Punishment doesn’t prevent behavior that already happened and is usually missed. Road modifications help every time.
My town has a major road that was one of the most infuriating and dangerous in town. It was two lanes in each direction, constant jockeying for position or to make the light or to get around a turning car.
All it took was repainting. Now it’s one lane in each direction with turning lanes. There is no jockeying for position since it’s only one lane. But turning cars are no longer blocking so no infuriating stop and go. They even coordinated the lights.
Now that road is slower, calmer, no road rage or angry drivers and everyone gets through in less time
that road is slower, calmer, no road rage or angry drivers and everyone gets through in less time
Perception is a funny thing. Experiencing road rage and anger distorts one’s sense of how much time something takes. The true test of “everyone gets through in less time” is a clock and a car counter.
And I’ve done that. While it’s tough to get repeatable traffic, I go through there often. For my most common destination, gps estimate is consistently 3 min less than before
I lived in a city that was doing a lot of lane count reduction, installation of traffic circles, etc. Results were… mixed. It definitely was achieving “aesthetic improvement” with more trees and green features along what used to be bare asphalt and concrete corridors - sometimes the traffic did “flow better” on the lane count reduced roads, but I think a lot of that was attributable to significant volume diverting to alternate routes. Then they had their “disaster area” situations that only got worse no matter what they did - overdevelopment underserved is a formidable problem.
Punishment doesn’t prevent behavior that already happened and is usually missed. Road modifications help every time.
My town has a major road that was one of the most infuriating and dangerous in town. It was two lanes in each direction, constant jockeying for position or to make the light or to get around a turning car.
All it took was repainting. Now it’s one lane in each direction with turning lanes. There is no jockeying for position since it’s only one lane. But turning cars are no longer blocking so no infuriating stop and go. They even coordinated the lights.
Now that road is slower, calmer, no road rage or angry drivers and everyone gets through in less time
Perception is a funny thing. Experiencing road rage and anger distorts one’s sense of how much time something takes. The true test of “everyone gets through in less time” is a clock and a car counter.
And I’ve done that. While it’s tough to get repeatable traffic, I go through there often. For my most common destination, gps estimate is consistently 3 min less than before
I lived in a city that was doing a lot of lane count reduction, installation of traffic circles, etc. Results were… mixed. It definitely was achieving “aesthetic improvement” with more trees and green features along what used to be bare asphalt and concrete corridors - sometimes the traffic did “flow better” on the lane count reduced roads, but I think a lot of that was attributable to significant volume diverting to alternate routes. Then they had their “disaster area” situations that only got worse no matter what they did - overdevelopment underserved is a formidable problem.