News & Discussion: Roads & Traffic

[camaro68]

The NYC story was amazing, the Rann government should turn south road into a big 20 km long mall and all the traffic congestion will be fixed, my god how amazing and how simple. I guess by doing that all the cars that were using it will disappear, and here I was thinking to build a better road system for this state, all we need to do is go down to Bunnings buy some planters and paint and all the traffic issues disappear. Who needs the MATS plan we should introduce the MALL (Metropolitan Arterial Leisure Link) plan. I'm beside myself in awe at this technological breakthrough. :wank:

[AtD]

The NYC story was amazing, the Rann government should turn south road into a big 20 km long mall and all the traffic congestion will be fixed, my god how amazing and how simple. I guess by doing that all the cars that were using it will disappear, and here I was thinking to build a better road system for this state, all we need to do is go down to Bunnings buy some planters and paint and all the traffic issues disappear. Who needs the MATS plan we should introduce the MALL (Metropolitan Arterial Leisure Link) plan. I'm beside myself in awe at this technological breakthrough. :wank:

Straw man argument. Try again.

A 20km South Road Mall is entirely your idea. You called your own idea wank. Well done. Have a cookie.

[Prince George]

The NYC example made the Broadway awkward but not impossible to drive along. That meant that the people who didn't really need to drive down there didn't, but the people that did need to still could. Making South Road a "20km mall" obviously isn't the same at all, but there is an equivalent and entirely reasonable idea for South Road - make it a tollway. If a new super road came with tolls, would you be happy with that? (And, yes, I really want to know)

In any case, they chose Broadway rather than the Henry Hudson Parkway or the Brooklyn Bridge because of Broadway's high number of pedestrians. That means that there are people there to use the new spaces. It's more comparable to closing off one of Adelaide's squares, or perhaps a section of Grenfell St. And the real genius of doing this with a bunch of planters and seats from Bunnings is that apart from costing very little to try, you can change your mind at almost no cost by just picking them up and moving them. You can afford to be wrong, and so afford to experiment, which is not at all true of sinking millions of dollars into a massive rebuild of an area. In fact, we regularly do just that when we're hosting the racing in the east parklands, or closing off sections of Victoria Square or King William Road during the Festival, or even when there has to be road or construction work, and the city manages to survive.

Wayno, I'm sure that some people were inconvenienced, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If the inconvenience means that you don't take a trip that you can afford not to take anyway, then big deal. Those low-value trips are the ones that you want to control when you're making plans to deal with congestion. And in NYC you are blessed with a plethora of options to driving - a little more than half of all households in the city don't even own a car, and fewer than 30% of New Yorkers drive to work. Indeed, NYC wanted to introduce congestion pricing, but were stopped by the state legislature, when the speaker of their House of Assembly refused to allow the required bill to be heard (the speaker gets to decide what the house will vote on). And why? Because much of NYC's traffic comes from outside the city, from the sprawling suburban areas like Westchester or Rochester; they represent a very significant part of the state assembly, and they still want to drive for free in NYC.

[rhino]

Great video. Thanks for posting it.

[camaro68]

A 20km South Road Mall is entirely your idea. You called your own idea wank. Well done. Have a cookie. Yes I was being serious about that?? MALAKA!!

I think leaving SA's roads as they are and relying on an improved public transport system to fix the problem is using both hands not just one :wank: :wank:

It amazes me I’ve broached this topic with many people in SA across many disciplines, white collar, blue collar, Young people, old people I’d say in excess of 100 over the last 12 months and not one has argued against improving the road system, similar to the MATS plan.

You guys must be a glitch in the system, nothing a full reformat wouldn’t fix.

[jk1237]

It amazes me I’ve broached this topic with many people in SA across many disciplines, white collar, blue collar, Young people, old people I’d say in excess of 100 over the last 12 months and not one has argued against improving the road system, similar to the MATS plan.

You guys must be a glitch in the system, nothing a full reformat wouldn’t fix.

Why are on here then?

Not everyone in Adelaide lives like zombies in a middle class house in the outer suburbs with a tripple garage with 1 or 2 cars for every member of the family to drive to the Westfield. I dont want a MATS plan, infact I feel like vomiting everytime I see that plan

[monotonehell]

I think leaving SA's roads as they are and relying on an improved public transport system to fix the problem is using both hands not just one :wank: :wank:

No one's saying that at all. They're pointing out the folly that the knee jerk reaction "make the roads wider" is. We need to improve the roads smarter, not just throw the 1950's engineering paradigm of "make it biggarrrr!" at it. It's been proven over the past 40 years that that approach doesn't work for the long term.

It amazes me I’ve broached this topic with many people in SA across many disciplines, white collar, blue collar, Young people, old people I’d say in excess of 100 over the last 12 months and not one has argued against improving the road system, similar to the MATS plan.

You guys must be a glitch in the system, nothing a full reformat wouldn’t fix.

You're confusing the general public's (correct) opinion that something must be done, with thinking that the general public know what must be done. Ask someone who drives in peak periods if the road system needs to be improved and they will undoubtedly say "yes." Then ask them for a solution that will work and they will stare at you blankly. They don't know, because they haven't done the research, or tested possible solutions. Understandably, they can only see the problem from their driver's seat.

Open your eyes to the bigger picture. Think about the whole metropolitan area, how all the parts interact. Don't assume that all we need are several big arteries feeding into the CBD. Realise that a lot of journeys aren't just radial, but cross town. Think about how induced demand can undermine proposed solutions. Look at the traffic patterns. Look at alternatives to single occupancy vehicles that will free up space for everyone. And instead of plonking a wank icon after that video in NYC, have a look at a map of Manhattan and realise that lower Broadway's situation is nothing like South Road.

[Shuz]

Adelaide's roads outside of the CBD are horribly misaligned. There needs to be a huge overhaul in the road network to align roads correctly to another. Everyone uses South Road because it is the only road that actually goes right from Noarlunga all the way through to the northern suburbs.

If Marion Road, Holbrooks Road, East Avenue, Kilkenny Road, and Hanson Road were all aligned into a continous route; I'm sure you'd see a huge shift of traffic away from South Road; alleviating the congestion that presently exists. Such an option would be cheaper than to build yet another underpass.

Same goes for east-west travel. The only two roads which travel consistently from East to West are SDBD, Grote, Wakefield & Kesington Roads, and Grand Junction Road.

I could mention several others. I just can't be effed right now. But look on Google Maps; you'll see.

[jk1237]

shuz, southerners dont just use South Rd to head north, they also use Goodwood Rd and Marion Rd, and also Springbank Rd winding through to Fullarton Rd via foothills. They also use Dyson/Lonsdale Hwy which turns into Brighton Rd which turns into Tapleys Hill Rd. Not a great deal of traffic would be heading all the way from south of Darlington to north of Gepps Cross anyway. Some would but not many

[camaro68]

"jk1237, Don't assume to know where I live and which class of people I belong to!! Save your racist satire for the KKK meetings, btw don’t forget your burning cross this time.

“Monotonehell”. I have spoken to people that have been involved in the designing of road systems throughout Europe and don’t feel that the theory of induced demand applies to SA in its purest form as we don’t have the population compared to our size that would bring that theory into play, neither do we have surrounding countries that have combined populations of ¼ billion people either. They have reviewed the MATS plan and though it can probably improve from its original version, it’s still mostly applicable.


They spoke about two possibilities:

1. If a freeway veered off to the left somewhere between Callington and mount barker and went through McLaren vale and eventually joined up with a north/south freeway the southern and western suburbs would be assessable without have to go down cross road and then turn left to go back to the southern suburbs.

2. Another to the right past Hahndorf that went around the other part of the city, then most of the traffic would miss the centre completely and have access to the now expanding northern part of Adelaide.

I’m not a civil/road engineer I’m just plane mechanical engineer however my experience in life has shown me if you discuss things with SME’s (Subject Matter Experts) you’re more than likely going to receive some pretty valid information.

I know that I’m going to get shot down in flames and told this will cost billions of dollars, it probably will, however that’s why things like this require a strategy and spread the costs over 30 + years, not like most of the politicians this state has had, who are only interested in quick fixes within their allotted 4 year tenure.

[jk1237]

you really love cars and petrol dont you Camaro

[Prince George]

People, people, let's keep the tone civil!

There's nothing wrong with loving cars, any more than there is with loving trains or bikes, or hang-gliding or water-skiing. But there is a distinction between what we like to do for leisure, and what we need to do for work, school, or whatever. Someone might love bike-touring, but have to drive as a part of their job; another might love motorsport, but catching a train makes most sense for getting where they need to go. Many problems arise from expecting that we should be able to do what we love in all cases, and that the rest of the world should conform to that requirement. We clearly understand that in some cases - I've met people that love hang-gliding, but no one that expected to commute that way - but driving seems to be a special case. We really have built whole cities on the principle that people will drive everywhere, and that we should be able to do it as freely as possible, and in some cases it's practically the only way that we can get around (eg the neighbourhoods with no footpaths).

And that brings me to the heart of the matter - this isn't just about road vs rail, car vs bike, petrol vs pedestrians; this is really about the shape of our city and the direction that it's going to take in the coming 20+ years.

Let's start at the beginning - I think that most people would agree that driving across town (esp. north/south) is pretty unpleasant. So why are so many people doing it? There are these plans or visions for an uninterrupted corridor from Seaford up to Elizabeth, or even Gawler - but why the heck do we have so much traffic even going half (or a quarter) of that distance?

Lets simplify it by just talking about commuting between work and home - many people are living a substantial distance from where they work. Obviously there's going to be a lot of reasons, but the principle ones that come to mind for me are:

• House prices drop as you head out to the fringes of the city (they've got a good phrase for that here - you "drive 'til you qualify", ie until you can afford to buy), likewise the price of land for industry drops which puts them out there too.
• Housing is spread over a very large area, but employment is more concentrated in a few areas
• People are much more mobile in their jobs than they are in their housing - people can change their job pretty freely, but moving house generally comes with a host of extra costs and they do that less often. So you might start near your work, but a few years later your job has changed and your house hasn't

The 30 year development plan is trying to address that "within the next 30 years Greater Adelaide can house 500,000 more people, nearly 250,000 new dwellings and 160,000 new jobs", meaning if we don't address some of these issues, no amount of road building is going to solve the traffic problem(*). How can we help people reduce the distance between where they live and work? Do we need to distribute employment (and shopping and schooling) around the city differently, so we can provide more or better options to people that don't require so much travel? Do we need to look at affordability, to give people more choices for the location that they could live? What's this city going to look like, how dense will the housing be, where will it be located, will people accept living in multi-level, multi-family buildings? How well does the TOD idea work with a transport system that's still very hub-and-spoke (everything going into town and then radiating back out), will it need more cross-town transit connections?

All this has to be addressed with our limited funds - take a look at how expensive the Northern Expressway and Northern Connector are going to be, and imagine projecting that cost across the metropolitan area. We've got to work at getting the most out of what we've got now, and marshalling it into what we want for the future. That's what this debate is really about - not just absolute positions and moral high-ground, but the practical matter of what will Adelaide be like when the year 2000 is a distant memory.

(*) well, within reason. Given infinite funds, you could build and build and build until there's a super abundance of freeway and the problem is gone, but is that the city that we want to live in? I've seen Houston and I didn't like it (and the traffic was terrible)

[AG]

I think what Prince George has written summarises the issue of the urban congestion situation really well. What most people seem to miss when it comes to sorting out the traffic issues is that the problem won't simply be sorted by continuously increasing capacity, but also by using what capacity we currently have more efficiently. That increase in efficiency requires structural changes to how we plan development, the way Adelaideans live, work and play and hence how they travel, and also a change in mindset to address these issues.

[drwaddles]

my experience in life has shown me if you discuss things with SME’s (Subject Matter Experts) you’re more than likely going to receive some pretty valid information.

In which case, why do you continue to ignore or refute the information given here by SMEs?

Besides, I would not call Civil Engineers SMEs on anything other than the actual physical design of roads without knowing what their knowledge outside of CivEng is like. CivEng does not encompass traffic engineering, let alone the complex interactions between land use and transport.

[Shuz]

...using what capacity we currently have more efficiently.

Further to prove my point about correcting the alignment of several of our roads, to make them continually flowing routes which reduces the dependency of congestion caused at points where two 'routes' share the capacity of one road.

A good example of two notable congestion hotspots around; Edward Street/Raglan Avenue cross-traffic needing to utilize South Road for 100m; causing congestion to the existing South Road traffic. Same goes for the Daws Road & Springbank Road intersections with Goodwood Road.