Rush hour traffic

[Fire]

You go on Deerfoot during rush hour and the traffic is going 50 km/h if you're lucky. People I know that used to live in the large USA cities (Detroit, Chicago) tell me that rush hour traffic speeds are at the speed limit if not higher. Plus people actually merge into traffic at the same speed as traffic because they have no choice. If they don't they get run over.

Why isn't it like that here?

My theory - A lot of Calgarians are not born and raised in Calgary. Many come from rural areas from Western and Atlantic Canada. They don't know how to handle the speed in heavy traffic. You get a farmer driving his pickup truck on Deerfoot and it causes hundreds of other vechicles to slow down behind him. It only takes a small percentage of slow vechicles to make Deerfot into a parking lot.

Does anyone live in any of the larger US cities that can back me up on this or am I crazy?

[flamingchina]

well one reason is just traffic totals.
as you add cars to a road, the speed wouldn't drop linearly, more like exponentially.
it might be something to do with the people not familier with heavy traffic, but not totally, it also helps in large American cities, often the on and off ramps are a bit better than they are here (longer merge leanes, and the merge lane+ exit lane aren't the same.

there is also the theory of how traffic jams ovvur, one person brakes, and it causes all of traffic to slow down.
heres a good trafic simulator to play with, use the on ramp one, and play with traffic volumes to see what happens.

http://141.30.51.183/~treiber/MicroApplet/simFrame.html

[Resolute 14]

A road like Deerfoot in a major American city would be an eight or ten lane road - or larger. The problem is simply congestion. Too many cars for the road to handle. At that point, all it takes is one idiot driving too slowly to mess everyone up.

The City of Calgary website has traffic volume maps dating back to 1963. It's amazing to compare how the city has grown and changed in the past 40 years:

Transportation maps

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by Snakeeye@Sep 7 2004, 06:07 AM
A road like Deerfoot in a major American city would be an eight or ten lane road - or larger. The problem is simply congestion. Too many cars for the road to handle. At that point, all it takes is one idiot driving too slowly to mess everyone up.

The City of Calgary website has traffic volume maps dating back to 1963. It's amazing to compare how the city has grown and changed in the past 40 years:

Transportation maps

That's exactly it.

Not enough lanes to shunt those choosing to drive slower off to the right and out of the way.

I was in San Antonio last week a city of about 1.2 million, and, while it doesn't have the equivalent of an LRT, it has a massive traffic distribution system. There were only a couple of times I couldn't drive 70 mph virtually anywhere, including right up to the downtown exit ramp. Not only does it have numerous freeways heading to all points of the compass out of the downtown but it also has several high volume ring roads encircling the downtown, the middle of the city and the edge, all interconnected.

Calgary really doesn't compare even though its not much smaller in size.

Cowperson

[Fuzzy McGillicuddy]

Originally posted by fotze@Sep 7 2004, 07:55 AM
People need to use their horn more.

Yes, that will speed things up and not aggravate the hell out of anyone.

Deerfoot Trail is also a badly-designed freeway. Merge lanes flow into exit lanes. You have traffic trying to enter the freeway competing with traffic trying to exit the freeway. When there are no accidents, the portions of Deerfoot that bog down the most are where interchanges are relatively close together.

[troutman]

With summer holidays over and children back in school, I noticed traffic was much heavier this morning than last week. Also, the bad weather forces a lot of bike riders back into cars.

[Cube Inmate]

Originally posted by Cowperson@Sep 7 2004, 07:46 AM
That's exactly it.

Not enough lanes to shunt those choosing to drive slower off to the right and out of the way.

Even if there are enough lanes, you can't put untrained, cellphone-talking, breakfast-eating, makeup-doing idiots (I'd prefer to use a different word starting with an "a" and ending with "holes" but it's a family site) on a freeway and expect them to drive in the correct lane.

...But I won't turn this into another thread dedicated to griping about other drivers...so I'll just say that even a 16-lane freeway doesn't solve the problems...I've wasted a few hours of my life stuck on the 401 in "stop and go..no wait..stop" traffic.