Major cities with no rush hour? (no traffic jams)

[Brian556]

We have bad signal timings for sure, but we also have increasing volume do to retroactive thinking.  The 90's widening of OBT was actually for the 70s volume and the 90's volume has not been taken care of as of yet. We are so far behind its not even funny!

Heck they probably turn on the Billboard TOP 40 Countdown expecting to hear the BeeGees!

Texas is always 10-30 years behind on many fronts.

I've seen something similar to this locally. In Flower Mound, when FM 2499 was extended north from FM 1171 to FM 407 in 1997, it was constructed as a two-lane rural-type roadway with paved shoulders; even though the area was fast developing and it was obvious to me that it needed to be six-lane divided urban. In 2009, they torn it up and finally made it six-lane divided urban as it should have been all along. A total waste of money. I wonder if money was an issue at the time, why they didn't consider building half of the divided roadway, and striping it two-way with a center turn lane. At least that way they wouldn't have wasted all that money on a roadway that would only last 12 years.

[theline]

I don't recall very much in the way of traffic jams in Cleveland on a three-day trip there in 2006, at least 9 AM on a Friday going north on I-71.

Cleveland can either be pretty congestion-free or a disaster; sometimes the traffic reports describe tons of problems and some days everything is moving pretty fine.  Dead Man's Curve, the I-271/I-480 flirtation and nearby areas, and some of the areas around the new Innerbelt bridge work are often problematic.  As seen in the Drew Carey Show's opening with Five O'Clock World, I-71 isn't usually too bad.

I agree with Bill. During my recent visit to Cleveland, I hit afternoon rush hour traffic on two consecutive days. I was shocked by the lack of congestion on I-90 West the second day, after gridlock conditions the previous day in the Euclid & E. 9th St. area. I suspect that significant construction in that area contributed to the congestion.

[vtk]

How about Springfield, OH? That's a decent sized city, and I've been there around morning rush with no significant congestion.

[Alps]

The Big I has freed up Albuquerque - I've been through the freeways during a typical rush hour with no problems. Then again, I've also sailed through Indianapolis during rush hour with no problems. Maybe I'm just special.

[theline]

The Big I has freed up Albuquerque - I've been through the freeways during a typical rush hour with no problems. Then again, I've also sailed through Indianapolis during rush hour with no problems. Maybe I'm just special.

I was going to nominate Indy as well, but I figured that would bring an objection from someone who has to commute from the Fishers or Noblesville area. Anyway, my experience there has been positive.

[agentsteel53]

this is due to the Stadium interchange etc messing things up).

When we were in Las Vegas last December, I don't recall any problems getting around town at any time of the day...occasional mini-jams along the strip, but we didn't spend a whole lot of time in that area.  There are lots of 5- and 7-lane crosstown arterials that speed things up, and the 15 and 215 freeways.  Maybe it was the time of year.

without even getting into "gotta get back home to LA" traffic, I've never once gotten through Vegas on I-15 without at least one spot of congestion due to some construction or another.

[Alps]

The Big I has freed up Albuquerque - I've been through the freeways during a typical rush hour with no problems. Then again, I've also sailed through Indianapolis during rush hour with no problems. Maybe I'm just special.

I was going to nominate Indy as well, but I figured that would bring an objection from someone who has to commute from the Fishers or Noblesville area. Anyway, my experience there has been positive.

I went through from I-70 to I-74. I'm pretty sure I-65, and I'm certain that I-69, is not as smooth.

[bassoon1986]

I'm curious. Are there any major cities that feature multiple freeways that no longer suffer congestion during rush hour thanks to redesigns (or build right the first time)

I once heard from the former head of the Baton Rouge regional MPO that the traffic analysts working in Shreveport were hard pressed to find any Level of Service worse that "C" in their region. Sort of figures when you have a freeway system consisting of two mainline interstates and a three-quarters loop for an urban region of around 450K (not to mention future planned and u/c interstates) that puts larger cities in Louisiana to shame.

I do find that the recently completed I-10 and I-12 widenings in BR have improved rush hour traffic flow in those corridors, especially I-10. However, traffic growth along those routes should only continue to increase, so I can't see that lasting forever, not to mention that it does nothing for the real bottleneck in BR (I-10 between 110 and 12) And I-12 does still see evening backups related to traffic merging at the Airline Highway cloverleaf (I'll say it again, apparently Louisiana drivers just do not know how to properly merge onto a freeway).

Shreveport for it's size has relatively minor traffic issues. The only place I think that may still stack up sometimes is the merge from I-49 North to I-20 east in downtown. 5 lanes that quickly go down to 2 lanes that cross the river.

When I-49 is ever completed from I-20 north to I-220 through the Inner City Connector, I-49 will have more traffic than its completed section now since people from the north will have their completed section of interstate, but I still can't imagine it really having thick traffic.

[tradephoric]

Something that annoys me is when a signalized intersection is congested, only one or two directions are congested, and the other approaches are congestion free. I wish they would re-time some of these signals to equally distribute congestion and make things more fair. Or, in some instances, it would be better for the signal timing to favor the major street. 

It is annoying when the main arterial is jammed and the side street appears to be relatively free of traffic.  One scenario that can cause this other than  bad signal timing (which is the more likely case)...  If the side-street pedestrian phase is running, then the side-street can run long and appear to be giving excess time to the vehicle phase when in reality the time is needed to safely service the pedestrian.  It really becomes annoying, however, when the push button is broken and every cycle the side-street runs long to service the non-existent pedestrian. 

Something I noticed....it looks like almost all signals in that area are still using loops. You would think an area as economically well off as Orlando would have more advanced detection systems, which could help move traffic better. I live in a suburb of Dallas, and almost all of our signals are now equipped with image detection.

Watch what you wish for.  Loops outperform video detection in all the followings measures of performance:  missed calls, dropped calls, false calls, stuck-on calls.  If you want accurate detection inductive loops are still the way to go.

[Brian556]

Watch what you wish for.  Loops outperform video detection in all the followings measures of performance:  missed calls, dropped calls, false calls, stuck-on calls.  If you want accurate detection inductive loops are still the way to go.

Loops don't always detect bicycles, which is a huge problem.

It is annoying when the main arterial is jammed and the side street appears to be relatively free of traffic.  One scenario that can cause this other than  bad signal timing (which is the more likely case)...  If the side-street pedestrian phase is running, then the side-street can run long and appear to be giving excess time to the vehicle phase when in reality the time is needed to safely service the pedestrian.  It really becomes annoying, however, when the push button is broken and every cycle the side-street runs long to service the non-existent pedestrian. 

I have a idea to avoid long pedestrian cycles, but not change the light too soon. How 'bout using image detection to determine whether a pedestrian has finished crossing. Around here, the pedestrian times are asininely long, considering most pedestrians are joggers that cross the street in a few seconds.

[NE2]

Watch what you wish for.  Loops outperform video detection in all the followings measures of performance:  missed calls, dropped calls, false calls, stuck-on calls.  If you want accurate detection inductive loops are still the way to go.

Loops don't always detect bicycles, which is a huge problem.

Most likely, local traffic engineers don't care about detecting bicycles.

http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2013/02/15/who-ya-gonna-call/

[tradephoric]

Loops don't always detect bicycles, which is a huge problem.

Video detection can have difficulty detecting bicycles, passenger cars, SUV's, 18-wheelers, or any other type of vehicle that you see on the road.  Some of the biggest problems with video detection, which have been well documented in a number of studies, are shadow occlusion leading to false calls in adjacent lanes and missed calls at night. 

I have a idea to avoid long pedestrian cycles, but not change the light too soon. How 'bout using image detection to determine whether a pedestrian has finished crossing. Around here, the pedestrian times are asininely long, considering most pedestrians are joggers that cross the street in a few seconds.

I like this idea but I don't know how it could be safely implemented.  Consider this pedestrian crossing in Wylie, Texas:


Crossing a 208 ft crosswalk at 3.5 ft/sec would take roughly 60 seconds.  It would be great if some type of pedestrian video detection could be used to determine that someone jogging at 8 ft/sec could finish the crossing in only 26 seconds and go back to the main street early.  The problem arises when the video detection misses a pedestrian.  Maybe the jogger wearing a florescent jacket gets detected, but a slow walker who started their crossing at the same time as the jogger gets skipped.  If this were to occur, the pedestrian change interval would gap out early once the jogger completes the crossing leaving the slow walker stuck in the middle of the intersection playing a real life game of Frogger.

[NE2]

If drivers would wait for conflicting traffic, including that in the crosswalk, to clear, we wouldn't have these long ped phases.

I could maybe see a video detection thing working if the crosswalk is painted and some sort of chroma-key system sweeps the entire length to look for any other colors. And peds don't wear that color.

[Alps]

For a crossing that long, you get a median refuge and you only time the signal for half the road crossing. If the jogger can make it across, fine.

[Mark68]

this is due to the Stadium interchange etc messing things up).

When we were in Las Vegas last December, I don't recall any problems getting around town at any time of the day...occasional mini-jams along the strip, but we didn't spend a whole lot of time in that area.  There are lots of 5- and 7-lane crosstown arterials that speed things up, and the 15 and 215 freeways.  Maybe it was the time of year.

without even getting into "gotta get back home to LA" traffic, I've never once gotten through Vegas on I-15 without at least one spot of congestion due to some construction or another.

If you catch it at the WRONG time of year, you can hit traffic well before you get to Vegas. I was once (during the holidays) stuck in traffic at Mountain Pass (no accident, no weather issues, just cars). This was around midnight.

The Strip is an 8-to-10-lane parking lot at all hours.