Having exits isn’t the same as “driving through downtown.”
I do agree that we should redo how highways work, and part of that is having fewer exits, but what causes slowdowns isn’t the quantity of exits, but the ability to get almost everywhere in a car. In other words, the number of exits are a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The highway infrastructure is in the right place much of the time, the issue is the rest of the infrastructure.
We don’t need more bypasses or lanes, we need driving to be less convenient than transit and walking for short trips. I think one simple change would improve things greatly: cut major arteries in the middle to prevent getting from one edge of the city to the other quickly by car. Basically, restrict those areas to delivery trucks, buses, and emergency services, and force the rest of the traffic to filter through side streets. Just that amount of inconvenience would push a bunch of people to use transit instead, and the areas cut off could be converted to a street.
Yeah downtown to me means lights every block, some towns are absolutely like that, but they’re not on any “shipping” or major highways. So if you’re traveling across country, you’re not going to be on those highways anyways.
freeways - no lights, and what I usually refer to when I say “highway”
inter-city highway - pretty much like any other road, but there’s a constant name between cities - usually get replaced by freeways, but keep the name (e.g. State Street in Utah, 516 in WA [272nd coming off I-18], etc)
My understanding is that most people don’t refer to the second as a highway, they’re just arterial roads most people in the area are familiar with.
Having exits isn’t the same as “driving through downtown.”
I do agree that we should redo how highways work, and part of that is having fewer exits, but what causes slowdowns isn’t the quantity of exits, but the ability to get almost everywhere in a car. In other words, the number of exits are a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The highway infrastructure is in the right place much of the time, the issue is the rest of the infrastructure.
We don’t need more bypasses or lanes, we need driving to be less convenient than transit and walking for short trips. I think one simple change would improve things greatly: cut major arteries in the middle to prevent getting from one edge of the city to the other quickly by car. Basically, restrict those areas to delivery trucks, buses, and emergency services, and force the rest of the traffic to filter through side streets. Just that amount of inconvenience would push a bunch of people to use transit instead, and the areas cut off could be converted to a street.
Yeah downtown to me means lights every block, some towns are absolutely like that, but they’re not on any “shipping” or major highways. So if you’re traveling across country, you’re not going to be on those highways anyways.
I guess there are two types of highways:
My understanding is that most people don’t refer to the second as a highway, they’re just arterial roads most people in the area are familiar with.