Article: Roads to nowhere: 3kmh on ICB

[ozbob]

From the Brisbanetimes click here!

Roads to nowhere: 3kmh on ICB

Roads to nowhere: 3kmh on ICB
TONY MOORE
September 3, 2009 - 8:41AM

Congestion is forcing motorists to drive as slow as three kilometres an hour on some of Brisbane's busiest arterials.

During peak hours, traffic moves at a crawl near Brisbane Airport, on the Gateway Motorway, the Inner City Bypass and along Nudgee Road.

Planners insist two developments - the Airport Link project and the Hale Street Link - will improve traffic times on Nudgee Road and the Inner City Bypass.

However, motorists are now crawling to work and home at less than 5km on a wide cross-section of Brisbane roads, with congestion not set to improve for several years.

While the Hale Street Link will be finished about mid-2010, other projects will not be finished until 2012.

brisbanetimes.com.au yesterday revealed traffic is moving at little more than 5kmh on Stanley Street at South Brisbane and along Honour Avenue at Graceville, at 6kmh on Gympie Rd at Kedron and Wynnum Rd at East Brisbane and "flying" at 9kmh on Moggill Rd near Kenmore Village.

Readers have also added their own agonising kilometres.

They are:

- the Inner City Bypass on Hale St, where the traffic was moving just after 4pm yesterday at just 3kmh. It took one reader 20 minutes to travel from Hale St to North Quay.

- Nudgee Road, near the East West Arterial, where the speed at midday was just 4kmh, having taken 15 minutes to travel a kilometre. The speed was also 4kmh for another motorist who endured a punishingly slow kilometre on Nudgee Rd from Navigation Place to the Gateway Motorway south on-ramp at about 4pm.

- the Gateway Motorway, on the Logan Rd exit from the Pacific Motorway, where vehicles were travelling at 4kmh at 4.30pm yesterday.

Queensland's Department of Transport and Main Roads last night said there had recently been improvements in morning peak hour travel times.

Their information shows travel times between 2006 and 2008 have been reduced along Kelvin Grove Road; from the Albion Fiveways to Fortitude Valley; on Coronation Drive near Jephson Street; from Lytton Road; on Lutwyche Road; and on Stanley Street at East Brisbane.

The 2008 data claims it takes six minutes and 11 seconds to drive from the Wellington Rd intersection of Stanley St to Melbourne St in South Brisbane between 7am to 9am.

However, on August 12 it took 11 minutes and 37 seconds from 8.12am for brisbanetimes.com.au to travel the 1km from the Wellington Rd intersection of Stanley St to where it meets the Riverside Expressway entry.

Transport and Main Roads said a string of projects would improve travel times.

These include the second Gateway Bridge, Airport Link and Eastern Busway projects, with improvements to come from the new rail line to Richlands and electrification of rail to the Gold Coast.

[#Metro]

The great irony is that the ICB, Riverside expressway and Gateway bridge were constructed to reduce traffic on these roads in the article, and get traffic out of the city.
But the traffic has always returned, worse than before. And at 1800 pax/hour/lane, that is not really an efficient use of space.

Controlling traffic on the Gateway would be simple- just increase the toll price, and more people won't use it- leading to less congestion. But that would be deeply unpopular.

[Jon Bryant]

This is just more proof that building more road space to solve congestion eventually results in even worse congestion.  The traffic problem we have today is the result of the freewsys we have built over the last 40 years. There must be an immediate ban on the contruction of more freeway style roads, bypasses and tunnels.  They DO NOT FIX CONGESTION!!!!!!  THEY CAUSE CONGESTION!!!!

[stephenk]

This is just more proof that building more road space to solve congestion eventually results in even worse congestion.  The traffic problem we have today is the result of the freewsys we have built over the last 40 years. There must be an immediate ban on the contruction of more freeway style roads, bypasses and tunnels.  They DO NOT FIX CONGESTION!!!!!!  THEY CAUSE CONGESTION!!!!

Very true.

2 road lanes carry approx 5,200 people per hour.
1 rail track can carry approx 20,000 people per hour.
1 busway lane can carry approx 15,000 people per hour.
It's not rocket science. Why do the Queensland Government just not get it?

[#Metro]

New roads do make the existing road network more convenient to use, and gives greater options to people.
This is usually called a "network effect". The same effect applies to rail and bus transit; as more services are added, it gets more convenient, and transfer penalties (time spent waiting while changing buses etc) is reduced.

There is debate over whether new roads "cause" congestion or are simply "correlated" with it, and to what degree and in what case. I would say that it would be a safer bet that building new roads/tunnels etc simply delay congestion into some point in the future. The idea of turning all city streets into 1 lane, bar Adelaide St may well reduce congestion, but would also rob the city of transport needed for business activities and amenity. And anyone who did that would probably be voted out of office.

Charging people for the congestion that they create is one (possibly unpopular) option that gets around this problem. If tolls were charged on above cost-recovery basis, this surplus could be applied to public transport and this would create a situation where *possibly*

a) Public transport would make less of a loss, or might turn a profit, which means more money for new services more quickly, rather than wait until budget time.

b) As traffic congestion gets worse, the surplus would increase (even with flat price tolls), automatically funding more buses, trains etc.

Toll roads and other tolled services (Gateway, Airtrain, Hale St link etc) must cost heaps (millions/billions?) to build, but they recover quite a large amount of money from tolls to pay for themselves (or at least partially). The problem would be that people not wanting to pay would raise equity issues (poor people can't afford the toll), that roads which were once free and paid for by the public purse to construct are now tolled (isn't that unfair?), and that funding of buses and trains from "toll taxes" isn't fair because they are paying for a service that they don't actually use, and it is like a tax. The RACQ appears to be on board though re: cordon tolling in the CBD.

But I guess the reality is that there is really no escape from paying - either through a toll, or by wasting huge amounts of time sitting in traffic. And as they say, time is money.

Some more PT would always be nice, but governments are generally slow because PT is an expense for them and therefore has to compete with other budget priorities.

[#Metro]

The traffic always returns... it's like a Traffic Hydra.