Whoopsie! Sydney’s road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.

For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney’s Central Business District.

It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it’s turned into a giant car park:

"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.

"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.

“Those travel delays have now blown out.”

So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?

‘Dude! Just one more lane!’

From the article:

"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.

“That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/how-planners-got-rozelle-traffic-modelling-horribly-wrong-20231129-p5ensa.html

#roads #traffic #cars @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #motorways #fuckcars

  • Paragone
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    -411 months ago

    @sping I only found counter-steering worked when on road-tires, & leaned waaay over, and from what I’ve seen of Fortnine, he countersteers waaay leaned over, too.

    The turn of the handlebars only is primary when you’re upright, not when you’re as-near-horizontal-as-you-can-get.

    *shruggeth*

    It’s been many years since I bothered with road-bikes, and arguing it is pointless, obviously: what I’m talking about you aren’t describing.

    Cheers.

    _ /\ _

    • @sping@lemmy.sdf.org
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      11 months ago

      I have a feeling you’re mixing up the direction of the force you have to apply with the angle of the wheel. Also, countersteering is about how you change the radius of your turn, not about what angle you hold on a steady-state turn.

      The effects of the round tire profile are a factor that alter the steering angle for a given turn - conceivably even against to the direction you turn, but as you can see from the Wikipedia page linked that’s not what the term means.

      And ultimately, it’s the only way you initiate a turn, no matter how much many people disbelieve it. As the page says “While this appears to be a complex sequence of motions, it is performed by every child who rides a bicycle. The entire sequence goes largely unnoticed by most riders, which is why some assert that they do not do it.”