News & Discussion: Roads & Traffic

[Aidan]

“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.

From that I surmise that by the theory of induced demand in its purest form they mean that the amount of induced demand will result in such a big increase in traffic that we will effectively be back where we started even if there is no population growth.

However, there is high population growth, so who cares about the purest form.

They have reviewed the MATS plan and though it can probably improve from its original version, it’s still mostly applicable.

Have they actually been to Adelaide? Have they heard the reason why the original version was found to be unnecessary?

I think the only part of the original that's still applicable is the connection of Montague Road to the Port River Expressway. Everything else that was sensible to build has now been built, albeit not always as freeways.

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.

True... but the demand is far too low to justify building a dual carriageway, let alone a freeway!

In the long term there's probably a good case for improving the roads east of Meadows, but we're unlikely to ever need a freeway there.

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.

This makes me suspect they're totally ignorant of the topography!

But I won't dwell on the issue of how, as I guess they could be Norwegians (who are used to tunnelling through mountains). Instead I'll ask why? What benefit would it bring? It would not be a better route down to the Adelaide plains.

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.

Indeed you are, but the expertise of some SMEs is so highly specific that there is no guarantee.

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.

The problem isn't just that it would cost billions of dollars, it's that it wouldn't be a cost effective use of those billions of dollars. Either it would prevent that money being spent on something more worthwhile, or it would require an increase in taxes.

[adam73837]

They have reviewed the MATS plan and though it can probably improve from its original version, it’s still mostly applicable.

Have they actually been to Adelaide? Have they heard the reason why the original version was found to be unnecessary?

I think the only part of the original that's still applicable is the connection of Montague Road to the Port River Expressway. Everything else that was sensible to build has now been built, albeit not always as freeways.

Sorry, couldn't resist underlining that and all, but just there are still parts (and modified sections) of the plan that are applicable.

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.

This makes me suspect they're totally ignorant of the topography!

But I won't dwell on the issue of how, as I guess they could be Norwegians (who are used to tunnelling through mountains). Instead I'll ask why? What benefit would it bring?

Gosh, i really hate to be repetetive, but in case you haven't noticed, there are at least 15 schools near A17, the same route that the trucks and growing volumes of traffic from the hills use. A17 is part of the Adelaide bypass and when trucks, etc. don't use that route, they use the A1 route of Glen Osmond Road, Fullarton Road and the Inner-City Ring Route. This route is also next to several school zones as well as commercial precincts. How long will it take before something is done about this mess? Does there need to be a fatality? Oh wait! There already was, on the intersection of Sir Donald Bradman Drive and South Road several months ago! Why was the truck there... hmmm?
So in answer to your question Aidan, the benefit that such a project (not necessarily to the other side of the city, but rather "entering" the metro area somewhere around Athelstone/ Highbury) would bring would be the increased safety in the suburbs and the quicker route for freight and other hills traffic wishing to bypass the city. I am not stating that this is THE option, I'm just putting forward an idea, answering your question and awaiting an e-slapping.

[camaro68]

Adam good argument, your father must be a fellow engineer; i must meet him some day.

The sad thing is the minority groups that run this state rarely look beyond their own self importance when putting forward any argument about the must needed changes to our roads, and more often then not, don’t even use them.

To think that our transport system can be upgraded to effectively serve this state for under many billions of dollars, is yet again an example of the ignoramuses that we’re dealing with.

The question I need to ask, doesn’t induced demand work here as well? The more busses/routes we implement the more people will use them, then we’ll have to buy more busses and make more routes, to the point that we will live in this utopia of only busses on the roads. Now there’s a pipe dream worthy of the Cheech and Chong faithful.

God I love getting on this post to see the looking backwards not to go forwards approach.

[mattblack]

To think that our transport system can be upgraded to effectively serve this state for under many billions of dollars,

I think that you need to be a little less vague about the figures. Where do you suppose that the state get these 'Under many billions of dollars from'? imsure you would be complaining if they rose taxes by a bucket load to pay for all these works, I would !

[Prince George]

The sad thing is the minority groups that run this state rarely look beyond their own self importance when putting forward any argument about the must needed changes to our roads, and more often then not, don’t even use them.
...
The question I need to ask, doesn’t induced demand work here as well? The more busses/routes we implement the more people will use them, then we’ll have to buy more busses and make more routes, to the point that we will live in this utopia of only busses on the roads. Now there’s a pipe dream worthy of the Cheech and Chong faithful.

I'm confused by your first argument: are you saying the "minority groups that run this state" are insisting on building public transport and then not using it? If that were true, there is something rather noble about putting so much attention on something that you won't be profiting from yourself. Or are you claiming that there is some elite bus-catching minority that secretly controls transport policy? In all the time that I've been catching public transport, I can safely say that the word "elite" was not the first to come to mind. But if you know where I can find this "On The Buses" mafia, let me know - I want in.

On your second point, yes induced demand does apply here. This is why arguments like "spending money on public transport is a waste because few people catch it" are misguided. The very point of investing in public transport is to increase its appeal so that more people will use it and reduce the pressure on the roads, to the benefit of the people that are them. It may help to visualize this with this (now pretty well known) picture from the German city of Muenster's planning office:

Each panel shows 60 people accommodated by 60 cars, 1 large bus, and 60 bikes, respectively. Even if we imagine there were three buses rather than one, they are still using less than a quarter of the space of the 60 cars. And the cars are parked bumper to bumper, when they are moving and leaving suitable breaking distance the area they consume easily doubles. How much does it cost to provide road space for those cars.

Continuing our thought experiment, if they were all travelling in a single lane road at 60 km/h leaving a 2-second gap, the distance car to car is about 35m; 60 lots of that gives us 2.1 km (at freeway speeds, the distance is even greater). How do we put a price on that roadway? Well, the Northern Connector is 8 lanes wide, 14 km long and along with the rail will cost about $2.2 billion; let's say that the road cost is only half of that, then $1 billion / (8*14 lane-kms) => a single lane costs about $9 million per 1 km. So our 2.1 km for the 60 cars costs about $20 million. If we could buy some space on the road by providing some buses, which do you think will cost less?

[Aidan]

They have reviewed the MATS plan and though it can probably improve from its original version, it’s still mostly applicable.

Have they actually been to Adelaide? Have they heard the reason why the original version was found to be unnecessary?

I think the only part of the original that's still applicable is the connection of Montague Road to the Port River Expressway. Everything else that was sensible to build has now been built, albeit not always as freeways.

Sorry, couldn't resist underlining that and all, but just there are still parts (and modified sections) of the plan that are applicable.

Apart from what I've already mentioned, no there aren't.

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.

This makes me suspect they're totally ignorant of the topography!

But I won't dwell on the issue of how, as I guess they could be Norwegians (who are used to tunnelling through mountains). Instead I'll ask why? What benefit would it bring?

Gosh, i really hate to be repetetive, but in case you haven't noticed, there are at least 15 schools near A17, the same route that the trucks and growing volumes of traffic from the hills use.[/quote]
I hadn't noticed that Portrush Road was the A17 (hardly any Croweaters use the numbers) but the number of schools near it doesn't surprise me. But even with less traffic, it will still be a busy road. Do you have any actual evidence that a busy road with less traffic would actually be safer for pedestrians?

A17 is part of the Adelaide bypass and when trucks, etc. don't use that route, they use the A1 route of Glen Osmond Road, Fullarton Road and the Inner-City Ring Route. This route is also next to several school zones as well as commercial precincts. How long will it take before something is done about this mess? Does there need to be a fatality? Oh wait! There already was, on the intersection of Sir Donald Bradman Drive and South Road several months ago! Why was the truck there... hmmm?

Firstly you've got the location wrong - it was the intersection of SDBD and Marion Road.

Secondly, the truck was turning left onto SDBD, so its route probably wouldn't've been affected by your Norwegian style highway.

The circumstances of this accident (dog ran out into road, girl followed and got hit by vehicle) are chillingly similar to a previous accident on Croydon Tramlink in South London. So I think road safety education should have a greater focus on the dangers of walking impulsive dogs. Of course the other contributing factor was poor visibility, and I hope that soon all large vehicles will have CCTV to cover their blind spots.

So in answer to your question Aidan, the benefit that such a project (not necessarily to the other side of the city, but rather "entering" the metro area somewhere around Athelstone/ Highbury) would bring would be the increased safety in the suburbs and the quicker route for freight and other hills traffic wishing to bypass the city. I am not stating that this is THE option, I'm just putting forward an idea, answering your question and awaiting an e-slapping.

Considering the road network around Highbury and Athelstone, I'm not convinced it would even do that - the route through the suburbs from there wouldn't be much shorter than from Glen Osmond, and would be over inferior roads.

[camaro68]

The German city of Muenster's population is 250,000 of which a 1/4 are students. It's no were near as large as Adelaide neither is it as spread out.

Not sure if you can make a direct comparison, in order to have the same effect on Adelaide as it had on Lil ol Muenster, the amount of Busses, routes, drivers and dare i say it better roads to effectively use busses down them would be astronomical.

There are only certain widths of roads in SA that busses are allowed to travel on, restrictions that I’d say this little village in Germany would not have to consider.

So I guess if we go down the bus route (pardon the pun) not only would we have to buy and maintain more busses, but we’d have to widen many streets in Adelaide to enable the majority of the busses to travel along them. The will enable the public transport option be viable enough that would entice population not to take their car.

I have not done the sums but I’d dare say this would be a far more expensive exercise than putting some freeways through the city.

But I guess due to the backward nature of this state were expansion is never considered in the design, we are snookered either way as the costs would be astronomical which ever way we go.

I guess no matter how you look at it we are constantly paying for the conservative minorities that run this state.

[Prince George]

The poster is only interesting because it compares the relative amount of space needed for the same number of people in three different modes of transport; I mentioned that it came from Muenster only to give it proper attribution, not to claim that Muenster was a model city for Adelaide to follow. Buses do not need to go down every street in Adelaide, or even the majority of them, because nature handily provided us with legs for walking. And if, for some reason, we did need buses to travel down many more streets you will find that almost none of them need extra widening as they are already required to be wide enough for fire engines to travel down them.

[Wayno]

are those bikes arranged to form a word? i can't read it - maybe it should say "think" or similar...

[Prince George]

are those bikes arranged to form a word? i can't read it - maybe it should say "think" or similar...

I think it spells "MDK", but what that means I can only guess at.

[adam73837]

Gosh, i really hate to be repetetive, but in case you haven't noticed, there are at least 15 schools near A17, the same route that the trucks and growing volumes of traffic from the hills use.

I hadn't noticed that Portrush Road was the A17 (hardly any Croweaters use the numbers) but the number of schools near it doesn't surprise me. But even with less traffic, it will still be a busy road. Do you have any actual evidence that a busy road with less traffic would actually be safer for pedestrians?

Sorry, I'm failing to understand what you mean by a road having less traffic, yet being a busy road.

A17 is part of the Adelaide bypass and when trucks, etc. don't use that route, they use the A1 route of Glen Osmond Road, Fullarton Road and the Inner-City Ring Route. This route is also next to several school zones as well as commercial precincts. How long will it take before something is done about this mess? Does there need to be a fatality? Oh wait! There already was, on the intersection of Sir Donald Bradman Drive and South Road several months ago! Why was the truck there... hmmm?

Firstly you've got the location wrong - it was the intersection of SDBD and Marion Road.

Secondly, the truck was turning left onto SDBD, so its route probably wouldn't've been affected by your Norwegian style highway.

My turn Firstly, judging by the pictures here: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/stor ... 01,00.html you can see that the police cars are on the section of that intersection where traffic from the southerly direction turns to go to the airport. Might I also remind you that the semis sometimes also use Marion Road to get to the airport rather than South Road.
Secondly, I never said that this "Norwegian Style" Highway is THE answer; you yourself have drawn up a plan for a freeway to go beneath the airport, etc.
But let's take a step back. Sorry to bring up an old debate, but from memory, in the... 80s I think it was, there was a plan for the airport to be shifted up North near Two Wells. Combine that with the Northern Connector and "Norwegian Style" Highway (or a tunnel like people said on the Glen Osmond Road Thread) that gets trucks, etc. to Dry Creek, then we've got ourselves a way of getting freight to the airport.
Obviously since the airport is where it is, such a thing won't be necessary for a while since millions were spent on a new terminal, rather than putting that money towards a new airport. But anyway, I don't wish to discuss that here; I am just bringing it up as a response.

[raulduke]

How do we put a price on that roadway? Well, the Northern Connector is 8 lanes wide, 14 km long and along with the rail will cost about $2.2 billion; let's say that the road cost is only half of that, then $1 billion / (8*14 lane-kms) => a single lane costs about $9 million per 1 km. So our 2.1 km for the 60 cars costs about $20 million. If we could buy some space on the road by providing some buses, which do you think will cost less?

I am not sure that this is accurate. The Northern Expressway is 23km long with a D&C cost of 320 million, including about 14 bridges, of which atleast three are significant interchanges (Heaslip, Pt Wakefield and Gawler). The road is four lanes total (with provision for a third) with a cost thus including interchanges of about $13 million per km divided by 4 lanes is about $3.25 million per km including structures.

The reality is, buses are not always going to work for everybody, they simply cannot go EVERYWHERE people want to go, so people will want to use the road.

[adam73837]

How do we put a price on that roadway? Well, the Northern Connector is 8 lanes wide, 14 km long and along with the rail will cost about $2.2 billion; let's say that the road cost is only half of that, then $1 billion / (8*14 lane-kms) => a single lane costs about $9 million per 1 km. So our 2.1 km for the 60 cars costs about $20 million. If we could buy some space on the road by providing some buses, which do you think will cost less?

I am not sure that this is accurate. The Northern Expressway is 23km long with a D&C cost of 320 million, including about 14 bridges, of which atleast three are significant interchanges (Heaslip, Pt Wakefield and Gawler). The road is four lanes total (with provision for a third) with a cost thus including interchanges of about $13 million per km divided by 4 lanes is about $3.25 million per km including structures.

The reality is, buses are not always going to work for everybody, they simply cannot go EVERYWHERE people want to go, so people will want to use the road.

Much to many people's disgust I'm sure: "raulduke has said it all, Hear, Hear"

[Aidan]

How do we put a price on that roadway? Well, the Northern Connector is 8 lanes wide, 14 km long and along with the rail will cost about $2.2 billion; let's say that the road cost is only half of that, then $1 billion / (8*14 lane-kms) => a single lane costs about $9 million per 1 km. So our 2.1 km for the 60 cars costs about $20 million. If we could buy some space on the road by providing some buses, which do you think will cost less?

I am not sure that this is accurate. The Northern Expressway is 23km long with a D&C cost of 320 million, including about 14 bridges, of which atleast three are significant interchanges (Heaslip, Pt Wakefield and Gawler). The road is four lanes total (with provision for a third) with a cost thus including interchanges of about $13 million per km divided by 4 lanes is about $3.25 million per km including structures.

The reality is, buses are not always going to work for everybody, they simply cannot go EVERYWHERE people want to go, so people will want to use the road.

Much to many people's disgust I'm sure: "raulduke has said it all, Hear, Hear"

If you think raulduke has said it all, you clearly haven't been following the thread very well. The point you highlighted in bold was totally irrelevant. The objective is to reduce traffic to a level where the roads become more effective. It was never to clear the roads completely.

Don't get me wrong - radduke did make a very important point: the cost of roads varies enormously, and it's often much cheaper than the Northern Connector. Although in urban areas where there's most potential to attract people into buses, the cost of more road space could be significantly higher.

[Aidan]

Gosh, i really hate to be repetetive, but in case you haven't noticed, there are at least 15 schools near A17, the same route that the trucks and growing volumes of traffic from the hills use.

I hadn't noticed that Portrush Road was the A17 (hardly any Croweaters use the numbers) but the number of schools near it doesn't surprise me. But even with less traffic, it will still be a busy road. Do you have any actual evidence that a busy road with less traffic would actually be safer for pedestrians?

Sorry, I'm failing to understand what you mean by a road having less traffic, yet being a busy road.

Not every busy road has as much traffic as Portrush Road.

Consider Brighton Road. Not as much traffic as Portrush Road, but it's still a busy road. Is it less dangerous for pedestrians? I really don't know, but I remember seeing schoolkids getting off a bus and running across the road (forcing traffic to brake) to catch another bus. I'd expect they'd not have attempted something that dangerous on Portrush Road, though I don't know for sure.

A17 is part of the Adelaide bypass and when trucks, etc. don't use that route, they use the A1 route of Glen Osmond Road, Fullarton Road and the Inner-City Ring Route. This route is also next to several school zones as well as commercial precincts. How long will it take before something is done about this mess? Does there need to be a fatality? Oh wait! There already was, on the intersection of Sir Donald Bradman Drive and South Road several months ago! Why was the truck there... hmmm?

Firstly you've got the location wrong - it was the intersection of SDBD and Marion Road.

Secondly, the truck was turning left onto SDBD, so its route probably wouldn't've been affected by your Norwegian style highway.

My turn Firstly, judging by the pictures here: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/stor ... 01,00.html you can see that the police cars are on the section of that intersection where traffic from the southerly direction turns to go to the airport. Might I also remind you that the semis sometimes also use Marion Road to get to the airport rather than South Road.

You might remind me, but it doesn't address the point I was making. A new route through the Hills to the Northern suburbs would not affect airport traffic.

Secondly, I never said that this "Norwegian Style" Highway is THE answer; you yourself have drawn up a plan for a freeway to go beneath the airport, etc.

Repeating yourself will get you nowhere. You've already said you're not saying it's THE answer, but you doubted my claim that it wouldn't actually be much use, so I explained the reason.

But let's take a step back. Sorry to bring up an old debate, but from memory, in the... 80s I think it was, there was a plan for the airport to be shifted up North near Two Wells. Combine that with the Northern Connector and "Norwegian Style" Highway (or a tunnel like people said on the Glen Osmond Road Thread) that gets trucks, etc. to Dry Creek, then we've got ourselves a way of getting freight to the airport.

If you were going to Two Wells then it makes sense to totally avoid Adelaide completely, and take the Sturt Highway through the Mount Lofty Ranges.

Obviously since the airport is where it is, such a thing won't be necessary for a while since millions were spent on a new terminal, rather than putting that money towards a new airport. But anyway, I don't wish to discuss that here; I am just bringing it up as a response.

Why do you feel the need to respond with red herrings?