Road Projects designed to solve one problem but upon completion causes a new one

[silverback1065]

What are some projects that were done to solve a problem, actually solves it, but inadvertently causes a new one in the area?

one that comes to mind near me is the US 31 project, it fixed the congestion problems on US 31, but ended up causing a new problem for 465.  Traffic now backs up daily there, due to the need for more lanes on 465.  This was a problem before, but it's much worse now after this project.  What are your guys' examples? 

[Rothman]

Phase I of Prospect Mountain (Kamikaze Curve) on NY 17 left it in a less safe condition than it was in prior to construction.  Situation lasted longer than expected due to funding issues and fitting Phase II into NYSDOT's capital program, which was always expected to correct the safety issues created by Phase I.

(personal opinion emphasized)

[Brandon]

The "fix" to the Hillside Strangler (I-290, I-294, I-88 merge).  The backup used to be west of Mannheim (US-12/20/45).  Now it's merely east of Mannheim.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

The "fix" to the Hillside Strangler (I-290, I-294, I-88 merge).  The backup used to be west of Mannheim (US-12/20/45).  Now it's merely east of Mannheim.

Sounds a lot like the Crosstown Commons fix on MN 62. The major headache in the old interchange began with the eastbound drop to one lane at Lyndale. The rebuild moved the lane drop east of 35W to Portland Avenue instead. What really changes?

[tradephoric]

Are we talking about projects that were perceived to solve a problem or one that actually solved it?  If it's the former then pretty much any complex roundabout built over the past decade has been perceived to solve a deadly crash problem.  The propaganda that all roundabouts are safe is strong and most people believe it without question.

[Hurricane Rex]

Just a prediction:

The phase 1 of the Newberg-Dundee bypass is opening soon and I don't think it will solve much congestion, but instead move the problem earlier. This is due to signals being on both ends of the bypass, it narrowing back down to 2 lanes west of Dundee, when it connects back up with the main highway. (which is part of the ORIGINAL problem), and just to get to the bypass, on the east end, you need to take a surface street for a mile and a half (with three signals) and then make a left turn on a state highway, then you can get on it.

Phase 2 at least will solve the east ends problems.

For those not familiar with the project, when all 3 phases are done, it will be a 11 mile, 4 lane expressway or freeway bypassing the 2 cities and surrounding areas. Phase 1 is a 4 mile, 2 lane expressway that bypasses half of Newberg and most of Dundee.

Location: extension of OR 18

[briantroutman]

The decision to bypass Rays and Sideling Hill Tunnels may have been more cost-effective than twinning those two, but it also resulted in a much higher-elevation road than the bypassed section. This leads to some of the worst winter road conditions on the east-west Turnpike outside of the Allegheny Mountain approaches. Additionally, the grades on each side of the bypass are challenging for trucks, although at least a third truck climbing lane is provided on the ascending side.

If you look at some of the contemporary news coverage of the Turnpike's planning and construction from around 1938-1940, it's interesting to note that much of the early emphasis was on the Turnpike being a low-elevation and "all weather"  highway–more so than on it being a high-speed road. In that light, the relatively high-elevation bypass would seem to be somewhat contrary to the original intent.

[jeffandnicole]

Are we talking about projects that were perceived to solve a problem or one that actually solved it?  If it's the former then pretty much any complex roundabout built over the past decade has been perceived to solve a deadly crash problem.  The propaganda that all roundabouts are safe is strong and most people believe it without question.

I'll fix what you said.

An intersection (be specific) had a congestion problem.  A roundabout was installed to relieve congestion.  That resolved the congestion problem.  However, a new problem is that the intersection now has more accidents than before.

That's what the OP wanted to hear.  Not your opinion about propaganda, because we could open a whole can of worms in regards to what NIMBYs say may or will happen when any road project is completed.

[PHLBOS]

The recent conversion of two tight cloverleaf MA 128 interchanges (MA 35 & 62) in Danvers into diamond interchanges.  While such eliminated the weaving between the ramps along 128; the change triggered a sizable uptick in left-turn-related accidents on 35 & 62 (for the ramps leading to 128).

See this thread from last year for more details.

[epzik8]

New Route 24, Bel Air-Abingdon-Edgewood, Maryland, has gotten just as congested in 30 years as old Route 24, now Route 924, was when new 24 opened around this time in 1987.

[hotdogPi]

New Route 24, Bel Air-Abingdon-Edgewood, Maryland, has gotten just as congested in 30 years as old Route 24, now Route 924, was when new 24 opened around this time in 1987.

That is caused by traffic increasing over time, not by the act of fixing one thing causing another to break/fail.

[sparker]

The toll lanes on SB I-680 between Dublin and Fremont/San Jose were and are intended to relieve peak-commute traffic between those areas, but instead have precipitated their own congestion "effect" near their southern end, as a large portion of the traffic attempts to cross all 3 free lanes over a very short (about 1 mile) stretch of 680 in order to access the CA 262 connector to I-880; the toll lanes should have been terminated a mile or two before their present end to allow a more smooth merge and transition across the lanes.

[silverback1065]

Are we talking about projects that were perceived to solve a problem or one that actually solved it?  If it's the former then pretty much any complex roundabout built over the past decade has been perceived to solve a deadly crash problem.  The propaganda that all roundabouts are safe is strong and most people believe it without question.

I'll fix what you said.

An intersection (be specific) had a congestion problem.  A roundabout was installed to relieve congestion.  That resolved the congestion problem.  However, a new problem is that the intersection now has more accidents than before.

That's what the OP wanted to hear.  Not your opinion about propaganda, because we could open a whole can of worms in regards to what NIMBYs say may or will happen when any road project is completed.

please ignore his comments, I don't want this thread to turn into "crash prone modern roundabouts" which is a 20+page long bitchfest on how much he hates roundabouts. 

[silverback1065]

465 was widened to 8 lanes with 2 aux lanes on either side of i-69, INDOT in their infinite wisdom, intentionally removed the 69 interchange because it was deemed "too regional" of an improvement, the result is the "daily 465 backup" that occurs on EB 465 from 4-7pm every weekday, it can back up as far as US 31.  In English "too regional" means "we didn't have the money"

thankfully this will be fixed in 2020

[Jmiles32]

The two big ones that immediately come to mind in the D.C area have to be:
1. The I-95 widening project that widened the highway from six to eight lanes from Exit 166 in Newignton south to Exit 160 in Woodbridge(2010).
2. The I-95 HOT lane project that moved the HOV lane bottleneck in Dumfries nine miles south to Garrisonville(2014). Both projects spent hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a bottleneck, ended up just moving it south, and in both cases made it even worse.

[US 89]

The HOV lane on I-15 in Salt Lake City might qualify. It does a decent job when traffic is flowing, but there are people who weave in and out of it across the double white line, and that often causes accidents which make the daily congestion worse.

Also, anytime a road is widened in two parts but a part between them is left unwidened (local examples are I-15 in Lehi and between Ogden and Layton) it will indeed make traffic better where the widening occurred, but it creates bottlenecks where the road narrows.

Are we talking about projects that were perceived to solve a problem or one that actually solved it?  If it's the former then pretty much any complex roundabout built over the past decade has been perceived to solve a deadly crash problem.  The propaganda that all roundabouts are safe is strong and most people believe it without question.

I'll fix what you said.

An intersection (be specific) had a congestion problem.  A roundabout was installed to relieve congestion.  That resolved the congestion problem.  However, a new problem is that the intersection now has more accidents than before.

That's what the OP wanted to hear.  Not your opinion about propaganda, because we could open a whole can of worms in regards to what NIMBYs say may or will happen when any road project is completed.

please ignore his comments, I don't want this thread to turn into "crash prone modern roundabouts" which is a 20+page long bitchfest on how much he hates roundabouts.

It's now 59 pages. And I made the mistake of posting in it, so I now see in "new replies to your posts" every time someone posts in it.

[silverback1065]

The HOV lane on I-15 in Salt Lake City might qualify. It does a decent job when traffic is flowing, but there are people who weave in and out of it across the double white line, and that often causes accidents which make the daily congestion worse.

Also, anytime a road is widened in two parts but a part between them is left unwidened (local examples are I-15 in Lehi and between Ogden and Layton) it will indeed make traffic better where the widening occurred, but it creates bottlenecks where the road narrows.

Are we talking about projects that were perceived to solve a problem or one that actually solved it?  If it's the former then pretty much any complex roundabout built over the past decade has been perceived to solve a deadly crash problem.  The propaganda that all roundabouts are safe is strong and most people believe it without question.

I'll fix what you said.

An intersection (be specific) had a congestion problem.  A roundabout was installed to relieve congestion.  That resolved the congestion problem.  However, a new problem is that the intersection now has more accidents than before.

That's what the OP wanted to hear.  Not your opinion about propaganda, because we could open a whole can of worms in regards to what NIMBYs say may or will happen when any road project is completed.

please ignore his comments, I don't want this thread to turn into "crash prone modern roundabouts" which is a 20+page long bitchfest on how much he hates roundabouts.

It's now 59 pages. And I made the mistake of posting in it, so I now see in "new replies to your posts" every time someone posts in it.

I know i made the same mistake, now every day that damn thread is in my list of threads I replied to.

[tradephoric]

The HOV lane on I-15 in Salt Lake City might qualify. It does a decent job when traffic is flowing, but there are people who weave in and out of it across the double white line, and that often causes accidents which make the daily congestion worse.

Also, anytime a road is widened in two parts but a part between them is left unwidened (local examples are I-15 in Lehi and between Ogden and Layton) it will indeed make traffic better where the widening occurred, but it creates bottlenecks where the road narrows.

Are we talking about projects that were perceived to solve a problem or one that actually solved it?  If it's the former then pretty much any complex roundabout built over the past decade has been perceived to solve a deadly crash problem.  The propaganda that all roundabouts are safe is strong and most people believe it without question.

I'll fix what you said.

An intersection (be specific) had a congestion problem.  A roundabout was installed to relieve congestion.  That resolved the congestion problem.  However, a new problem is that the intersection now has more accidents than before.

That's what the OP wanted to hear.  Not your opinion about propaganda, because we could open a whole can of worms in regards to what NIMBYs say may or will happen when any road project is completed.

please ignore his comments, I don't want this thread to turn into "crash prone modern roundabouts" which is a 20+page long bitchfest on how much he hates roundabouts.

It's now 59 pages. And I made the mistake of posting in it, so I now see in "new replies to your posts" every time someone posts in it.

I know i made the same mistake, now every day that damn thread is in my list of threads I replied to.

Silverback1065 has sabotaged their own thread.

[Beltway]

The two big ones that immediately come to mind in the D.C area have to be:
1. The I-95 widening project that widened the highway from six to eight lanes from Exit 166 in Newignton south to Exit 160 in Woodbridge(2010).
2. The I-95 HOT lane project that moved the HOV lane bottleneck in Dumfries nine miles south to Garrisonville(2014). Both projects spent hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a bottleneck, ended up just moving it south, and in both cases made it even worse.

I find both of them to be substantial improvements to traffic conditions when I use the road.  Northbound you get the wider roadway sooner.  I-95 with 4+ general purpose lanes in Fairfax County, and the I-95 HOT lanes extending further to the south.  Of course, both features need to be extended further south, the HOT lanes to Massaponax, and the 4 general purpose lanes to I-295.

[Jmiles32]

The two big ones that immediately come to mind in the D.C area have to be:
1. The I-95 widening project that widened the highway from six to eight lanes from Exit 166 in Newignton south to Exit 160 in Woodbridge(2010).
2. The I-95 HOT lane project that moved the HOV lane bottleneck in Dumfries nine miles south to Garrisonville(2014). Both projects spent hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a bottleneck, ended up just moving it south, and in both cases made it even worse.

I find both of them to be substantial improvements to traffic conditions when I use the road.  Northbound you get the wider roadway sooner.  I-95 with 4+ general purpose lanes in Fairfax County, and the I-95 HOT lanes extending further to the south.  Of course, both features need to be extended further south, the HOT lanes to Massaponax, and the 4 general purpose lanes to I-295.

Moving the fouth lane terminus to Woodbridge made the southbound bottleneck even worse because now not only does I-95 lose a lane, but there is also the additional burden of having southbound US-1 and both directions of VA-123 also merge onto I-95(both these highways get backed up considerably too). Prince William County has been begging VDOT to do something about it for years. On weekends I-95 northbound gets backed up there too(though for less of a clear reason). If the I-95 HOT terminus right before Garrisonville exit wasn't any worse than the old HOV terminus at Dumfries, than why did VDOT and Transburban immediately have to spend $50 million to extend the lanes 2 miles further south after the Garrisonville exit? While I agree the HOT lanes need to go to Massaponax and 4 general purpose lanes need to go to I-295, I highly doubt either will happen anytime soon.

[froggie]

The "fix" to the Hillside Strangler (I-290, I-294, I-88 merge).  The backup used to be west of Mannheim (US-12/20/45).  Now it's merely east of Mannheim.

Sounds a lot like the Crosstown Commons fix on MN 62. The major headache in the old interchange began with the eastbound drop to one lane at Lyndale. The rebuild moved the lane drop east of 35W to Portland Avenue instead. What really changes?

The OP appears to be looking for new problems that cropped up from a given road project.  Both the Crosstown Commons and Hillside Strangler references are cases where a problem remains, but isn't as large a problem as it was before.  I'm not aware of any "new" problems that have cropped up with the Crosstown Commons.

In the case of the Crosstown, what really changed is that the large movement from EB 62 to NB 35W was removed from the EB 62 through traffic equation.  That's a large movement, so the resulting single lane bottleneck at Portland is much smaller than the old single lane bottleneck at Lyndale was.

[jeffandnicole]

The two big ones that immediately come to mind in the D.C area have to be:
1. The I-95 widening project that widened the highway from six to eight lanes from Exit 166 in Newignton south to Exit 160 in Woodbridge(2010).
2. The I-95 HOT lane project that moved the HOV lane bottleneck in Dumfries nine miles south to Garrisonville(2014). Both projects spent hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a bottleneck, ended up just moving it south, and in both cases made it even worse.

I find both of them to be substantial improvements to traffic conditions when I use the road.  Northbound you get the wider roadway sooner.  I-95 with 4+ general purpose lanes in Fairfax County, and the I-95 HOT lanes extending further to the south.  Of course, both features need to be extended further south, the HOT lanes to Massaponax, and the 4 general purpose lanes to I-295.

Moving the fouth lane terminus to Woodbridge made the southbound bottleneck even worse because now not only does I-95 lose a lane, but there is also the additional burden of having southbound US-1 and both directions of VA-123 also merge onto I-95(both these highways get backed up considerably too). Prince William County has been begging VDOT to do something about it for years. On weekends I-95 northbound gets backed up there too(though for less of a clear reason). If the I-95 HOT terminus right before Garrisonville exit wasn't any worse than the old HOV terminus at Dumfries, than why did VDOT and Transburban immediately have to spend $50 million to extend the lanes 2 miles further south after the Garrisonville exit? While I agree the HOT lanes need to go to Massaponax and 4 general purpose lanes need to go to I-295, I highly doubt either will happen anytime soon.

There's 2 factors here:

1) The wider road. While congestion will still form, the congested period of time will be less.  This is something often overlooked (or ignored) by people not wanting roads widened.  They feel that unless congestion is eliminated completely and forever, the project failed.  They'll rather see a 15 mile backup for 5 hours, then a 3 mile backup for 2 hours.  Transportation departments aren't very good at noting that though.  They tend to talk in average times, rather than saying "Hey, look, this isn't going to completely eliminate congestion, but someone on the road will see much less congestion, especially during rush hour and before and after rush hour".

2) The HOT lane terminus is exactly the problem the OP is looking at.  The congested point simply moved downstream.  If you enter or exit 95 north of that point, this doesn't affect you.  But if you're going to this point and south, then it's a problem. 

[hbelkins]

Based on what I saw yesterday all over Facebook, I'm going to guess that the new I-66 tolling inside the beltway is going to be a candidate for this thread.

[MCRoads]

In OKC, they moved I-40 south to avoid the old "Crosstown Viaduct", which was congested and falling apart, but until the OKC Boulevard is done, I-40 travelers have no convenient way to downtown. Way to go, ODOT.

[froggie]

1) The wider road. While congestion will still form, the congested period of time will be less.  This is something often overlooked (or ignored) by people not wanting roads widened.  They feel that unless congestion is eliminated completely and forever, the project failed.  They'll rather see a 15 mile backup for 5 hours, then a 3 mile backup for 2 hours.  Transportation departments aren't very good at noting that though.  They tend to talk in average times, rather than saying "Hey, look, this isn't going to completely eliminate congestion, but someone on the road will see much less congestion, especially during rush hour and before and after rush hour".

The reality with the Woodbridge situation does not match what you say here, however.  The duration and intensity of the Woodbridge bottleneck is noticeably worse than when the bottleneck was in Newington.  And this is DESPITE the reversible lanes being widened to 3 lanes (from the previous 2) and allowing toll-paying solo- and two-passenger vehicles since the general lanes were added between Newington and Woodbridge.