Ramp metering isn't the end-all be-all of traffic solutions, and maybe LA's traffic issues are just far beyond the help that it can provide, but it can indeed help when deployed in the right...
Ramp metering isn't the end-all be-all of traffic solutions, and maybe LA's traffic issues are just far beyond the help that it can provide, but it can indeed help when deployed in the right situations. They were added in the Raleigh area for us and after install and tuning, it was reported that they saved about 10 minutes on a 14 mile section of the highway during rush hour which is pretty significant.
This is just the end result of designing your city around vehicle use rather than walkability. The only way to have less traffic is to have less need to drive in the first place by providing what...
This is just the end result of designing your city around vehicle use rather than walkability. The only way to have less traffic is to have less need to drive in the first place by providing what people need within walking distance of their home (within half a mile).
This isn't particularly specific to vehicle-based development. It's the same for any queuing system; you're adding a form of back pressure. This applies to lines of pedestrians at entrances,...
This isn't particularly specific to vehicle-based development. It's the same for any queuing system; you're adding a form of back pressure. This applies to lines of pedestrians at entrances, cyclists, boxes, packets, batch jobs, any queue really.
LA in particular has very limited avenues of vehicular congestion easing because LA is already so developed. You can't widen arterials and most freeways because there's existing, expensive, development along these ROWs. Fundamentally maximum vehicular throughput is much lower per unit area than cyclist or pedestrian throughput, so beyond a certain density it just cannot move enough vehicles to offer unclogged traffic flow. That's the main issue with sprawl-oriented vehicular development, at least when it comes to congestion.
The solution, in principle, is not complicated: induce a modal shift to public transportation by constructing more light and heavy rail; increasing bus service; redesigning streets appropriately;...
The solution, in principle, is not complicated: induce a modal shift to public transportation by constructing more light and heavy rail; increasing bus service; redesigning streets appropriately; and eliminating parking and other inefficient land uses to encourage development infill and greater walkability. Obviously, the implementation is complicated. But the recent LA Regional Connector speaks to the work that's being done to improve the region's transportation system.
The Regional Connector ties together multiple formerly disparate metro lines, which deceases train turnaround time and therefore improves efficiency and reliability significantly. It also offers the ability to take a through-running train from one side of town to the other without a transfer. Philadelphia's Center City Commuter Connection, opened in 1984, is another example of through-running capabilities in the US. New York is somewhat embarrassingly behind the times with this one (Penn Station and Grand Central don't connect), as is Boston (North and South Stations don't connect). It's therefore remarkable and good to see a project like this completed in LA, of all places.
The Regional Connector project also brought in three new transit stations in the downtown. The city's planned extension to the D (purple) line will improve transit access and decrease the need for many people to drive. This is a pretty busy part of town and could really benefit from rail. (Construction will have a phased opening, starting in 2024 and finishing in 2027.) The LAX Automated People Mover (lol) will also connect the airport to the metro network in late 2024, a severely important measure. And extensions to the A line will supposedly be finished next year as well.
I visit LA frequently but don't live there so I'm not sure about the particulars. But my experience on the Metro has been... mixed. Buses only really have priority downtown. Blocks are huge and...
I visit LA frequently but don't live there so I'm not sure about the particulars. But my experience on the Metro has been... mixed. Buses only really have priority downtown. Blocks are huge and bus stops can be awful. I've taken two buses before where they just missed my stop (though both operators were very nice, one actually drove the bus directly to the closest point on an arterial and the other went to an extra stop along their route back to the yard and let me get off.) Because buses get mired in the same traffic as cars, they're often a lot slower than driving when you account for frequent stops on many of the routes and walking to the actual destination. The subway is nice but its poor headways and consequently poor ridership numbers speak for themselves.
From what I can tell it's all a huge lack of political will. LA City Council members push back on bike lanes whenever and wherever they can. Lack of political will to give buses dedicated lanes. The impression I get spying on LA area local politics is that locals feel that traffic is a zero-sum game and offering any advantage to any other mode is just making every other mode lose. The walking back of protected bike lanes in Culver City shows me this zero-sum attitude is alive and well in the region. With that kind of thinking, I just can't see how the region can ever dig itself out of its congested hole. If you can't widen roads, you're already up against vehicular throughput limits, and you refuse to offer priority to more space-efficient modes, then there's just no way forward.
I'd happy to be wrong but that's my impression as a frequent visitor looking in and a transit activist in a different place.
Mark out dedicated bus lanes. It let's busses be quicker than cars and sends a message that if you want to actually get somewhere then you should take the bus. The transit system in that area...
Because buses get mired in the same traffic as cars, they're often a lot slower than driving when you account for frequent stops on many of the routes and walking to the actual destination.
Mark out dedicated bus lanes. It let's busses be quicker than cars and sends a message that if you want to actually get somewhere then you should take the bus. The transit system in that area needs to be good enough though...
I don't know what LA is like but the minute someone says "busses get stuck in the same traffic as cars" then that needs to be fixed.
Of course. It's just that the political will doesn't exist. From what I've seen, LA City Council does not want to do anything to upset drivers and making dedicated bus lanes makes drivers feel...
Of course. It's just that the political will doesn't exist. From what I've seen, LA City Council does not want to do anything to upset drivers and making dedicated bus lanes makes drivers feel that they're losing ground to bus riders.
Ya, I absolutely understand the political issue... but the attitude can either be "transit is priority, cars are second class" or they have the existing situation. The physical solution is easy....
Ya, I absolutely understand the political issue... but the attitude can either be "transit is priority, cars are second class" or they have the existing situation.
The physical solution is easy. The solution to the political problem is NOT easy.
While I agree with mostly everything you stated about the lack of political will and people viewing transportation as a zero sum game, I take issue with the suggestion you keep alluding to that...
While I agree with mostly everything you stated about the lack of political will and people viewing transportation as a zero sum game, I take issue with the suggestion you keep alluding to that widening roads would be a possible solution to the congestion problem if the option was available.
It is proven that widening roads induces demand, even if they had the space to add one lane each way to every road you'd just be kicking the current problem 5-10 years down the line when the amount of throughput induced by this change reaches the new capacity of the system.
The only viable solution for urban environments is to push and incentivise more efficient modes of transport. Until people realize that they can't drive their big metal box everywhere within a city we'll never get rid of traffic and congestion.
I'm not alluding this at all. I'm just trying to show how absurd this even is when a city becomes as developed as LA. Smaller cities have the choice to kick the can down the road by widening their...
I take issue with the suggestion you keep alluding to that widening roads would be a possible solution to the congestion problem if the option was available
I'm not alluding this at all. I'm just trying to show how absurd this even is when a city becomes as developed as LA. Smaller cities have the choice to kick the can down the road by widening their streets, but LA physically cannot. There is a literal cap on the growth of its lanes.
The only viable solution for urban environments is to push and incentivise more efficient modes of transport. Until people realize that they can't drive their big metal box everywhere within a city we'll never get rid of traffic and congestion.
This is fun in theory but in practice this isn't what most Americans are okay with. I know, because some of the work I do is sitting at intersections and canvasing locals to sign onto street design changes which benefit other modes. In this regard the urbanist web is a bit of an echo chamber. In real life, I've had neighbors come up to me and tell me why they need another lane or parking or some other auto-oriented feature even when speed surveys and collision data shows that traffic calming is necessary. All we can do is go out and gather popular support for these changes.
As a driver I have some problems with these meters. Most of them are because they are badly placed. Some of them are put too close to the highway traffic, which means you have to put the pedal to...
As a driver I have some problems with these meters. Most of them are because they are badly placed. Some of them are put too close to the highway traffic, which means you have to put the pedal to the metal to reach traffic speeds in time or risk crashing. Some of them are on jughandles so they kind of just sneak up on you (though to be fair, those have been largely fixed with "METER ON" signs that illuminate when they're in use). And some of them appear to stay red until you drive up to them for a few seconds, which means you lose all of your forward momentum and have to waste a lot of fuel for no apparent reason.
But the worst part of them is that there are diamond HOV lanes on every metered onramp that I've ever seen, which means any car with more than one person can just skip the line, which makes the whole thing kind of pointless. Unscrupulous people constantly abuse it and go in even if they're the only one in their car, and I've literally never seen a highway patrol car waiting to catch them. The lanes also tend to be poorly marked, which leads to it being very easy to get into it by mistake and be essentially forced by traffic to skip the meter by accident.
What an LA issue. I swear I've never seen one of those lights but I've mostly been in the bay area, only as far south as Bakersfield. Though, it's hilarious to hear how much the engineers work for...
What an LA issue. I swear I've never seen one of those lights but I've mostly been in the bay area, only as far south as Bakersfield.
Though, it's hilarious to hear how much the engineers work for two or three mph and that they know how little that means to the average motorist. Must be a thankless job.
Well, I can't say I've seen them much between San Jose and Mountain View and I'd guess I mostly have taken the BART outside of that. Should I rephrase the original statement to "Most California...
Well, I can't say I've seen them much between San Jose and Mountain View and I'd guess I mostly have taken the BART outside of that.
Should I rephrase the original statement to "Most California thing" or maybe "Most West Coast" based on the other comments? I've never seen a light like that east of the Rockies.
They are new-ish, installed in 2017. They're only on 540 right now, but supposedly there are some plans to install more in the Raleigh area for ramps onto 40 as well.
They are new-ish, installed in 2017. They're only on 540 right now, but supposedly there are some plans to install more in the Raleigh area for ramps onto 40 as well.
I live in Seattle and these lights are on most of our busy highway onramps. I thought they were fairly universal. however, this is the most LA thing I've ever read:
What an LA issue.
I live in Seattle and these lights are on most of our busy highway onramps. I thought they were fairly universal.
however, this is the most LA thing I've ever read:
That’s yet another reason not to drive when it rains.
It rains very infrequently in the LA area, and the most common type of rain is very light drizzles. As a result the drivers aren't well practiced at driving in it, to put it politely. But my...
It rains very infrequently in the LA area, and the most common type of rain is very light drizzles. As a result the drivers aren't well practiced at driving in it, to put it politely.
But my opinion is that there are a lot of drivers who aren't even vaguely aware of what you should do to safely drive in the rain.
I mean, if your roads aren't designed for rain it will make driving in the rain horrible. Try driving in Texas during a rainstorm and you'll wish you stayed home.
I mean, if your roads aren't designed for rain it will make driving in the rain horrible. Try driving in Texas during a rainstorm and you'll wish you stayed home.
Ramp metering isn't the end-all be-all of traffic solutions, and maybe LA's traffic issues are just far beyond the help that it can provide, but it can indeed help when deployed in the right situations. They were added in the Raleigh area for us and after install and tuning, it was reported that they saved about 10 minutes on a 14 mile section of the highway during rush hour which is pretty significant.
Hello fellow Trianglan!
Wow, there are three of us!
I'm here too
This is just the end result of designing your city around vehicle use rather than walkability. The only way to have less traffic is to have less need to drive in the first place by providing what people need within walking distance of their home (within half a mile).
This isn't particularly specific to vehicle-based development. It's the same for any queuing system; you're adding a form of back pressure. This applies to lines of pedestrians at entrances, cyclists, boxes, packets, batch jobs, any queue really.
LA in particular has very limited avenues of vehicular congestion easing because LA is already so developed. You can't widen arterials and most freeways because there's existing, expensive, development along these ROWs. Fundamentally maximum vehicular throughput is much lower per unit area than cyclist or pedestrian throughput, so beyond a certain density it just cannot move enough vehicles to offer unclogged traffic flow. That's the main issue with sprawl-oriented vehicular development, at least when it comes to congestion.
The solution, in principle, is not complicated: induce a modal shift to public transportation by constructing more light and heavy rail; increasing bus service; redesigning streets appropriately; and eliminating parking and other inefficient land uses to encourage development infill and greater walkability. Obviously, the implementation is complicated. But the recent LA Regional Connector speaks to the work that's being done to improve the region's transportation system.
The Regional Connector ties together multiple formerly disparate metro lines, which deceases train turnaround time and therefore improves efficiency and reliability significantly. It also offers the ability to take a through-running train from one side of town to the other without a transfer. Philadelphia's Center City Commuter Connection, opened in 1984, is another example of through-running capabilities in the US. New York is somewhat embarrassingly behind the times with this one (Penn Station and Grand Central don't connect), as is Boston (North and South Stations don't connect). It's therefore remarkable and good to see a project like this completed in LA, of all places.
The Regional Connector project also brought in three new transit stations in the downtown. The city's planned extension to the D (purple) line will improve transit access and decrease the need for many people to drive. This is a pretty busy part of town and could really benefit from rail. (Construction will have a phased opening, starting in 2024 and finishing in 2027.) The LAX Automated People Mover (lol) will also connect the airport to the metro network in late 2024, a severely important measure. And extensions to the A line will supposedly be finished next year as well.
There's hope for LA traffic!
I visit LA frequently but don't live there so I'm not sure about the particulars. But my experience on the Metro has been... mixed. Buses only really have priority downtown. Blocks are huge and bus stops can be awful. I've taken two buses before where they just missed my stop (though both operators were very nice, one actually drove the bus directly to the closest point on an arterial and the other went to an extra stop along their route back to the yard and let me get off.) Because buses get mired in the same traffic as cars, they're often a lot slower than driving when you account for frequent stops on many of the routes and walking to the actual destination. The subway is nice but its poor headways and consequently poor ridership numbers speak for themselves.
From what I can tell it's all a huge lack of political will. LA City Council members push back on bike lanes whenever and wherever they can. Lack of political will to give buses dedicated lanes. The impression I get spying on LA area local politics is that locals feel that traffic is a zero-sum game and offering any advantage to any other mode is just making every other mode lose. The walking back of protected bike lanes in Culver City shows me this zero-sum attitude is alive and well in the region. With that kind of thinking, I just can't see how the region can ever dig itself out of its congested hole. If you can't widen roads, you're already up against vehicular throughput limits, and you refuse to offer priority to more space-efficient modes, then there's just no way forward.
I'd happy to be wrong but that's my impression as a frequent visitor looking in and a transit activist in a different place.
Mark out dedicated bus lanes. It let's busses be quicker than cars and sends a message that if you want to actually get somewhere then you should take the bus. The transit system in that area needs to be good enough though...
I don't know what LA is like but the minute someone says "busses get stuck in the same traffic as cars" then that needs to be fixed.
Of course. It's just that the political will doesn't exist. From what I've seen, LA City Council does not want to do anything to upset drivers and making dedicated bus lanes makes drivers feel that they're losing ground to bus riders.
Ya, I absolutely understand the political issue... but the attitude can either be "transit is priority, cars are second class" or they have the existing situation.
The physical solution is easy. The solution to the political problem is NOT easy.
While I agree with mostly everything you stated about the lack of political will and people viewing transportation as a zero sum game, I take issue with the suggestion you keep alluding to that widening roads would be a possible solution to the congestion problem if the option was available.
It is proven that widening roads induces demand, even if they had the space to add one lane each way to every road you'd just be kicking the current problem 5-10 years down the line when the amount of throughput induced by this change reaches the new capacity of the system.
The only viable solution for urban environments is to push and incentivise more efficient modes of transport. Until people realize that they can't drive their big metal box everywhere within a city we'll never get rid of traffic and congestion.
I'm not alluding this at all. I'm just trying to show how absurd this even is when a city becomes as developed as LA. Smaller cities have the choice to kick the can down the road by widening their streets, but LA physically cannot. There is a literal cap on the growth of its lanes.
This is fun in theory but in practice this isn't what most Americans are okay with. I know, because some of the work I do is sitting at intersections and canvasing locals to sign onto street design changes which benefit other modes. In this regard the urbanist web is a bit of an echo chamber. In real life, I've had neighbors come up to me and tell me why they need another lane or parking or some other auto-oriented feature even when speed surveys and collision data shows that traffic calming is necessary. All we can do is go out and gather popular support for these changes.
As a driver I have some problems with these meters. Most of them are because they are badly placed. Some of them are put too close to the highway traffic, which means you have to put the pedal to the metal to reach traffic speeds in time or risk crashing. Some of them are on jughandles so they kind of just sneak up on you (though to be fair, those have been largely fixed with "METER ON" signs that illuminate when they're in use). And some of them appear to stay red until you drive up to them for a few seconds, which means you lose all of your forward momentum and have to waste a lot of fuel for no apparent reason.
But the worst part of them is that there are diamond HOV lanes on every metered onramp that I've ever seen, which means any car with more than one person can just skip the line, which makes the whole thing kind of pointless. Unscrupulous people constantly abuse it and go in even if they're the only one in their car, and I've literally never seen a highway patrol car waiting to catch them. The lanes also tend to be poorly marked, which leads to it being very easy to get into it by mistake and be essentially forced by traffic to skip the meter by accident.
What an LA issue. I swear I've never seen one of those lights but I've mostly been in the bay area, only as far south as Bakersfield.
Though, it's hilarious to hear how much the engineers work for two or three mph and that they know how little that means to the average motorist. Must be a thankless job.
There are metering lights on most highways in the SF bay area. How could you not see them?
There are tons in the Bay Area, but if you aren’t driving during rush hour they’re rarely on if ever. But yeah definitely not just an LA thing.
Well, I can't say I've seen them much between San Jose and Mountain View and I'd guess I mostly have taken the BART outside of that.
Should I rephrase the original statement to "Most California thing" or maybe "Most West Coast" based on the other comments? I've never seen a light like that east of the Rockies.
Maybe I'm just not worldly enough.
We have them in Raleigh, NC on 4 exits with more to come.
Neat! Have they recently been put in or have they been seeing for a while? Most of my NC visits have been Fayetteville or just up and down 95.
They are new-ish, installed in 2017. They're only on 540 right now, but supposedly there are some plans to install more in the Raleigh area for ramps onto 40 as well.
They are on easily more than half of freeway on ramps in the Bay Area
I live in Seattle and these lights are on most of our busy highway onramps. I thought they were fairly universal.
however, this is the most LA thing I've ever read:
It rains very infrequently in the LA area, and the most common type of rain is very light drizzles. As a result the drivers aren't well practiced at driving in it, to put it politely.
But my opinion is that there are a lot of drivers who aren't even vaguely aware of what you should do to safely drive in the rain.
I mean, if your roads aren't designed for rain it will make driving in the rain horrible. Try driving in Texas during a rainstorm and you'll wish you stayed home.
Got them in Vegas too, mostly for the spaghetti bowl.
I've seen them in NL also, fwiw
I live on a totally different continent, and I've seen these traffic lights on some freeway entry ramps in my city.
They're common along 101 near Redwood City, and there's plenty of them on 50 in Davis and Sacramento -- not sure how you've never seen them.