Quote:
Originally Posted by Cube Inmate
This (bold) is your utopian misconception. When a roadway's capacity is reduced below demand, it doesn't just slow down...it stops somewhere and/or the congestion backs up. In Utopia, a capacity reduction would require everyone approaching the congestion to slow down, with the slowdown extending farther and farther backwards unless demand decreases. In reality, the people approaching congestion don't know about it until they've hit it, so the required slowdown doesn't happen...traffic just piles up.
It's like drinking through a straw. You can only suck so hard before the straw collapses. Within that limit, it doesn't matter whether you're drinking out of a tall & skinny glass or a short & wide one...it takes the same amount of time to drink the stuff.
More courteous drivers could yield a more even distribution of wait times in a congested location, but the average wait time cannot be changed. Even if drivers slowed down and increased space far in advance of a congested area, the result is the same. Instead of a 1 km-long stop-and-go traffic jam moving at an average of 5 km/h, we could have a 3 km-long traffic jam moving continuously at an average of 15 km/h. Regardless, the end result is the same.
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Seems like you know a lot more about this stuff than I do. But that straw analogy doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not mad that the straw's collapsing. I'm upset that some blueberries in my milk shake seem to think they need to go through the straw ahead of the raspberries and banana chunks.