Friday, February 17, 2012

Intensification, Traffic Congestion and Air Pollution

Public Health and Downtown Traffic (Marcus Bowman , Spacing Toronto, Jul. 21, 2011)

Also discussed here: Ottawa's clogged roads near capacity (Open File Ottawa, Nov. 18, 2010)

And here: Queue Interactions in Synchro 6 (12 page Word doc, Synchro 6)
Today, we focus on some articles that describe how congested cities, such as Toronto and Ottawa, are becoming as the density of the urban population increases and leads to traffic flows that exceed road capacity, queuing at intersections and unnecessary idling and emissions. One ‘solution” is to widen roads to increase capacity but "widening roads to fight congestion is like loosening your belt to fight obesity".



Key Quotes:

“ Environment Canada estimates that passenger vehicles account for approximately 51% of VOC emissions and 21% of NOx emissions in Canada”

“Each new car that hits the road makes the entire system slightly worse for everyone by contributing to greater traffic jams and more pollution. Investing in more traffic capacity will only perpetuate this exponentially growing cycle”

“the well documented phenomenon of induced demand. More road capacity leads to more cars and provides no overall gain in reducing congestion…a 1% increase in road capacity will lead to a 1% increase in the amount of traffic.”

“increases in downtown density must be accompanied by a shift away from automobile capacity or public health will suffer. More density in downtown must be accompanied by a shift towards alternative means of transit”
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