most effective option IMO would be to massively improve rail connections between the two. At the moment, the North River Tunnels are a major bottleneck, and the unreliability of NJ Transit caused by those tunnels makes it even worse. The tunnels are a pair of 1 track each tunnels that go into Penn Station. They are 110 years old. Any broken train or tunnel takes out one tube, and the need to accomodate trains in both directions means one tube out causes a 75% or so drop in capacity. The Gateway Project is going to add 2 more, fix the original 2, and end up with 4 tunnels total. Adding more rail from NJ to NYC that goes to more office areas will help too.

Put a train across the bridge's lower deck. Make dedicated lanes for trucks.

The thing that strikes me the most as a European is that the NYC subway completely ignores New Jersey and doesn't cross the Hudson. Some Americans argue that it is because New Jersey is a different state so there are many political barriers to expand the metro there. Yet, there are numerous examples of metro systems in Europe that expand across two or even three international borders without any inconvenience? (i.e. Geneve, Strasbourg, Basel, Copenhagen, San Sebastián, etc.)

It’s incredible that ALL freight must come to New York by truck. The solution ? Rail. You’re welcome.

Probably build a rail system that goes under the bridge along with a loading station for the trucks to unload/load the cargo onto the train. Sure, it will cost a lot of money, but probably it will save a lot of money and time for everyone.

Autonomous vehicles are way too overhyped at the moment as a hypothetical panacea, but wow, everything else in this video was so sane and logical with the systematic approach. There are so many ways to reduce congestion by providing more efficient alternatives, both on the freight and passenger side. We've wasted too much time, money, and land on relieving single high-profile bottlenecks while ignoring the factors that cause bottlenecks to appear in the first place.

We built our cities and suburbs for passengers cars instead of public transportation. If we got rid of half of those cars, it would greatly solve this issue. We need more public transportation (trains) ESPECIALLY in NJ.

America’s dependence on cars will forever hold it back from true prosperity and greatness

Stop building highways through downtown cities. Start investing in real solutions like public transport.

I drove through GWB pretty frequently, one of the major road design flaw this video didn't mention is that right after GWB before exit 1C-D to Maj Deegan exp way, is like driving a go kart course in a nutshell. Typically the truck would ended up at the inner most lane right after GWB and when the trucks tried to exit to the exp way. It caused a lot of the slow down and that's where the bottle neck happened at first. Secondly on the opposite side of the road where the truck has to merged from outer most lane to inner most lane getting on to GWB is also badly designed.

"Delays here have cost an estimated $38 million annually" Having used that bridge when I absolutely had to, quite a few times in my life, $38 million seems very low, I think they misplaced a decimal or something

Great video, but one piece they missed is that I-95 (the busiest interstate in the country) is the main source of traffic on the GWB. A large portion of the traffic, including trucks and cars, traveling over the GWB are not going to the tri-state area, however to populated cities in Massachusetts, Maine, etc. It would be great to have more routes into lower parts of Manhattan, however, anyone who regularly drives on I-95 knows that traffic doesn't get any better after crossing the bridge.

GWB not too bad, but 95 Bronx is the worst, right after the GWB.

And as always trains are the solution.

In sydney, we built a tunnel. The result is traffic jams on both bridge and tunnel. Better public transport helped, but what really did the trick and can work any where....pandemic. 😊

The real answer is to build public transit and freight rail. The other solutions are just useless.

Just one more lane bro, I promise

For so long the US found it’s solutions in more lanes and bigger lots. Then when it doesn’t work, we shrug our shoulders and say that’s that. So glad to see we are finally moving past our fixations to real solutions

The only real solution to traffic is remove cars from the road by providing other options.

That's what I noticed. Traffic usually happens because of a bottleneck. In my city, rush hour is bad. Because people from 3 different places are having to go through one traffic light. In order to get to the other side of town. On a normal day, it's not so bad. But when a lot of people are picking up their kids or leaving work. It's unbelievable.

JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO I SWEAR WE WILL FIX TRAFFIC THIS TIME

Great video, thank you for the consistent content 👍

I think they should go ask Japanese about train. Having better efficient rain system will off load those traffic and bring more speed

Ramp meters and congestion pricing are proven solutions to improve traffic flow rather than just expanding roads with more lanes which induces demand

“16 lanes into 7”.. he forgot to mention that after the bridge, that becomes just 3 lanes!

Soon as I saw the title I thought of the George Washington Bridge. I used to drive from Montreal to deliver stuff in New York. The bridge was always stressful cuz I didn't have an E-ZPass. I think it would have been my second or third trip with a full-size cube van and when I cleared the rock Cliffs on the Jersey side the wind shear grabbed the truck, I think it was the closest I came to Wrecking on the 25 or 30 trips I did. I was always happy to get back over that bridge after that!

As a Cities: Skylines player, his suggestion of a cloverleaf is worrying for his qualificiations

I remember crossing the GWB on the lower level when I first started driving a truck. I think after 9/11, they made it mandatory for all commercial vehicles to cross on the upper level. Since I got my CDL and became a truck driver (25 years ago this month), I’ve gotten to cross a lot of bridges and highways all over this country. Some bridges are cars and buses only, like the Golden Gate Bridge. Others are scary AF, like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, US 13 in Virginia. Last time I crossed it was about eight years ago, and they I was one of the last trucks to cross that day, before they closed it to high profile vehicles, because of the wind. The only bridge or highway that I haven’t gotten to cross is the Mackinaw Bridge, from the UP to Lower Michigan. They close that to high profile vehicles sometimes, too.

Transit and ebikes are the best solutions. Transportation 101

Probably worth mentioning the major grade changes from the GWB down to the Henry Hudson and Harlem river drive.

Get this man on everything now.

I rode my motorcycle across the GWB in 2016. The “paved” surface nearly shook my bike apart. While that was happening my motorcycle cover was being shaken out from under the seat cowl/cover… I had to hold it with my left hand & the throttle with the right. That’s when I noticed that there were spots you could literally see through on the lower level. The GWB was the scariest bridge once you noticed it was falling apart every day. The Whitestone wasn’t much better. Driving over sketchy American Infrastructure by motorcycle really opened my eyes to how bad our roads & bridges are here.

I think zeppelins are where it's at. They can carry immense loads, especially with helicopter rotors assisting with lift, and if given a wing-shape their movement will also create lift.

This video was amazing!

WOOHOOO! This guy is my hero!! He is exactly what the highway's need to reduce congestion!

The answer is what no one wants to hear. There is no cheap easy fix. Simply put, NYC needs more infrastructure. It has gotten too big for existing transportation infrastructure and needs more investment to expand it.

Most of the traffic seems to be personal vehicles, so here's a simple, cost effective and easy solution that could be implemented within a year or so: Convert one of the existing lanes in each direction to a bus lane. Add multiple bus lines connecting places where people want to go, and make sure that each line has service at least every 10 or 15 minutes. Ideally you'd have at least 30 busses using the bus lane on the bridge for each direction. All you need is busses, bus drivers, paint and little bit of law enforcement to keep drivers out of the bus lane.

I live around here. It’s bizarre the amount of traffic that happens on a daily basis and how ineffective, expensive and time consuming it is to cross that bridge. The George Washington Bridge had a carpool option where you can transport three passengers total for the amount of seven dollars give or take. They took that out now. Everybody has to pay $17 to cross that ineffective bridge because they’re so greedy. 🤦🏽‍♀️

You mean America's worst bottleneck is a bridge? In America's largest city? Shocking. Great work WSJ.

Just keep increasing the tolls for private cars until the traffic subsides.

As a Uber drivers in NYC this is the worst bridge to cross it! The George Washington Bridge

Wow, never realized that there was no freight rail coming into Brooklyn and Queens. Really eye opening. I wonder what the GWB would look like with that much fewer trucks going through.

So we're backed to the fatally flawed congestion pricing idea that is currently in the works. 🤦

the only answer is rail network.

WSJ great video with a real topic expert. Now get the politicians to listen experts when allocating funds rather than donors and the uniformed public.

Thanks Robert Moses.

1:43 that Roundabout looks more like a Traffic Circle. The vehicles aren't constantly moving. Looks like there are traffic lights

If you travel south on 87 mobile gps will 9 times out of 10 navigate you TOWARDS the GWB, particularly if your destination includes trips over the Throgs Neck or Whitestone Bridges. I think there is more to this story than "Congestion" when traffic is being directed towards the problem and not towards a potential solution.

Here's another one: charge employers who demand that their workers come into the office, even if they could easily work from home. Not every job can be done from home, obviously, but too often employers essentially don't trust their staff. I work from home 60% of the time, in one of the most densely populated (and congested) countries on earth. The only "traffic" I get on those days is a couple of cats.

Amazing video Beautiful graphics and simple explanation This is what MPs need when making decision, reviewing all options

The only thing that will "fix traffic" is good public transportation and active transport. It's not complicated.

He didn't talk about using lane mathematics to alleviate the Jerseyside choke point before the GWB, that would alleviate northbound congestion, a lot.

LOVE THIS

Great to see him quickly discard widening.

Sounds like we need more freight rail so we don't need as many trucks! Better for the environment too

Solution: get single-passenger vehicles off the road. The road infrastructure going across to Manhattan should be used for freight or busses.

It seems that many traffic bottlenecks are caused by the expectation that single occupant private vehicles can go on any road anywhere at any time. Imagine the GWB or any other congested highway with only trucks, buses, vans and emergency vehicles at peak times-much of the congestion is gone. That is the beauty of congestion pricing. Test this the next time you are stuck in traffic. Look around and see how many single occupant cars are around you. (I usually get 8 or 9 out of 10). Now imagine that same stretch of road at the same time with only trucks, buses and vans.

To get rid of cars you need good public transport. To get rid of the trucks you need a tunnel from New Jersy to Brooklyn under Manhattan that will have only one underground EXIT (no enterance) to manhattan while continuing further to Brooklyn. The trucks going accross will avoid manhattan, while trucks entering manhattan will not use so many space at bridges so there will be more for cars. And no enterace to tunnel in manhattan because exiting manhattan isn’t as big as an issue as entering it

Instead of cramming everyone into a city to do work 5 days a week, maybe explore remote options for those that are not essential to add to the congestion 10 times a week. We lived 2 years doing that only to have dumb (sugar honey iced tea) managers require to start up the commute boom again.

I feel like the bandwidth for crossing from New York to Nj is pathetic to begin with. I believe there should be an additional bridge in addition to more rail 😊

They need a rail transit line near the NJ, GWB and CBE. Also, a freight train line from NJ to GWB connecting to the rail line underneath the bridge. I love the freight harbor rail crossing proposal as well. Especially the brooklyn (rail yards) and queens (greenville rail yard) rail lines.

Practically every town or city in the UK has a "park and ride" where you park your car, pay a few £ (around $5) and take a bus which runs every ten minutes and goes from the car park to the centre of town. Very often it is cheaper and easier than driving into the city and then trying to find somewhere to park. Not sure if the USA uses these?

Just one more lane Bro!

Friendly reminder that "Grand Central Station" is a Post Office. Grand Central Terminal is the train station because it's a terminus, not a station. For now at least... I consider WSJ to be one of the more well-vetted and researched media sources, so I would normally assume this goes without saying.. Great video otherwise!

People think trucks and cars go only to NYC forgetting that Long Island has another 3m+ people between Nassau and Suffolk counties. One more way to ease congestion is build the bridge/tunnel or both in Long Island Sound, so trucks and cars that go to LI don't go thru NYC

Should definetly do a video on the Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge. Certain times of day will see transit times of over an hour to go a few miles.

TRAINS TRAINS TRAINS TRAINS

Although I live in L.A. now, I used to ride the Metro North trains down to Grand Central and I was born in New York so I know the traffic problems well. And I have to say I don't think there is anyway to build out of this problem. I feel like we need a paradigm shift like when we went for horse & buggy to automobiles. Until cars were invented there was no such thing as commuting. You worked where you lived. So that to me seems the ultimate solution. Now of course I know the cost of living in Manhattan is prohibitive and schools maybe better in the suburbs but society has reorganized itself before and we can do it again. We took a baby step in that direction during the pandemic.

It's easy to fix. Hudson River tunnels and expansion of NJT Rail.

The only solution to traffic is viable alternative forms of transportation. The trucks would have no problem with this already-overgrown thoroughfare if single-occupancy vehicles and most other personal vehicles were removed or significantly reduced from the equation by providing fast, frequent, and safe public transportation.

i think you guys should start thinking about reducing traffic and not adding more lanes

The biggest issue is the flow of traffic on the bridge, not the merging before it. I live in Manhattan and drive (whenever I rent to go out of the city) over GWB a lot. Once on the bridge we still barely move. This is because the exit of traffic toward I95, Bronx & Connecticut in general is poorly designed and enforced. Smoothening that flow will largely solve the bridge issue. It's never gonna be fast, but it will be better than what it is today. Agree with the improvements of regional rail & transit as well as the freight under harbor tunnel. Those will also help a lot.

Reading all the comments saying, "just add trains" is kind of thinking way too short. First off, suspension bridges are HORRIBLE for rail transit - especially rapid transit. The Manhattan Bridge (which carries the BDFM trains) had to be entirely closed because of how much maintenance it needed due accelerated wear by the trains constantly running over the bridge 24/7. The GWB would need to be further strengthened and inspections would need to double just to make sure things don't go wrong. Secondly, where exactly are the trains going to go? Yes, it will go into Manhattan... about 200ft in elevation. That doesn't sound like a problem until you remember you will have to find a way to get the subsequent train line to sea level and below with very limited space to do so as Grand Central and Penn Station are *below ground stations*. One could add loops down which certainly can help at the cost of speed and efficiency. Trains don't exactly turn quick. Alternatively, you could simply have the train be elevated... except it would be elevated about 100ft in the air once it slips out of the hills and with a 2 degree max gradient, it'll be a while till it gets to a more suitable level. And on the NJ side... well there's not much there. What is already served by NJT goes to Penn Station or is served by the PATH to WTC and 34th Street. Plus the lines, they have to drill through the Palisades to stay level and then carve a path through the marshy Meadowlands and crowded suburbs. Basically, it will not be cheap on either side to just slap down a rail line. Finally... where is the I-95 traffic going to go if limited greatly or cut off? Route it along I-287? Well, you're just moving the problem from the GWB to the Tappan Zee and it absolutely does not have the capacity to handle that load. Most likely, it would actually just overload the Lincoln and Holland tunnels if GWB is closed. No one is driving 20 to 30 minutes north to cross the Hudson by car. If you want to go 100% car-free, it will never happen. Even Tokyo, a place with amazing transit, can only attain so much ridership (about 20 million daily riders out of 36 million Tokyo metro residents). Thus, you will need to accommodate cars to some capacity even if you would like to see every car that exists to go up in flames. This all said, basically, replacing the lower deck with train lines sounds like a good idea but all concepts that are great on paper may not be in practice. Always keep that rule of thumb in mind: The simple solution isn't always so simple. This isn't to say I wouldn't like such a solution - I absolutely would - but one has to be realistic. The solution I think would work is to cut down the lanes to 6 up top, 4 down below to decrease throughput while focusing on expanding rapid transit into the city further south. Build more tunnels and frequent rapid service to accommodate. Additionally, route trucks north via I-287 with reduced commercial tolls there so they don't drive through NYC unless they need to go to Long Island. Turn the upper deck into HOV/Bus and truck lanes only. All other traffic goes to the lower deck. I imagine this kind of plan would be done gradually over a decade in phases. First increase transit, then encourage commercial traffic to go around NYC, and finally redo the bridge layout.

I think it’s best to remove cities. What’s the point nowadays? Many cities don’t have any manufacturing, it’s all information technology. Stuff that can be done remotely and online. You could have a dozen spread out offices across a country rather than a big building.

TRAINS

European designers: can we get a tram bridge with a wide walking path and a bike lane, and a rail line for freight Car addicted American designers: ONE MORE LANE BRO!!

"And because there is no rail, all of these goods have to come in via truck." aaaaaaand.... that's your problem.

Has there ever been a plan to connect the Lincoln Tunnel with the Queens-Midtown Tunnel with a tunnel under Manhattan?

As someone who uses these roads all the time living in Eastern Long Island and having to travel frequently to NJ, PA, mid-Atlantic, upstate, NY and beyond, trains will not work. Most of the traffic are drivers traveling at least 50-100 miles. People forget. Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk have almost 1% of the US population with only a few ways to exit LI. Congestion pricing in Manhattan is a joke, it’s just a money grab. Car traffic in Manhattan is way down. Anecdotally, I’d say as much as 30%. All the traffic now travels around Manhattan. Really what needs to happen is another way to enter and exit Long Island.

Pricing and fees while work only target people without money and is unfair. Instead let's just make a Lazer guided missile system that shoots and obliterates a vehicle at random. this will thin out the traffic very fast and also keep things fair.

I remember when we had a comprehensive rail system

OMG whoever did the captions at 1:06 GRADE separation!

Why do we listen to those who have done nothing ( I.e. 25 years of doing nothing “experience”) to solve our problems? If they have done anything at all, why do we still have all these traffic nightmares? Think BQE, LIE, i95.

Easy solution. Just build a train, bike lanes, and extra sidewalks. We don’t need trucks. When trucks come into NYC from the rest of the country they can just transfer everything to bikes, buses and such and people on bikes can deliver the goods. I’m sure this new freight bottleneck won’t impact the supply chain in NYC and maybe we can add a delivery tax to pay the walkers and bikers delivering goods. Our store shelves will still be stocked. Then add more public transit as well. All 5 boroughs and Long Island should be covered with subway lines. To pay for the construction and additional police presence to make it safe just raise the taxes. I’m sure the people of NYC aren’t taxed high enough as it is. Then if people don’t want to use the transit just spend another billion to make it better. Eventually they will change their mind. That’s all it takes bro. We don’t need engineers like this guy I figured it out. Just one more billion bro. Just get it done bro.

Hah, the GWB isn't even that bad. I wish to see a video from this urban engineer on his ideas to solve the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) from the Hugh Carey Tunnel to Williamsburg bridge section.

dont think this guy really did much other than restate ideas that have been in the works for years.

A lot of people in the comments here don’t seem to realize, maybe because they do not drive themselves, that the bridge handles more than 300,000 vehicles a day, many going further into the North East of the United States and into Canada. The rail line that do enter the city are already over capacity. This is the most populated metro area of the United States, with over 20 million people. Before anybody mentions Japan, many of their rail lines are over capacity, and more than 90% of their goods are transported via trucks.

While I love public transit, it’s poorly implemented and it’s just not going to be the answer for everything. Transit planners keep focusing on expanding transit, but the problem is transit is too slow and it’s usually faster to take a car. Planners then argue to remove road lanes to make driving slower and more inconvenient. Look, people have lives, they have families, they can’t be spending 3 hours a day on public transit. People get tired of it and move to small metro areas and they drive anyway, taking their money and expertise with them. We need to invest and grow our freeway infrastructure along with transit.

Or, and ear me out, if the problem with the roundabout is the levels ov cars on the bridge, change the transit on the brige to all to going out and all bottom going in to NY

time based limits for trucks, specific time windows at night or during the afternoon for trucks to pass through, while the train connectivity is built out

Lanes need to be reduced when approaching a bottleneck. Yes, there still will be traffic, but the traffic will move smoother one you reach the bottleneck.

So long story short, they have no desire or plan to fix the problem or improve infrastructure. The only plan of action is to add congestion tolling to discourage people from driving.

The problem is trying to send everybody by car. Cars are the problem car centric infrastructure.

it makes sense that theres no freight rail crossing into NY considering NY/NJ is a major port area where the freight is loaded onto trains and taken elsewhere. A high volume train tunnel could alleviate alot of the truck traffic but youd still have alot of truck traffic because freight rail only transports bulk materials and container loads. alot of time sensitive loads still come and go on trucks.....

The area simply needs another bridge, so people taking I-95 up the east coast aren’t forced to use the same crossing as commuters into the city