Roads That Get Us Nowhere

I came across this picture of a traffic jam in Xiamen, China. This is clearly evidence of the limitations of a roundabout...look at the outbound routes that are almost empty while the lanes feeding into the circle are backed up for thousands of feet (look at the upper left corner of the photo). This is what we call in the trade "bad traffic design." My mom would call it a "cluster-fuck."

For over a decade, China has aspired to a "western" lifestyle, and this is one of the results. In the past twenty years, China has built from the ground up a highway system that is the third largest in the world. Their network of limited-access expressways (motorways) is second only to the United States. The road building shows no sign of stopping, either. The Economist has an interesting article on the emerging car culture in China and what this might portend for that nation, and for the world.

One of my professors once explained to me how building more roads can actually make traffic worse. By building more roads, you increase capacity to allow people to travel farther distances in a short time. This in turn makes land at the edge of an urban area more attractive for development. When the land is developed, say a worksite or a major residential community, traffic volumes increase, and planners respond by commissioning yet more roads that open up more land at the edge of an urban area for development, and...well, you get the idea. The point is, roadbuilding induces sprawl, which requires a driver to make more and longer trips. More and longer trips result in more cars on the roads for longer periods of time. And one of the consequences of the sprawl-roadbuilding relationship is ever more pollution (see a piece on the land-use/transportation/air quality connection here).

Just as metropolitan regions across the United States are confronting the need for alternate modes of transit (the Salt Lake region alone has committed to 90 miles of commuter rail, four light rail extensions, at least one streetcar line, and at least three bus rapid transit lines by 2030. By that time, 90 percent of the region's population will be within one mile of a light or heavy rail stop), it's amusing to see China go through the same motions that the United States did when we rapidly suburbanized our cities from the mid-1940s onward -- until you realize that America has barely topped 300 million people while China accounts for one fifth of humanity. China's desire to build western style cities may have deep and far-reaching impacts on the global environment and economy well before they realize the need to establish alternative modes of development.