Slow Roads? No more Roads.
This article by Corin Faife critiques Elon Musk’s worldview when Musk tweets out a status saying “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…” Six months after this tweet, Musk actually was able to detail his idea of tunneling machines and unveiling his concept video to the tech press at the TED conference in Vancouver. However, Faife in fact does not even worry about the tunnel scheme itself, though he finds it impossible, but focuses on the fact that building more roads does not ensure easing traffic congestion.
One of the reasons that Musk’s tunnel “scheme” is unreasonable is illustrated through Braess’ paradox. Braess’ paradox is essentially the idea that adding a strategy can make a game worse for the player, which relates to traffic in that adding or building new roads that may seemingly be more efficient, may result in more congestion. Another reason for the failure of Musk’s idea according to Faife, the demand level for a road network cannot be considered in “isolation to the supply”. In other words, after a certain point, traffic congestions serve as an incentive to discourage use of cars for short, unnecessary journeys, and the number of vehicles in the system is roughly constant. However, this is not exactly the case, because when people may reduce their use of cars due to traffic jams, other people may actually be more inclined to use their cars since slow roads is a disincentive to other people. This is an example of latent demand, according to Faife. Thus, building more roads as Musk proposed may tempt more people to drive, which will make it harder to ease the roads. This complex cycle of people’s thoughts make it extremely difficult to solve the traffic issue. Corin Faife offers the “best way” to improve traffic, which is to not build more roads, but to have fewer vehicles on the road. Seems like a very reasonable solution, and in fact, this is simple solution is the best response to this game between cars. With less cars, there will be less competition and more spaces along the road.
Jarret Walker, a consultant in public transit policy, offers another critique on Musk’s idea, stating that though Musk assumes this issue is an engineering issue about design and technology, it is actually a geometry problem, which Musk is not even seeing. Walker says this is a geometry problem because improving traffic flow is about space, and not speed.
Juan Mattute, Associate Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA, told the board that he also, like other commenters, finds Musk’s traffic idea to be impractical for several reasons. For one thing, Matute expresses the difficulty of getting rights to the undergrown property, since tunneling beneath private property requires an easement, or permission to operate in the underground portion of the land. Since Musk’s plan requires a lot of underground area to execute his plan, he would have to get many property owners’ rights to proceed, but it is very unlikely for everyone to cooperate. For Matute, a more effective suggestion is to add congestion pricing to some parts of the freeway system. This alternative has reduced traffic and accidents in London, and Matute argues that it would be a way to tackle congestion at a lower overall cost.
All of this relates to Braess’ paradox, as adding more options can interestingly enough, actually cause more problems. The opinions of Faife, Walker, and Mattute all are skeptical with Musk’s traffic congestion ‘solution’, and maybe this can lead to a more innovative way to deal with slower roads.