10 Ideas: Ways to double road capacity (without changing physical infrastructure)

One of the biggest problems (and opportunities) in urban design: how to do more with less in road infrastructure?

The question is quite specific, in that we’re after 10 ways to (at least) double the capacity of current roads, without changing the physical infrastructure.

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.

Some of my favourites this week:

• This could be quite practical — Restrict car width so you can fit more lanes into the same space. Special lanes and parking zones for restricted width cars.
• Reallocating road lanes to sleds — Introduce express lanes on major roads that use sleds to increase traffic density and speed. So you drive onto a sled and are whisked out of the city, in bumper to bumper traffic, at 120kmh. Like the Elon Musk tunnelling business but reallocates road lanes instead.
• Rolling work from home — Make work from home (or outer suburbs hubs/coworking) compulsory 1 day per week …and support with software/internet etc to facilitate it

The full list:

Better use of road space

• Restrict car width so you can fit more lanes into the same space. Special lanes and parking zones for restricted width cars.
• No registration fee on motorbikes and scooters to encourage better use of space.
• Higher density lanes on freeways where in order to travel in the lane you have to have automatic braking and speed control fitted to the car. So you can travel at higher speed and higher density with less risks of accidents (but you must have the hardware fitted on your vehicle.

Tolling / traffic management

• Dynamic road tolling that penalises you for entering any congested area at any congested time if in a private vehicle. If you add to congestion, you pay.
• Add GPS to ETags and use this for traffic management and tracking. Can also offer incentives for drivers who don’t drive in peak, or those that don’t use congested roads.
• Get paid to take alternative routes when not urgent with tokens that can then be used for “express roads” that are more direct when more urgent
• Dynamic in car signalling. So there’s no longer a need for traffic lights. Each car gets in car signalling at each intersection.
• Connect all cars with technology that can optimise traffic
• Make a parking/entering area a flat rate in congested area eg CBD cost $10/hour flat rate — for all vehicles and all parking (private or public)

Parking

• Remove on road parking on all major thoroughfares.
• All on-road parking spaces are allocated via an app. So there’s no more driving round looking for parking. You request a space in a zone and are allocated to the next available based on your arrival time. If there’s nothing available you’re pushed to a private car park.
• Full transparency on parking availability on an app and you can pre-book spots

Sleds and automation

• Introduce express lanes on major roads that use sleds to increase traffic density and speed. So you drive onto a sled and are whisked out of the city, in bumper to bumper traffic, at 120kmh. Like the Elon Musk tunnelling business but reallocates road lanes instead.
• Use buses on sleds on rail lines to accelerate bus traffic into and out of major cities. Buses become multimodal and can leverage existing rail, tram and road infrastructure. Would require new signalling.
• Cars drive on to smart electric sleds when entering congested area (reduce waste at lights etc)
• High speed sleds or pods for highway traffic
• Implement full adoption of Uberified self driving cars (so they don’t have to park, and all the rest)

Increasing traffic density

• Bike expressways, designed to substantially increase bike based commuter traffic from certain areas.

Shared transport

• Bike sharing for cars — having set places to park cars to reduce traffic looking for parking
• Uber buses that deliver door to door service, but are much more space efficient than using a whole car. So perhaps each bus has 10 carlike booths where you can have your own private space during a slightly longer journey
• Car pooling planning app
• Make public transport free
• Make public transport free (people will take that instead)

Less traffic

• Make work from home (or outer suburbs hubs/coworking) compulsory 1 day per week …and support with software/internet etc to facilitate it
• Promote companies to allow people to work from home
• Get amazon to speed up their rollout of Prime so people don’t have to go to the shops anymore
• Make the cargo rail system more efficient, faster, utilised more and cost less (basically hyperloop it) and take way more trucks off the road

Urban planning

• Build more high-rise apartments in cbd — can just walk instead of commuting
• Offering incentives based on where you live and where you commute to. So perhaps you pay reduced taxes or no car registration if you live in an area that means you generally commute against the traffic on roads that are running under capacity. GPS tracked via your phone for proof.

Vehicle redesign

• Redesign cars so they elevate above other cars. can dock with another car that is going in the same direction
• Buses / trams that are on long legs and “elevated” so cars can go under

Others

• Go up — self driving drones technically wouldn’t need much more infra structure
• Teleportation

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.