On: Forced Out by Deadly Fires, Then Trapped in Traffi...

[nordsieck]

> Why are cities not planned such that evacuation routes are already commonly used routes in the morning peak?

No one wants to pay for that level of capacity.

[dsfyu404ed → nordsieck]

This. People would rather have "rush hour" be from 3-8pm rather than pay for enough spare capacity that peak demand only saturates the system from 5-6.

If a four lane highway is saturated for 3hr you'd need twelve lanes to cut that time to 1hr. That's a lot of money.

[Hextinium → dsfyu404ed]

This is compounded by the fact that you cannot in fact build more lanes to handle traffic. Supply just meets demand. https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

[closeparen → dsfyu404ed]

Sprawl simply grows until the ample capacity is tight again.

[dsfyu404ed → closeparen]

This applies to all modes of transit. It is as true for rail networks as it is for cars.