Whoopsie! Sydney’s road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.
For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney’s Central Business District.
It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it’s turned into a giant car park:
"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.
"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.
“Those travel delays have now blown out.”
So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?
‘Dude! Just one more lane!’
From the article:
"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.
“That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks.”
#roads #traffic #cars @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #motorways #fuckcars
Are you sure the post is just a mistake or misunderstanding? Maybe it’s just dishonest. ‘You’re ignorant or stupid’ seems a bit much.
I’d be more willing to accept innocent ignorance in the replies - I assume that if someone is posting a new thread about a situation that includes a judgement on the cause of that situation, they at least have a passing familiarity of the thing they’re publically passing judgement on.
They’re very obviously wrong in a way that discredits the good ideas put forward by the participants in this sub - if they retract their post, I’ll happily retract mine.
@WaxedWookie Is it really “obviously wrong”? I lived a few kilometres from all those roads when they were being built - ANZAC Bridge, City West Link, Cross City Tunnel etc… Induced demand (as I understand it) has been a long-term thing. Previous new road debuts have not been as fraught as the Rozelle Interchange.
Induced demand is (like I said) definitely a thing, and will almost certainly be a meaningful factor here, but to point to massive delays a couple of days after opening the most complex underground road network in the world, where loads of people are stopping after taking wrong turns (e.g. the side you access the Anzac bridge has switched) is obviously not induced demand.
Let the immediate adjustment period cool off, then take a look at it - I’m sure the induced demand will be there. There’s no need to point to teething issues immediately after opening and call that induced demand - it discredits the very concept.
I lived a few hundred meters from it, and currently live a few km from it - not that I think it’s relevant to this discussion.
@WaxedWookie @AvonVilla I fundamentally disagree that induced demand isn’t at play here.
That’s because this spaghetti intersection isn’t a standalone project. It’s part of WestConnex.
For *years* before it opened, the state government promised that WestConnex would deliver faster travel times from Western Sydney to the CBD. They promised faster travel times from the southern suburbs to the city. This was going to end traffic congestion on Parramatta Road once and for all.
This is directly off the WestConnex website:
"The New M4, opened in July 2019. The WestConnex M4, including the 5.5km New M4 Tunnels, connects Haberfield to Parramatta and the M4. Motorists on this section of WestConnex are saving an average of 35 minutes on their westbound peak time journey compared to Parramatta Road.
“The M8, opened in July 2020. The 9km twin tunnels connects the M5 at Kingsgrove to a new interchange at St Peters, with 6ha of new open space, built on a remediated former landfill site. The tunnels cut up to 30 minutes off a trip between Liverpool and the southern CBD.”
https://www.westconnex.com.au/explore-westconnex/about-westconnex/
Here’s a direct quote from Gladys in 2018:
"If you’re coming from Liverpool you’ll save about half an hour, if you’re coming from [Oatley area] you’ll save about 15 minutes.
“When this project has finished, not only will you have less traffic on local roads, because traffic will be underground, but you’re also going to be given open space you didn’t have before.”
And people made decisions about where they would live and how they would travel based on WestConnex.
That instead of being stuck on Parramatta Road, they’d get a nice quick commute down the M4 to the city. Or that they’d be able to take the M5 through the new M8 motorway tunnel to the city.
And a lot of that traffic is now heading straight to the Anzac Bridge:
“Before the Rozelle interchange opened, seven lanes merged into four on the Anzac Bridge. Now, 10 lanes are merged into four with the extra lanes from the spaghetti junction.”
““It is a forever problem because the system is funnelling too many people into a road that is too small. They assumed the Anzac Bridge could support more cars than was physically possible,” [Sydney transport expert Mathew Hounsell] said.
"“Trying to shovel a motorway into the middle of a city was never going to work. The previous government and the roads department stuffed it up. They didn’t want to listen to anyone who would tell them it was not going to work.
“The former Coalition government stated repeatedly that traffic flows on Victoria Road would be reduced by 50 per cent when the interchange opened, a “claim that is laughable now” [Inner West Council mayor Darcy Byrne] said.”