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Transportation Engineer Tries to Solve America's Worst Bottleneck | WSJ Pro Perfected
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ส.ค. 2024
- Many U.S. highways are plagued by outdated highway infrastructures and interchanges, which cause congestion and delays. Truckers call the intersection of Interstate 95 and SR 4 in Fort Lee, N.J., leading to the George Washington Bridge the most congested bottleneck in America. How could traffic be alleviated here to help the trucking industry become more efficient?
Transportation engineer Varanesh Singh analyzes the worst bottleneck in America and looks at possible solutions, like a cross-harbor tunnel into New York City.
0:00 I-95 and SR 4
0:34 Cloverleafs and roundabouts
2:36 Cross-harbor tunnel
3:54 Improved transit system
5:01 What’s next?
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Experts in engineering and design break down a ubiquitous problem, examining how the world is built and what can make it better.
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Good to hear that finally traffic engineers search for solutions instead of bulldozing everything to build more lines.
The "solutions" outlined in this video are basically to tax people to encourage them to use transit that doesn't exist.
Real good solution would be to build better beltways around the NYC region. 287 should definitely connect to Long Island. LI could use a few bridges linking it to CT/NJ actually. It's ridiculous how the 8 million people on LI have 4 bridges (that don't go to Manhattan) connecting them to the rest of the country.
@@smacpats6379such would only create demand and do nothing to halt congestion while the buildings that were bulldozed for the project stay demolished.
@@ideatsand Last time I checked there's not an abundance of buildings in the Long Island Sound.
They found out that didn't work with the LA experiment.
@@smacpats6379 It just gives more options to cars. They will still congest the roads/highways. When people use public transit they pay, so charging people to use the highways/roads at certain times make sense too.
ok so like, imagine if we had a form of transportation that let you put multiple trucks worth of cargo on a single vehicle all going the same way. oh wait. TRAINS.
Umm…the existing trains are over capacity, that is why they said they are considering building more tracks and tunnels across the river. That bridge handles more than 300,000 vehicles a day. Many going all the way up to Canada.
@@JakeSDN then scale up the existing trains
@@JakeSDN If that's the case then surely the road network as a whole should be questioned - trucks going all the way to Canada should not move through (almost) central NYC in the first place.
@@Sp4mMe NYC roads and highways were created more than 100 years ago, some don’t have shoulders. Infrastructure was built around them, so changing them is really expensive and requires a lot of studies. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge started in 1869, the George Washington bridge in this video had it’s construction begin in 1927.
@@JakeSDNsurely if they are going to Canada they would avoid NYC altogether and keep going North. There are other bridges that cross the Hudson, such as the Coumo/Tappan Zee bridge.
Literally the only way to solve traffic is to build public transport.
No, that guy didnt solve anything, he just told some of the most basic pre schools ideas and then go on to say that build public transport so the gov could tax people more and earn a heck ton of it and make people suffer in metros
@@SJRS700if NY/NJ politicians weren’t corrupt though it could work. Politics is the issue, not the lack of ideas
Are you ready to give up your house or lower its value so that public transportation is built in your vicinity. I figured not. It is close to impossible to build new infrastructure in a built up city or suburbs. That is why every solution to congestion involves tolls, congestion pricing or rerouting of traffic. All the solutions presented in this video are workarounds.
@@vipahman Right, so we should just bulldoze peoples homes and businesses to add another lane to an already overgrown highway. Sarcasm aside, you mention that public transport projects destroy or reduce the value of homes, and this is entirely incorrect. It is well known that homes adjacent to massive, multi-lane highways have reduced home values and increased mortality rates, while transit-oriented developments generate greater amounts of income through the efficiency that is brought by higher density and access to transport options besides driving.
@@vipahmana nearby rail station is an amenity that would increase property values because for many, not having to drive to work is desirable.
Improved Public transit is 100% the answer
Not for freight. Although, rail is still the answer ;)
@@QemeHwell most vehicles on the bridge are cars, not trucks.
So if many of those people would switch to public transit, it would free up space for trucks
And I'm 100% sure that another line will solve the problem.
Make it clear and safer . I used to take the subway to school - not in the US ofcause.
A quick, cheap and easy fix would be a bus lane on the bridge...
My biggest thing I’ve been saying for years is that trucking needs to be forced to work with rail companies. They should only be taking these goods the last 100 miles. By making them travel across the country and all around these cities we are causing so much traffic for no good reason.
Rail companies hold all the cards.
Nationalize, Nationalize, Nationalize - Alan Fisher
Yep, it's being done here in NSW. Big intermodal loading docks connected to sea ports via heavy rail. The US needs to move away from road-based infrastructure.
And trucks should only operate and distribute between 19:00 and 07:00.
@@nickprafke6664 So let us - an entire nation of people - take those cards and that power back from them - a small group of shareholders.
So much of the congestion on the George is commuters from NJ who work in NYC. The most effective option IMO would be to massively improve rail connections between the two. At the moment, the North River Tunnels are a major bottleneck, and the unreliability of NJ Transit caused by those tunnels makes it even worse. The tunnels are a pair of 1 track each tunnels that go into Penn Station. They are 110 years old. Any broken train or tunnel takes out one tube, and the need to accomodate trains in both directions means one tube out causes a 75% or so drop in capacity. The Gateway Project is going to add 2 more, fix the original 2, and end up with 4 tunnels total. Adding more rail from NJ to NYC that goes to more office areas will help too.
New York subways haven't been improved on since the 40s and they're currently infested with homeless people. There is a LOT of improvement to be made.
We probably won’t see that in years. They claim they spend a lot of money to maintain trains and bridges. So building or adding will be most likely difficult
Wrong. Most take buses already
@@Simon-nw9bf "infested" maybe don't dehumanize people by using language that evokes swarms of insects
you clearly don't live here.@@Simon-nw9bf
It’s incredible that ALL freight must come to New York by truck. The solution ? Rail. You’re welcome.
yes so simple its not like the r ail system is overcapacity and we import mots goods by rail more than some other countries just screaming out RAIL wont do anything
@@angelcabeza6464 It's not cargo that creates the congestion. It is people using their car because that is the only way they can buy eggs.
@@interspect_are you about to stop people from driving their cars?😂 You can add all the public transport you want to an 18 million city there's still gonna be enough cars for traffic jams if you dont believe me look around the world.
good luck with NYC price of property.
@@blanco7726if you can buy the eggs just walking to the store there's no need for a car.
The thing that strikes me the most as a European is that the NYC subway completely ignores New Jersey and doesn't cross the Hudson. Some Americans argue that it is because New Jersey is a different state so there are many political barriers to expand the metro there. Yet, there are numerous examples of metro systems in Europe that expand across two or even three international borders without any inconvenience? (i.e. Geneve, Strasbourg, Basel, Copenhagen, San Sebastián, etc.)
The subway itself doesn't, but the PATH system (Port Authority Trans-Hudson), NJ Transit regional rail, and NJ Transit buses do help connect NJ with NYC, although primarily to midtown and downtown Manhattan.
the PATH is like NYCs secret subway, it’s a lot bigger of a network than a lot of people realize and it even runs one line that goes intercity to Newark on a heavy rail alignment. The Newark line goes right to the new World Trade Center and has an ultra modern station
There’s also a decent light rail network in Jersey City and Newark that connects to the PATH
Also I do agree thought that the actual MTA run subway should go to Jersey and that we should build a regional through running network
It’s doesn’t completely ignore NJ. The PATH connects the two.
The issues that the US can't solve due to political barriers are unending. A modern, flexible system with parties motivated to find a solution that works well for all, would solve a lot of our problems.
Watched a vid about energy grids in the us. Was saying they don't like to connect the grids between states as then it is federal rather than run by the states themselves. Could be a similar issue.
“16 lanes into 7”.. he forgot to mention that after the bridge, that becomes just 3 lanes!
Put a train across the bridge's lower deck. Make dedicated lanes for trucks.
No connecting infrastructure on the nj side.
@@KhanJoltrane Then build a system on the other side as well.
I'm not sure the bridge is designed for the weight of a passenger, commuter or subway train; besides, all the car brains will demand no driving lanes be taken and since there's no room otherwise... 🤷
@@edwardmiessner6502a super frequent light metro would work. See Vancouver Skytrain's Simon Fraser Bridge
If I’m not mistaken, the lower level of the GWB was designed to include passenger rail. When you drive on it, in the middle lanes have a division where the train was supposed to be. But they scratched it and unfortunately New Jersey doesn’t have the rail infrastructure in Bergen County for it to be useful.
Probably build a rail system that goes under the bridge along with a loading station for the trucks to unload/load the cargo onto the train.
Sure, it will cost a lot of money, but probably it will save a lot of money and time for everyone.
Would probably save wayyy more money in the long-term
Over 300,000 vehicle move across the George Washington bridge everyday, many going all the way up into Canada. Your system would be overwhelmed.
@@JakeSDNI'm not really sure about that, because we know that heavy rail can carry up to 80,000 people per hour
@@JakeSDNThe vehicle capacity hierarchy typically assumes that heavy/passenger rail carries more in one space than a car. Being overwhelmed by the capacity currently faced by cars is the opposite of being an issue. The real issue here is if the transit organization itself can handle higher-capacity train operations reliably. But, then again, getting a train to work at all to serve as an alternative to car traffic is still a productive development.
@@jinsory5582 Just as with freight, public transit is mostly a last-mile problem. Over the longer distances it is without a doubt better to clumb cargo/people together and make use of economies of scale, i.e. rail. However, nobody takes the train if you then have to walk 10 miles to your destination from the nearest train station. Public transit will become much more useful (and therefore _used_ in the city) when it is integrated between neighborhood-collectors, inner-city transit and regional/national transit. It should be said, though, that by US standards New York is actually doing a _stellar_ job in public transit (in european terms it's more like an okay-ish job, but still...)
Autonomous vehicles are way too overhyped at the moment as a hypothetical panacea, but wow, everything else in this video was so sane and logical with the systematic approach. There are so many ways to reduce congestion by providing more efficient alternatives, both on the freight and passenger side. We've wasted too much time, money, and land on relieving single high-profile bottlenecks while ignoring the factors that cause bottlenecks to appear in the first place.
We built our cities and suburbs for passengers cars instead of public transportation. If we got rid of half of those cars, it would greatly solve this issue.
We need more public transportation (trains) ESPECIALLY in NJ.
I totally agree we should look to build our cities around public transport and people. But I'd disagree that we built our cities for the car we bulldozed them for the car.
Ironically the cities of the future look a lot closer to the cities of the past, and most importantly don't require any new technologies, just rethinking how we should use the space
😂😂😅 1:45 ❤ 1:45
We built them for horses and pedestrians.
Then things changed.
@@patmcbride9853 only the old cities like Boston, New York City, Parts of Brooklyn. Most of the USA is built for cars.
@@89five3five LA had a great transit system.
Then people started buying lots of cars after WWI and roads became crowded enough to delay the streetcars and people didn't want to pay more than 5 cents to ride.
Then buses were used, but later fell out of favor too.
I drove through GWB pretty frequently, one of the major road design flaw this video didn't mention is that right after GWB before exit 1C-D to Maj Deegan exp way, is like driving a go kart course in a nutshell. Typically the truck would ended up at the inner most lane right after GWB and when the trucks tried to exit to the exp way. It caused a lot of the slow down and that's where the bottle neck happened at first. Secondly on the opposite side of the road where the truck has to merged from outer most lane to inner most lane getting on to GWB is also badly designed.
Correct, cross Bronx to major deegan is always terrible for trucks (and drivers). After driving in nyc for years, I can say that is one of the most challenging areas.
Came here just to post this, as a truck driver this is correct truckers going to jersey( using the MJ Deegan ramp ) have to merge from the right lane all the way to the left(lower level)
He failed to mention elevation differences. The GWB is about 200 feet high and the Deegan is at sea level- that explains the go kart ramps.
I have been driving over it for years and always thought that if the only flipped the ramps to lower and upper levels at NY side(both in and out) it will solve many of the trucking bottle neck. also if they had police on motorcycles to quickly get rid of minor accidents(always stopping when no injuries in lieu of driving to a area to wait for police or just take each side insurance info and move on). The police change is a simple thing they can implement right away at no cost and major saving.
90% of congestion can be solved just by proper lane usage and signs. Having two lanes become one with no signs is 90% of the problem
"Delays here have cost an estimated $38 million annually" Having used that bridge when I absolutely had to, quite a few times in my life, $38 million seems very low, I think they misplaced a decimal or something
America’s dependence on cars will forever hold it back from true prosperity and greatness
I don’t feel like getting shot on the way to work taking the subways
@@kaseyc5078One of the leading causes of death is car crashes. Especially for children. Come back with facts instead of fear mongering.
@@bigswings2414 It's THE leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 55.
@@kaseyc5078 The LEADING cause of death for young people is CARS... 😭😭😭😭
Cars give you more freedom to not have a life stuck to spine of public transport network.
How do you carry week worth of groceries anyway without car.
The only real solution to traffic is remove cars from the road by providing other options.
GWB not too bad, but 95 Bronx is the worst, right after the GWB.
Exactly. The Cross Bronx expressway is the most congested highway in the nation. It handles I-95 and the majority of truck traffic in/out New England. There are no other alternatives thru the NYC area for trucks except the Tappan Zee bridge, which is about 20 miles north.
Which is why NYC is tryna get rid of the Cross Bronx Expresway
@@dr.woozie7500 because trucks can only go through GWB, lincoln and holland don't allow trucks.
Great video, but one piece they missed is that I-95 (the busiest interstate in the country) is the main source of traffic on the GWB. A large portion of the traffic, including trucks and cars, traveling over the GWB are not going to the tri-state area, however to populated cities in Massachusetts, Maine, etc. It would be great to have more routes into lower parts of Manhattan, however, anyone who regularly drives on I-95 knows that traffic doesn't get any better after crossing the bridge.
Sounds like they need express lanes
@@Distress.or even a detour that doesn’t go thru the city
@@Wurtyy Something like the Big Dig?
@@Awesome_Aasim that would be pretty crazy but i’m sure effective. seems like the best solution as suggested in the vid is to improve passenger rail in NYC. but if the problem is regional travelers than that’s where our regional trains come into play which are…not good as of now.
@@Wurtyy I agree improving passenger rail is going to help. However, one issue is why are cars slowing down truck traffic? Having truck and bus only lanes actually helps alleviate congestion, since more people are going to be on the same road, just in a bus rather than a private automobile. The problem isn't that we built highways, the problem is that we never thought about segregating different types of vehicles to make best use of the road space.
The real answer is to build public transit and freight rail. The other solutions are just useless.
Don't forget ships, multimodal transport is good
I think they should go ask Japanese about train. Having better efficient rain system will off load those traffic and bring more speed
We would but they would tell us, many of their rail lines are over capacity passenger wise, and that they transport over 90% of their goods on trucks just like NYC. Also did you know Japanese rail ridership is down?
@@JakeSDNso rail is so much more efficient that it’ll be over capacity? Sign me up
@_ryanc Rail capacity is high in Japan because owning a car is often prohibitively expensive for many Japanese. People don't get paid nearly enough to own a car. They also can hardly afford the apartments they live in despite working ridiculous hours.
@@Fools_Requiem Europe has similar pricing on vehicles. In Japan and Europe the bigger the engine or classification(luxury) the more you pay in taxes and insurance. Europe average gasoline/petro is when everything is good is $5.00 a gallon. It is just generally more expensive to own and operate a vehicle in those countries vs the United States of America.
@JakeSDN I'm not talking about taxes and what not. K Cars allow people in Japan to get around those taxes. The problem is low income and long hours.
In sydney, we built a tunnel. The result is traffic jams on both bridge and tunnel. Better public transport helped, but what really did the trick and can work any where....pandemic. 😊
What do you mean by pandemic ?
@@manujadesilva22 where have you been for last 3 years? I think you may have to sit down, we have some things to tell you.
@@manujadesilva22 Lock downs. Everyone stayed home. No one driving = No congestion. A bit extreme, but it worked. Of course, things should be back to normal now.
Good call. We should totally have another pandemic and stay at home doing nothing again.
sydney is a bad city, no one knows what they are doing the only want the gov to earn money
You mean America's worst bottleneck is a bridge? In America's largest city? Shocking. Great work WSJ.
And their guy's "solution" is to raise the toll. Genius. This is journalism...
It’s funny it’s a liberal solution. But ironically it hurts the poor. Rich people dirt cars don’t care. It’s the poor pple with vehicles are now hamstrung with poor public transportation
They definitely hit the right ideas: increasing the number of alternative routes, smoothing traffic flows, and enticing drivers to choose alternative forms of transport.
For so long the US found it’s solutions in more lanes and bigger lots. Then when it doesn’t work, we shrug our shoulders and say that’s that.
So glad to see we are finally moving past our fixations to real solutions
Because the city is too broke to buy out the property needed
Just one more lane bro, I promise
Until we paved the oceans. How great!
Stop building highways through downtown cities. Start investing in real solutions like public transport.
Here's another one: charge employers who demand that their workers come into the office, even if they could easily work from home. Not every job can be done from home, obviously, but too often employers essentially don't trust their staff. I work from home 60% of the time, in one of the most densely populated (and congested) countries on earth. The only "traffic" I get on those days is a couple of cats.
That's what I noticed. Traffic usually happens because of a bottleneck.
In my city, rush hour is bad. Because people from 3 different places are having to go through one traffic light. In order to get to the other side of town.
On a normal day, it's not so bad. But when a lot of people are picking up their kids or leaving work. It's unbelievable.
And because they all use a private motor vehicle (a car) which takes up a lot of space, good busses, cycling infrastructure, and metro/streetcar infrastructure can fix this. Cars can’t
Is it Pittsburgh?
@@miles5600 That's why I'll buy a van, so my family don't need a car to mix the family members.
@@ikanmesra that’s a really good solution. We have that here in The Netherlands too and it works great, however when the other kids are at school you can also use the cargo bike to get groceries or take someone with you on a ride, you see a lot more on a bike than in a car too. Sadly infrastructure in the US is begging people to take the car instead of literally anything else, but hopefully this’ll change in the future. Glad i moved to The Netherlands (not just for that stuff)
@@miles5600 Buses in US are designed for people who can't afford cars. And even how poor they're, they'll just buy cars anyways.
Great video, thank you for the consistent content 👍
Soon as I saw the title I thought of the George Washington Bridge. I used to drive from Montreal to deliver stuff in New York. The bridge was always stressful cuz I didn't have an E-ZPass. I think it would have been my second or third trip with a full-size cube van and when I cleared the rock Cliffs on the Jersey side the wind shear grabbed the truck, I think it was the closest I came to Wrecking on the 25 or 30 trips I did. I was always happy to get back over that bridge after that!
As a Cities: Skylines player, his suggestion of a cloverleaf is worrying for his qualificiations
As a regular victim of the I-93/95 cloverleaf north of Boston, I agree.
I think the point of mentioning a Cloverleaf is to offer a solution that would commonly come up when talking to an uneducated crowd And mention how it doesn’t work.
Haha yeah I think he’s just proposing one of many solutions that are brought up, like mentioned in the thread already
@@ideatsand I'd agree, but the only con he states is it's size, not anything to do with it's actual traffic managment ability (or lack thereof).
I remember crossing the GWB on the lower level when I first started driving a truck. I think after 9/11, they made it mandatory for all commercial vehicles to cross on the upper level.
Since I got my CDL and became a truck driver (25 years ago this month), I’ve gotten to cross a lot of bridges and highways all over this country. Some bridges are cars and buses only, like the Golden Gate Bridge. Others are scary AF, like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, US 13 in Virginia. Last time I crossed it was about eight years ago, and they I was one of the last trucks to cross that day, before they closed it to high profile vehicles, because of the wind.
The only bridge or highway that I haven’t gotten to cross is the Mackinaw Bridge, from the UP to Lower Michigan. They close that to high profile vehicles sometimes, too.
trucks have always been required to take the upper level.
As a Uber drivers in NYC this is the worst bridge to cross it! The George Washington Bridge
I live around here. It’s bizarre the amount of traffic that happens on a daily basis and how ineffective, expensive and time consuming it is to cross that bridge. The George Washington Bridge had a carpool option where you can transport three passengers total for the amount of seven dollars give or take. They took that out now. Everybody has to pay $17 to cross that ineffective bridge because they’re so greedy. 🤦🏽♀️
So we're backed to the fatally flawed congestion pricing idea that is currently in the works. 🤦
Transit and ebikes are the best solutions. Transportation 101
No one is taking an e-bike over the GW. The noise and pollution is horrible. Not to mention you will probably get mugged in the Bronx
But no license plate. I love number plates more than the vehicle itself!!!
I rode my motorcycle across the GWB in 2016. The “paved” surface nearly shook my bike apart. While that was happening my motorcycle cover was being shaken out from under the seat cowl/cover…
I had to hold it with my left hand & the throttle with the right. That’s when I noticed that there were spots you could literally see through on the lower level. The GWB was the scariest bridge once you noticed it was falling apart every day. The Whitestone wasn’t much better. Driving over sketchy American Infrastructure by motorcycle really opened my eyes to how bad our roads & bridges are here.
Get this man on everything now.
It seems that many traffic bottlenecks are caused by the expectation that single occupant private vehicles can go on any road anywhere at any time. Imagine the GWB or any other congested highway with only trucks, buses, vans and emergency vehicles at peak times-much of the congestion is gone. That is the beauty of congestion pricing.
Test this the next time you are stuck in traffic. Look around and see how many single occupant cars are around you. (I usually get 8 or 9 out of 10). Now imagine that same stretch of road at the same time with only trucks, buses and vans.
the only answer is rail network.
I think zeppelins are where it's at. They can carry immense loads, especially with helicopter rotors assisting with lift, and if given a wing-shape their movement will also create lift.
And think of the flying cars! They will definitely not create bottlenecks in the airspace too!
@@jan-lukas Flying cars should be launched with catapults and caught by anti-catapults, obviously.
If Elon can land rockets, surely we can catch cars.
I think it’s best to remove cities.
What’s the point nowadays?
Many cities don’t have any manufacturing, it’s all information technology. Stuff that can be done remotely and online. You could have a dozen spread out offices across a country rather than a big building.
Wow, never realized that there was no freight rail coming into Brooklyn and Queens. Really eye opening. I wonder what the GWB would look like with that much fewer trucks going through.
Sounds like we need more freight rail so we don't need as many trucks! Better for the environment too
And as always trains are the solution.
We need private trains!!
@@ikanmesra Those already exist, not everywhere though.
@@MegaLokopo I meant personal trains.
@@ikanmesra you could have those as well, yhey just dont exist yet.
@@MegaLokopo PRT (Personal Rapid Transit). Goood idea though, but create traffic jams just like cars do.
People think trucks and cars go only to NYC forgetting that Long Island has another 3m+ people between Nassau and Suffolk counties. One more way to ease congestion is build the bridge/tunnel or both in Long Island Sound, so trucks and cars that go to LI don't go thru NYC
Probably worth mentioning the major grade changes from the GWB down to the Henry Hudson and Harlem river drive.
WSJ great video with a real topic expert. Now get the politicians to listen experts when allocating funds rather than donors and the uniformed public.
dont think this guy really did much other than restate ideas that have been in the works for years.
The only solution to traffic is viable alternative forms of transportation. The trucks would have no problem with this already-overgrown thoroughfare if single-occupancy vehicles and most other personal vehicles were removed or significantly reduced from the equation by providing fast, frequent, and safe public transportation.
Most of the traffic seems to be personal vehicles, so here's a simple, cost effective and easy solution that could be implemented within a year or so:
Convert one of the existing lanes in each direction to a bus lane. Add multiple bus lines connecting places where people want to go, and make sure that each line has service at least every 10 or 15 minutes. Ideally you'd have at least 30 busses using the bus lane on the bridge for each direction. All you need is busses, bus drivers, paint and little bit of law enforcement to keep drivers out of the bus lane.
thats not a solution kid, no sane hard working man would travel in a BUS. Its not dummy europe, everyone just runs away from the problem, the solution is to Upgrade the Decades old infrastructure
@@SJRS700 Toronto has a great bus rapid transit network with plenty of riders and it's also not "dummy" europe
Yeah we already tried that on the Lincoln tunnel 5 miles south of the GWB and it hasn't done anything.
@@SJRS700Clearly you’re not from NYC. Everyone takes the bus. Rich or poor, and especially the hardworking.
@@SJRS700and what is that supposed to mean? “upgrade”
The answer is what no one wants to hear. There is no cheap easy fix. Simply put, NYC needs more infrastructure. It has gotten too big for existing transportation infrastructure and needs more investment to expand it.
The entire US needs more infrastructure but it costs somewhere between a trillion and a quadrillion dollars to do anything now.
WOOHOOO! This guy is my hero!! He is exactly what the highway's need to reduce congestion!
The problem is trying to send everybody by car. Cars are the problem car centric infrastructure.
If you travel south on 87 mobile gps will 9 times out of 10 navigate you TOWARDS the GWB, particularly if your destination includes trips over the Throgs Neck or Whitestone Bridges. I think there is more to this story than "Congestion" when traffic is being directed towards the problem and not towards a potential solution.
gps does this because it is still the quickest way to destination; which is a testament to how much of an efficient beast the GWB really is.
which route is quicker?
@@johnnysecular um, no. 87 to the Tappan Zee to 4 solid choices to points south and east. There is an agenda as to why gps sends you to the gwb to sit in standstill traffic and it isn't efficiency.
@@schnitzjr mm maybe. what is the agenda?
Ramp meters and congestion pricing are proven solutions to improve traffic flow rather than just expanding roads with more lanes which induces demand
Doesn't do much unless commuter and freight rail become viable alternatives.
Yes let's just tax people for how many other people happen to exist. Call it the redundancy tax and it will help people to understand how worthless they are.
@@VintageToiletsRock commuter rail is already a viable option in new york
@@mind-of-neoIf people want to choose inefficient, polluting, dangerous transportation methods it's perfectly reasonable to tax them for their poor choice.
The congestion pricing plan currently being implemented will put more pollution in poor areas according to the environmental studies.
1:43 that Roundabout looks more like a Traffic Circle. The vehicles aren't constantly moving. Looks like there are traffic lights
True we can see it on the west side
"We want to get people out of cars and on to public transit... so we're gonna charge them more".
That's negative extrinsic motivation, literally rhe worst kind. Sure would be better if you just made the option more appealing.
He didn't talk about using lane mathematics to alleviate the Jerseyside choke point before the GWB, that would alleviate northbound congestion, a lot.
I feel like the bandwidth for crossing from
New York to Nj is pathetic to begin with. I believe there should be an additional bridge in addition to more rail 😊
Yeah, saying "more roadway just means more demand" was the stupidest thing I've heard.
You have a total of 3 tunnels/bridges out of Manhattan. Each tunnel/bridge has 2 lanes. There are literally 6 lanes to get out of NYC.... serving millions of people.
What a joke.
@@user-tz9jh6pv2jManhattan is not meant to be a car city. That is enough. Most people getting into Manhattan for work are going via rail or bus. Also, counting other bridge, it is not just 6 lanes.
The GWB has 5+ in each direction, it’s closer to 10.
The key to driving through NYC is to avoid it. Its not a very good place to be driving because of how dense and compact things are
To get rid of cars you need good public transport. To get rid of the trucks you need a tunnel from New Jersy to Brooklyn under Manhattan that will have only one underground EXIT (no enterance) to manhattan while continuing further to Brooklyn. The trucks going accross will avoid manhattan, while trucks entering manhattan will not use so many space at bridges so there will be more for cars. And no enterace to tunnel in manhattan because exiting manhattan isn’t as big as an issue as entering it
I remember when we had a comprehensive rail system
Instead of cramming everyone into a city to do work 5 days a week, maybe explore remote options for those that are not essential to add to the congestion 10 times a week. We lived 2 years doing that only to have dumb (sugar honey iced tea) managers require to start up the commute boom again.
Friendly reminder that "Grand Central Station" is a Post Office. Grand Central Terminal is the train station because it's a terminus, not a station. For now at least... I consider WSJ to be one of the more well-vetted and researched media sources, so I would normally assume this goes without saying.. Great video otherwise!
Practically every town or city in the UK has a "park and ride" where you park your car, pay a few £ (around $5) and take a bus which runs every ten minutes and goes from the car park to the centre of town. Very often it is cheaper and easier than driving into the city and then trying to find somewhere to park. Not sure if the USA uses these?
In the US we do this much more with trains, particularly those running between suburban areas and the center city in my experience. I'm not familiar with any places that have major bus systems that extensively use the park and ride system here. Expanding out broader in North America, I think Toronto's GO Transit busses have some park-and-ride stations. Those might be just for their trains too though, I'm not entirely sure.
There are so few places in the US where busses have their own lanes and priority. In most places, driving yourself is at least as fast as going the same route by bus. The bus is going to get stuck in the same traffic you would in your own car, so may as well drive yourself. I don't know how much better the UK does in this area, but from what I've seen I have a pretty high opinion of busses in the UK. If people find it worthwhile to drive to a bus to get where they're going in the UK, then your bus systems must work much better than ours.
The other issue you run into with getting people to take busses here is the stigma. In the US, the bus "is for poor people". If you are of this mentality, it's very unlikely you'd want to drive yourself to a bus stop to then get on a bus with the people too bad off to own a car in the first place. Unfortunately, the number of people who align with this kind of thought is higher than it should be.
"And because there is no rail, all of these goods have to come in via truck."
aaaaaaand.... that's your problem.
i think you guys should start thinking about reducing traffic and not adding more lanes
Just keep increasing the tolls for private cars until the traffic subsides.
Let's just increase the taxes on all Americans so they can build and improve the infrastructure..
Yea
So Rich people get to drive while average people only can afford the train.
@@drewclark2928I see we understand each other
@@drewclark2928 Base the toll on income or price of vehicle.
Reading all the comments saying, "just add trains" is kind of thinking way too short. First off, suspension bridges are HORRIBLE for rail transit - especially rapid transit. The Manhattan Bridge (which carries the BDFM trains) had to be entirely closed because of how much maintenance it needed due accelerated wear by the trains constantly running over the bridge 24/7. The GWB would need to be further strengthened and inspections would need to double just to make sure things don't go wrong.
Secondly, where exactly are the trains going to go? Yes, it will go into Manhattan... about 200ft in elevation. That doesn't sound like a problem until you remember you will have to find a way to get the subsequent train line to sea level and below with very limited space to do so as Grand Central and Penn Station are *below ground stations*. One could add loops down which certainly can help at the cost of speed and efficiency. Trains don't exactly turn quick. Alternatively, you could simply have the train be elevated... except it would be elevated about 100ft in the air once it slips out of the hills and with a 2 degree max gradient, it'll be a while till it gets to a more suitable level.
And on the NJ side... well there's not much there. What is already served by NJT goes to Penn Station or is served by the PATH to WTC and 34th Street. Plus the lines, they have to drill through the Palisades to stay level and then carve a path through the marshy Meadowlands and crowded suburbs. Basically, it will not be cheap on either side to just slap down a rail line.
Finally... where is the I-95 traffic going to go if limited greatly or cut off? Route it along I-287? Well, you're just moving the problem from the GWB to the Tappan Zee and it absolutely does not have the capacity to handle that load. Most likely, it would actually just overload the Lincoln and Holland tunnels if GWB is closed. No one is driving 20 to 30 minutes north to cross the Hudson by car. If you want to go 100% car-free, it will never happen. Even Tokyo, a place with amazing transit, can only attain so much ridership (about 20 million daily riders out of 36 million Tokyo metro residents). Thus, you will need to accommodate cars to some capacity even if you would like to see every car that exists to go up in flames.
This all said, basically, replacing the lower deck with train lines sounds like a good idea but all concepts that are great on paper may not be in practice. Always keep that rule of thumb in mind: The simple solution isn't always so simple. This isn't to say I wouldn't like such a solution - I absolutely would - but one has to be realistic.
The solution I think would work is to cut down the lanes to 6 up top, 4 down below to decrease throughput while focusing on expanding rapid transit into the city further south. Build more tunnels and frequent rapid service to accommodate. Additionally, route trucks north via I-287 with reduced commercial tolls there so they don't drive through NYC unless they need to go to Long Island. Turn the upper deck into HOV/Bus and truck lanes only. All other traffic goes to the lower deck. I imagine this kind of plan would be done gradually over a decade in phases. First increase transit, then encourage commercial traffic to go around NYC, and finally redo the bridge layout.
we've been through some societal mandela effect of train forgetfulness and I think it´s high time they make a comeback
JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO I SWEAR WE WILL FIX TRAFFIC THIS TIME
Although I live in L.A. now, I used to ride the Metro North trains down to Grand Central and I was born in New York so I know the traffic problems well. And I have to say I don't think there is anyway to build out of this problem. I feel like we need a paradigm shift like when we went for horse & buggy to automobiles. Until cars were invented there was no such thing as commuting. You worked where you lived. So that to me seems the ultimate solution. Now of course I know the cost of living in Manhattan is prohibitive and schools maybe better in the suburbs but society has reorganized itself before and we can do it again. We took a baby step in that direction during the pandemic.
Agreed. NYC sucks anyways, for problems I won't even get into. At this point, why anyone would want to live or work there now doesn't make sense, when you can have all the modern conveniences in many small to medium sized towns and cities without having to make sacrifices (your car, your safety, among other things)
Ever heard of horses? Also, you’re talking about when we were mostly agricultural.
There's only one perfect solutions for this; we need viable bypass routes around NYC. Currently only one exists, which is i-87 which is a full 15 miles north of this, and you still can't get into long island without brushing past very close to Manhattan.
Hah, the GWB isn't even that bad. I wish to see a video from this urban engineer on his ideas to solve the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) from the Hugh Carey Tunnel to Williamsburg bridge section.
Solution: get single-passenger vehicles off the road. The road infrastructure going across to Manhattan should be used for freight or busses.
Correct. And most of cars are going to Manhattan while the trucks are passing thru.
@@ikmarchiniYou think the majority of the traffic on i-95 is going to Manhattan? How would one get to Canada or any state in between NY and Canada from Florida?
Lol nice try
I live on Long Island. How should I get anywhere in PA, Northern NJ, basically anywhere west
@chrise7180 work for Amazon?
The only thing that will "fix traffic" is good public transportation and active transport. It's not complicated.
It is complicated, that bridge and road (i-95) goes into the North East United States into Canada, it doesn’t just stop in NYC.
If the only way to cross was to die in the material world and subsequently pay Cheron, the ferryman, with coins laid over your eyes, now forever closed, to ferry your soul across to yonder shore, it would reduce traffic.
This video was amazing!
Just one more lane Bro!
I swear! 😂
The biggest issue is the flow of traffic on the bridge, not the merging before it. I live in Manhattan and drive (whenever I rent to go out of the city) over GWB a lot. Once on the bridge we still barely move. This is because the exit of traffic toward I95, Bronx & Connecticut in general is poorly designed and enforced. Smoothening that flow will largely solve the bridge issue. It's never gonna be fast, but it will be better than what it is today.
Agree with the improvements of regional rail & transit as well as the freight under harbor tunnel. Those will also help a lot.
surprise surprise: best way to reduce traffic is reduce the cars on the road
Let's ask the profession that created the problem to solve the problem. Sure. Traffic engineers have systematically destroyed most Cities for the past 70 years.
Why do we listen to those who have done nothing ( I.e. 25 years of doing nothing “experience”) to solve our problems? If they have done anything at all, why do we still have all these traffic nightmares? Think BQE, LIE, i95.
The answer they've been searching for all these years is public transport
Why don’t you get a degree in this field then?
Infrastructure takes lots of time and money to build in New York. Many of our transportation problems are a result of rapid growth, built upon infrastructure that could not keep pace in development. ideas take time to implement
A lot of it is political will. As well. What can you really do. The best answer would be knock it all down and re build with a better approach. That's not feasible. How long do you think a cross harbor tunnel would take not to imagine who's paying for it.
@@adamhiltonmusic They just spent $11 billion taxpayer money on a train station, Grand Central Madison. What problem did it solve? so now people don't have to walk a few blocks to transfer to Metro North? How about spending that money to widen the lIE Queens portion.
@@soteri787 You don't need a degree to see that what The Netherlands has done with infrastructure and removing car-centric design in the 1980s is much better for cities than what American city designers do today.
Lanes need to be reduced when approaching a bottleneck. Yes, there still will be traffic, but the traffic will move smoother one you reach the bottleneck.
After playing Cities Skylines for a few years now, I can't believe how absolutely terrible real life road systems can be.
As someone who uses these roads all the time living in Eastern Long Island and having to travel frequently to NJ, PA, mid-Atlantic, upstate, NY and beyond, trains will not work. Most of the traffic are drivers traveling at least 50-100 miles. People forget. Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk have almost 1% of the US population with only a few ways to exit LI. Congestion pricing in Manhattan is a joke, it’s just a money grab. Car traffic in Manhattan is way down. Anecdotally, I’d say as much as 30%. All the traffic now travels around Manhattan. Really what needs to happen is another way to enter and exit Long Island.
They should (finally) build the LOMEX and directly connect NJ and LI
That LI->CT bridge finally needs to get built.
European designers: can we get a tram bridge with a wide walking path and a bike lane, and a rail line for freight
Car addicted American designers: ONE MORE LANE BRO!!
If you live local as well and are now hearing about this “worst bottleneck” then the rest of the country must be not bad at all .
Just build three 8 lane highways cutting through manhattan and it’ll be solved 😂😂
Easy solution. Just build a train, bike lanes, and extra sidewalks. We don’t need trucks. When trucks come into NYC from the rest of the country they can just transfer everything to bikes, buses and such and people on bikes can deliver the goods.
I’m sure this new freight bottleneck won’t impact the supply chain in NYC and maybe we can add a delivery tax to pay the walkers and bikers delivering goods. Our store shelves will still be stocked.
Then add more public transit as well. All 5 boroughs and Long Island should be covered with subway lines. To pay for the construction and additional police presence to make it safe just raise the taxes. I’m sure the people of NYC aren’t taxed high enough as it is.
Then if people don’t want to use the transit just spend another billion to make it better. Eventually they will change their mind. That’s all it takes bro. We don’t need engineers like this guy I figured it out. Just one more billion bro. Just get it done bro.
How do you transfer washing machines to bikes?
@@JakeSDNeurope has transportation bikes. Give it a search
@@chauhannishith I tried, and all that came up is information on transporting your bicycle via trains. Can you point me to maybe a website that provides the service?
@@JakeSDN sorry they are called cargo bikes. They are used for transportation of goods
@@chauhannishith Unfortunately, those cargo bikes would create more problems than what they will solve. Over 300,000 vehicles go over the bridge each day. Many are going into more northern states and Canada. The NYC metro area is home to over 20 million people, and has many more high rises than europe. NYC has 1851 schools, many of which need to use school buses. Those bikes can work for Europe because they have a lower density. Then there is an entire bike storage problem that would be created.
Pricing and fees while work only target people without money and is unfair. Instead let's just make a Lazer guided missile system that shoots and obliterates a vehicle at random. this will thin out the traffic very fast and also keep things fair.
😄I love it.
It's easy to fix. Hudson River tunnels and expansion of NJT Rail.
Weird that the traffic engineer first proposes a traditional cloverleaf interchange. It is quite an old fashioned design and actually you see far more turbine interchanges or hybrid solutions. But maybe he just wanted to keep it simple.
TRAINS TRAINS TRAINS TRAINS
While I love public transit, it’s poorly implemented and it’s just not going to be the answer for everything. Transit planners keep focusing on expanding transit, but the problem is transit is too slow and it’s usually faster to take a car. Planners then argue to remove road lanes to make driving slower and more inconvenient. Look, people have lives, they have families, they can’t be spending 3 hours a day on public transit. People get tired of it and move to small metro areas and they drive anyway, taking their money and expertise with them. We need to invest and grow our freeway infrastructure along with transit.
Almost as if car cities have a population limit after which they stop being useful. Probably a reason why the biggest city on the planet is Tokyo and not New York. On the other hand America has a lot of overgrown mid-range cities like Phoenix, St Louis, Atlanta etc, I think those would be smaller if cities like NYC had better public transport.
The neglect of railroad infrastructure in this country becomes a tougher pill to swallow every single year
Widening the bridge is cost prohibitive, but building several train tunnels that only partially solve the problem sounds awesome. Also, let’s make people pay more so they don’t go in or out sounds like a masterful plan as well.
So long story short, they have no desire or plan to fix the problem or improve infrastructure. The only plan of action is to add congestion tolling to discourage people from driving.
Basically yes.
*and by doing so, encouraging use of public transit.
@@simondahl5437 There is no public transit crossing the hudson river that far north, so you're really just encouraging people to stay home.
@@smacpats6379 In the case pf congestion pricing there would likely be an investment in public transit to the areas impacted the most. So the transit that may not exist now, may come to exist. And it goes for the entire city. If congestion pricing goes into affect, areas with already existing transit will se their automotive mode share shift towards transit
@@simondahl5437 It's really not that simple though. Many areas of Northern New Jersey are not dense enough that it'd be an easy task to connect existing houses to public transit networks. And the same basically goes for people leaving similar neighborhoods in Long Island.
A lot of people in the comments here don’t seem to realize, maybe because they do not drive themselves, that the bridge handles more than 300,000 vehicles a day, many going further into the North East of the United States and into Canada. The rail line that do enter the city are already over capacity. This is the most populated metro area of the United States, with over 20 million people. Before anybody mentions Japan, many of their rail lines are over capacity, and more than 90% of their goods are transported via trucks.
Urban automobile-based infrastructure is suboptimal by nature, no matter how you cut it.
@@Ryanotokyo The outside of Coal power plants are more radioactive than Nuclear power plants, and their use kills more per year than all Nuclear power plants have ever killed but we still use them. We have to deal with reality not hate people just trying to live their lives because they don’t live them in the most ideal way.
@@JakeSDN @Ryantokyo is not blaming the people, it's the car-dependent infrastructure that's causing the issue. You're right, 300,000 vehicles use that bridge every day, and most of them are just bypassing the city. A bulk of those vehicles are personal vehicles, so if there were viable, frequent, and affordable high-speed rail throughout this corridor (and robust regional rail along the trunk lines), then much of that automobile traffic would vanish. It's not the average driver's fault that they're driving, it's the fact that the least efficient form of transportation is really the only option.
@@Ryanotokyo It's also the only type of infrastructure that has been proven to work in areas with urban sprawl similar to what you see throughout NY and the surrounding areas. In Europe you don't have the spaced out cul de sacs that you see in the US.
Yes, rails lines are bad. They go over capacity. Let's just build one more lane then. /sarcasm