News & Discussion: Roads & Traffic

[camaro68]

Thanks to all for those lovely responses, especially aimed at my 68 Camaro, ironically my vehicle is a lot more modern than the roads in SA that I drive it on. BTW we can all throw around induced demand theories (And I’m sure one of the many Einsteins of this post will convince the masses how accurate they are), let’s just agree to disagree. In years to come when Adelaide is left behind due to its lack of vision with anything resembling progress, then we can pull out all the induced demand and even chaos theory math and try to model that scenario. :wank:

[monotonehell]

Thanks to all for those lovely responses, especially aimed at my 68 Camaro, ironically my vehicle is a lot more modern than the roads in SA that I drive it on. BTW we can all throw around induced demand theories (And I’m sure one of the many Einsteins of this post will convince the masses how accurate they are), let’s just agree to disagree. In years to come when Adelaide is left behind due to its lack of vision with anything resembling progress, then we can pull out all the induced demand and even chaos theory math and try to model that scenario. :wank:

Progress for progress's sake? Great way to end up with a load of white elephants. Your convictions and liberal application of the wank icon are almost religious in zeal. Shouting down people who try to look at things with rational thinking is ignorance. Yes let's just build freeways where it feels right, even if it creates gridlock and destroys any ability to get around the city in less than an hour -- at least it "resembles progress," yes? :wank:

How about this instead? We look at the problems facing Adelaide now, as well as trying to predict the problems Adelaide may face in the future. Then we look around the World for similar situations, and try to learn from history. Then we apply what we've learnt to our situation and build infrastructure that will actually lead to progress.

[camaro68]

Question for the rocket scientist out there. With regards to the induced demand theory of everyone using the proposed N/S freeway, do you think that the amount of people using it will outweigh it's through put ability?

Will there be an inifinte number of cars to do that? Surely a 3-4 lane freeway in either direction would be able to cope with any possible induced demand.

Change for the sake of change, I think people were saying that about Jeff Kennett, now they worship the ground he walks on!!!.

I guess the flip side we can spent the money building a more effective public transport system, I'm sure CEVA logistics would love to tranport a few shipping containers on a bus.

[AtD]

Question for the rocket scientist out there. With regards to the induced demand theory of everyone using the proposed N/S freeway, do you think that the amount of people using it will outweigh it's through put ability?

Will there be an inifinte number of cars to do that? Surely a 3-4 lane freeway in either direction would be able to cope with any possible induced demand.

A freeway's single biggest failing is that it does cannot exit in isolation. Congestion on a freeway is almost always caused by off-ramps, that is, the roads beyond the freeway. Driving though Sydney you see this a lot, queues of traffic from arterial roads running back onto the freeway. You literally do get situations where a 6 lane motorway comes to a standstill because of a set of traffic lights several kilometers up the road.

Think about the car parks!

I guess the flip side we can spent the money building a more effective public transport system, I'm sure CEVA logistics would love to tranport a few shipping containers on a bus.

If you can get people out of cars and onto trains and buses, the road system benefits! Adelaide's PT network is so sub-standard that even the smallest investment can pay big dividends for both networks.

According to Transport SA, at South Road's busiest section, just south of Adam St in Hindmarsh, there are an estimated 50,800 vehicles, two way traffic. Just 10% of this is estimated to be commercial traffic. On Adelaide's busiest and most important freight route, commercial vehicles account for just 1 in every 10 vehicles at most. This falls down to just 5% around Flinders University. Marion Road records as low as 3.5% points, Goodwood Road just 2.5%.
http://www.transport.sa.gov.au/transpor ... olumes.asp

So the other 90% or more of traffic is private cars. The figures for car occupancy, depending which study you look at, vary around 1.1 to 1.4 persons per car. Let's be generous, and say it's 1.4. Now, a 4-car Adelaide train can carry about 400 seated passengers - that's 285 cars before anyone needs to stand. You can easily double that with standing passengers.

If Adelaide had the capacity to run a train like this every 15 minutes between 7am and 9am that's over 1,100 cars removed from the road with seated passengers only, and another 1,100 on the return trip. Already that's 5% of typical South Road traffic past Flinders Uni.

Even this is a rail setup that would be considered substandard in the four larger cities. Adelaide could run six or even eight car trains with a simple platform extension, and every 5 minutes is arguably achievable if we had the rollingstock. Our trains run less often and are the smallest in the nation. We have the lowest PT usage of the five major cities. Adelaide's limiting factor isn't the length of track or passenger demand, but the number of vehicles, just 98 trains and 11 trams! There's some very low hanging fruit to be gained from Public Transport.

But what about our favourite truth of economics, induced demand? It's a killer for freeways because it is hideously expensive to increase the capacity of a freeway once it's built, and the limiting factor is almost always the roads around it. Well the amazing thing is induced demand works to the advantage of public transport! If a bus runs every 30 minutes and is full, logically it'd be feasable to run a bus every 15 minutes and double capacity. Suddenly the service is twice as frequent and therefore twice as usable, and more passengers follow. This can carry on as long as the population allows.

A bus that comes every 5 minutes becomes a very popular alternative. Even in little Canberra, the intertown bus route boasts a bus every 5 minutes and is the only service here to do so. It is slower than driving as it takes a longer path and stops more often, and all the other 'indignities' of bus travel. Despite this it is still packed, and this is a city one third the size of Adelaide.

A literal example: Before the city extension was even built and before many of the new trams had arrived, the Glenelg Tram carried the same number of people as 10% of the cars on Anzac Highway at West Tce, about 5150 people per day. Just 4% of traffic on Anzac Hwy is commercial vehicles. The government has ordered trams to double the size of the fleet, so we can take at least another 10% of traffic off Anzac Highway.

The trick we need to achieve is to get people out of their cars and into PT. As they say, one bus = 50 cars. Run a bus and you can move 70 people and reduce road traffic. We can help both systems by investing in PT.

I'll end with a fun fact. Sydney's CityRail baosts that they move 50,000 people per hour on their busiest lines. South Road's busiest section carries 50,000 vehicles per day.

[adam73837]

Question for the rocket scientist out there. With regards to the induced demand theory of everyone using the proposed N/S freeway, do you think that the amount of people using it will outweigh it's through put ability?

Will there be an inifinte number of cars to do that? Surely a 3-4 lane freeway in either direction would be able to cope with any possible induced demand.

Change for the sake of change, I think people were saying that about Jeff Kennett, now they worship the ground he walks on!!!.

I guess the flip side we can spent the money building a more effective public transport system, I'm sure CEVA logistics would love to tranport a few shipping containers on a bus.

If people seriously consider what you say camaro68, they will come to realise the absolute truth in what your posts. Especially the part of your quote regarding transporting shipping containers on a bus! Although I'm sure within a few hours, someone will have tried to kill the humour of the whole situation by stating that we can transport these goods on a train .
AtD, I completely agree with your point:

I'll end with a fun fact. Sydney's CityRail baosts that they move 50,000 people per hour on their busiest lines. South Road's busiest section carries 50,000 vehicles per day.

I went to Sydney last year and am well aware of the number of people so i can definitely vouch for your fun fact. However I would like to ask people just one teeny, tiny little thing; compare the density of Adelaide (which is so often tossed around by NIMBYs and PT supporters (who are NOT NIMBYs) as they argue things to do with LA ) with the density of Sydney. I had a quick look on Wikipedia and Sydney's density is nearly twice as much as that of ours, quite significant when you consider that they have a little bit more than 4 times our population.
As TooFar stated earlier on, Density is something that won't come to Adelaide anytime soon, (now for my input : ) no matter how many TODs you build around the Outer Harbour Railway line -sorry couldn't resist .

BTW, I'm aware of the number of smilies in this post, but I'm sure people will come to realise that they do have a significance in changing a sentence from serious to light-hearted. This avoids any unnecessary clashes.

[rhino]

Thankyou for that very informative post, Atd.

Adam, I'm trying, but I cannot for the life of me understand how you can read Atd's post, and then write this:

If people seriously consider what you say camaro68, they will come to realise the absolute truth in what your posts. Especially the part of your quote regarding transporting shipping containers on a bus!

I can only assume that you didn't read it, because it actually disproves the "truth" in Camaro68"s posts.

[Aidan]

Question for the rocket scientist out there. With regards to the induced demand theory of everyone using the proposed N/S freeway, do you think that the amount of people using it will outweigh it's through put ability?

Will there be an inifinte number of cars to do that? Surely a 3-4 lane freeway in either direction would be able to cope with any possible induced demand.

Change for the sake of change, I think people were saying that about Jeff Kennett, now they worship the ground he walks on!!!.

Before I had finished writing a response to this, AtD posted his so I didn't bother. But one question is troubling me: who worships the ground Jeff Kennet walks on?

I guess the flip side we can spent the money building a more effective public transport system, I'm sure CEVA logistics would love to tranport a few shipping containers on a bus.

If people seriously consider what you say camaro68, they will come to realise the absolute truth in what your posts. Especially the part of your quote regarding transporting shipping containers on a bus! Although I'm sure within a few hours, someone will have tried to kill the humour of the whole situation by stating that we can transport these goods on a train .

Actually the reverse is the case: there's not much potential to develop freight operations on our suburban railways, and we''d be better off ignoring freight considerations when designing them.

AtD, I completely agree with your point:

I'll end with a fun fact. Sydney's CityRail baosts that they move 50,000 people per hour on their busiest lines. South Road's busiest section carries 50,000 vehicles per day.

I went to Sydney last year and am well aware of the number of people so i can definitely vouch for your fun fact. However I would like to ask people just one teeny, tiny little thing; compare the density of Adelaide (which is so often tossed around by NIMBYs and PT supporters (who are NOT NIMBYs) as they argue things to do with LA ) with the density of Sydney. I had a quick look on Wikipedia and Sydney's density is nearly twice as much as that of ours, quite significant when you consider that they have a little bit more than 4 times our population.

I suggest you take the time to compare it with other Australian capital cities as well. Melbourne's density is only slightly higher than that of Adelaide. Brisbane's density is lower than Adelaide's. And Perth's is so low that it calls into question the validity of Wikipedia's population density statistics

As TooFar stated earlier on, Density is something that won't come to Adelaide anytime soon, (now for my input : ) no matter how many TODs you build around the Outer Harbour Railway line -sorry couldn't resist .

BTW, I'm aware of the number of smilies in this post, but I'm sure people will come to realise that they do have a significance in changing a sentence from serious to light-hearted. This avoids any unnecessary clashes.

But what is it you actually mean? You seem to be implying that Sydney type densities are necessary for public transport to move large numbers of people, but that's simply not true.

[raulduke]

good to see the Northern Connector planning study moving ahead, and for the PT nuts in here, even better to see the rail corridor in the middle of it...indeed, the whole job bears a remarkable resemblance to the Kwinana Freeway - imagine that!

[AtD]

good to see the Northern Connector planning study moving ahead, and for the PT nuts in here, even better to see the rail corridor in the middle of it...indeed, the whole job bears a remarkable resemblance to the Kwinana Freeway - imagine that!

Uh, they're just relocating an existing freight line.

[rhino]

even better to see the rail corridor in the middle of it...indeed, the whole job bears a remarkable resemblance to the Kwinana Freeway - imagine that!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the rail line down the middle of the Kwinana Freeway a metropolitan transit line? This railway line is a freight line that is being removed from the suburbs and relocated to a place where suburbs are not envisioned.

[raulduke]

Point taken - but its still a rail line

[AtD]

The Federal Treasury has released a short working paper titled Urban congestion - why "free" roads are costly, which explores variable tolling as a means to combat congestion. It argues that supply management is inefficient as road capacity is only constrained for a small portion of the day, so demand side management is needed. Currently peak hour road users pay with time, which is wasteful. The paper suggests time of day tolling (such as on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel) converts the road costs from time wasted to toll revenue.

It's an interesting read, albeit mostly about theory rather than practicality. It's not exactly ground breaking research, but it does apply some of the concepts discussed in this thread.

http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/15 ... estion.pdf

[adam73837]

Hmmm... I like it:

From 27 January 2009, New South Wales introduced time-of-day tolling for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Three levels of pricing are now charged for peak ($4), shoulder ($3), and off-peak ($2.50) tolls. The peak toll is not charged for weekends or public holidays.

And if it worked in Sydney, who's to say such a thing wouldn't work in Adelaide?

The New South Wales Road Traffic Authority has noted that ‘[m]otorists have adapted well to the changes and traffic volumes reflect a marked increase in people travelling before the peak period, with numbers falling again during the peak period between 6.30am and 9.30am on all crossings, including the Ryde and Gladesville bridges, when compared to the same time last year.’
The additional revenue from the peak toll is to be invested in public transport (Roads and Traffic Authority (NSW) 2009).

I like, I like!

The Central London Congestion Charging Scheme adopts this approach and is required by law to spend the net revenue of the scheme to improve overall transportation. In 2007-08, around 80 per cent of the £137 million net revenue from congestion charging was spent on improving the bus network, with the remainder on planning, upgrading roads and bridges, road safety, environmental and walking and cycling measures (Transport for London 2008).

Granted we wouldn't make the equivalent of 137million GBP, but it's still a good idea.

Great find AtD, cheers mate!

[Prince George]

Spiffy video of what happens when you take one of the busiest arterial roads in NYC, and make a pedestrian plaza right in the middle of it. The cars that don't need to drive down there don't, the cars that do need to drive down there can, people use the space that they get to actually do stuff there, and all it cost was some chairs, planters (as a baricade) and paint.

[Wayno]

Spiffy video of what happens when you take one of the busiest arterial roads in NYC, and make a pedestrian plaza right in the middle of it. The cars that don't need to drive down there don't, the cars that do need to drive down there can, people use the space that they get to actually do stuff there, and all it cost was some chairs, planters (as a baricade) and paint.

the video shows the obvious benefits (which appear to be very good indeed), but is biased simply because it does not include the perspective of the drivers who are shunted elsewhere. It would be good to know if the impact on them (length of trip, ease of driving, etc) was +/- or neutral.