So, I live in one of the great traffic nightmares of the world, Atlanta.  We have a freeway downtown that is 8 lanes each way, and they are almost always full.

There is a bypass around the city that has become a main thoroughfare for a lot of people going to work.  It's now stopped solid from about 8am till 9:30am in all directions.

Our side streets are just as bad.  The cities and counties have a "zero growth" policy, to stem the sprawl.  So, the governments do not have infrastructure improvement plans.  But, the growth continues because developers by the hundred get variances to build their new subdivisions or commercial developments.

I've been thinking a lot about how to make things better and there are probably a few pretty simple things that would help:

Get rid of the stupid "High Occupancy Vehicle" lanes.  They only restrict traffic flow, have no impact on car pooling and give police about 500 additional people to pull over every day for using the lane with only one person in the car.

Make the freeway dividers 8 to 10 feet high so traffic on the other side can't see an accident. 

Divide the freeways into local and express lanes.  If we could segregate the traffic into local and express, we'd see a lot better lane usage.  Right now, I can be 6 lanes over and have to cut all the way over to get an exit.  and because I'm bad at planning, I wait till the last minute to do so, and slow everything down as I try to make my way over.

Get rid of the zero growth policies, and tie infrastructure improvements to actual population growth, not planned growth.


Atlanta also has a bad smog problem.  We are constantly bombarded by ads from the governor asking people to carpool or telecommute.  We have a big push to use more fuel efficient cars.  Those aren't the answer.  The answer is to deal with the traffic problem.  We have about 1 million cars sitting on the freeways idling for 20 minutes to an hour EVERY morning and EVERY afternoon.  If you want to impact the pollution problems, that's how you do it.

Some of them are.  The local and express lanes are in wide use in Chicago and parts of Detroit.  The HOV lanes are still in their hayday.  I think in 10 or 15 years, we'll start to realize that they were incredibly dumb and effectively reduced the amount of traffic that can flow through the roadways and increases pollution and fuel usage.

Atlanta has about 4 to 5M people.  Detroit had about 7M in the same space, but they handled the traffic SO much better.  Freeways went where you needed them to go.  Roads were expanded when the needed to be.

Mass transit in the US is relegated to boondoggles that only benefit the contractor relatives of the politicians who push them through.  I've yet to see a good mass transit system in the US.  People like their cars, hate paying the taxes/tolls that come with mass transit and DO NOT want to have it "in their back yard".  In Atlanta, we have a meager attempt at a mass transit system.  It runs all over downtown.  Sadly, most people who work downtown don't live there.  Every time people talk about extending it out to the places that people live - to the north mostly, the eminent domain issues of whose property would have to be siezed comes up, as does the retarded objection that the subway will be a conduit that instantly transports all of Atlanta's homeless up to the pristine neighborhoods in the north.  When I lived in Detroit, the various counties tried to form some kind of alliance with each other to offer continuous bus service throughout (they don't even pretend to have a mass transit system there).  The same arguement came up about the undesireables being bussed into the nice neighborhoods and the crime that was sure to result.  I think that's a very common reason that these projects don't get off the ground here.