Something really bad didn’t happen when Seattle closed the Alaskan Way Viaduct to traffic, reported to carry 110,000 vehicles a day. From Crosscut:
In news coverage leading up to “Viadeath 2016”, Inrix provide the official data forecasts for Seattle’s traffic snarls. The company predicted commute times would increase by 50 percent …
But in an e-mail exchange with Crosscut, a representative speaking on behalf of Inrix backpedaled on their initial predictions, saying that, “According to INRIX’s analysis, commute times have not dramatically increased and several of the major routes into the City have been only moderately affected.” …
On I-5 travel time has increased by about five minutes, and rush hour has shifted toward 6 AM as people allow themselves more time to get into work. The same goes for the West Seattle bridge, on which travel times have jumped about five minutes. On I-90 Westbound, commutes have only increased by between three and five minutes. And on 520, traffic’s about normal.
Obvious question: Why is Washington spending over $4 billion to build a bored tunnel when demand management, a new surface street and better transit could have done the job?
I think the conclusion you reach is a bit misleading. As the article notes, rush hour has shifted earlier, so, even though the actual transit time hasn’t changed much, the commute has effectively lengthened for anyone who now has to travel at 6am to make it to work on time…
Basically, commuters have responded to congestion by spreading out demand over a longer time. That doesn’t mean the $4b tunnel is justified, but life is qualitatively worse for those people whose workday got longer because of the spread.
Carmageddon has failed to materialize in jurisdiction after jurisdiction all over the world for generations whenever it was predicted after announcements of road closures. This is not news for transportation planners like Jeff Kenworthy, Stephen Rees and Jarrett Walker who have studied these things for decades. Yet billions in public money is still wasted trying to prevent this so-called apocalypse the moment someone utters the word “congestion” like it was a satanic attribute of communism.
Despite reams of research and years of first hand experience, many decision makers still commit to this clearly unsustainable path, which so easily defeated from several directions, not the least being economic and environmental.