Short History of Traffic Engineering

Found this over at copenhagenize and can only agree and hang my head in shame.

Congestion

Found this article over at Copenhagenize.com. It talks about congestion and gives some interesting data that I found surprising in that this problem comes from the cycling holy land Copenhagen. Here is some of the data that I found so interesting.


About 15 years back, a majority in the Copenhagen City Council agreed that car traffic had surpassed any reasonable level and decided that car traffic must be forced to remain at 1996 levels - at the most.

When I tell you that...
Today, 8% of Danes die a premature death due to car accidents, car noise and air pollution.

Cars occupy 5-20 times as much infrastructure capacity as any other commuter modality we know in Copenhagen, so if you want to fight congestion, you need to change modal share from cars to other modes of transportation.

Car infrastructure is ten to 25 times as expensive as bike infrastructure and, in most cases, research from Aalborg University shows, almost never returns reasonably on investment, due to induced traffic. 

Oh, yes, and the noise and air pollution decreases property values and workforce productivity. 

... it's easy to understand why car growth had to be stopped.

 When you really think about it you understand just how expensive the car infrastructure really is and how many hidden costs there are. As I think about it I begin to see just how important it is that we increase the number of people who aren't using a private car as their main form of transportation.

Please read the entire article here.