How to Fix Traffic Forever

If emerging technology has anything to say about it, there might be a day eventually when and all cars drive themselves. Fortunately for those of us who enjoy driving, that they would appear to be pretty far off on the horizon.

These days, even though we might enjoy driving, every once in a while we get stuck in the unfortunate circumstance where we have to battle severe traffic. Depending on where somebody lives, battling traffic can come in all different shapes and forms as there are definitely areas around the country and the world that are much worse than others.

This time, though, we dig into a little bit of the science behind traffic control and how exactly engineers are doing everything that they can to make things better so that the roadways can flow much more efficiently.

In this video, we get to see a breakdown of one example in the Katy Freeway in Texas where engineers tried to fix a big congestion problem and discovered that it might not be as simple as it seems. As this highway is a particularly busy one, a widening project was done and before we know it, there is more traffic to fill the now wider highway which made the traffic jams even worse. In fact, travel times only stood to increase after the major construction project was finished.

In this video from Wendover Productions, we get to dig into these sorts of concepts about how traffic works and how adding small amounts of cars can end in large amounts of congestion. We also get to dig into why bigger isn’t better and how things like toll roads that might be a bit annoying could stand to really make the traffic situation a lot better.

By following along with the video below, we get to dial ourselves in with the complex puzzle that is the road system.