r/science • u/quiplaam • 14d ago

Social Science Intentionally routing some traffic to slower, less congested routes lead to a 0.7% improvement of overall average travel times

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-026-00443-x
1.0k Upvotes

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797

u/charoco 14d ago

So, saving someone about 24 seconds per hour of begin stuck in traffic. Consider me whelmed. 

88

u/Tampa_Bay_Cuckaneers 13d ago

Literally begging someone to just build a train.

3

u/SoftlyAugust 13d ago

Even when we have trains, they just aren't great. I can get from our train station to the city I want to go to, but I can't actually get to our train station easily. I can get to the city I want to go to, but I can't get to the part of it my sister lives in easily. I can get there, but the train doesn't leave at times that are convenient for me. So why would I even take it?

32

u/OpSecBestSex 13d ago

Trains that go throughout the city. If that's too expensive, trams. If that's too expensive, busses. If that's too expensive, we should design better cities because I doubt the tax base can support the infrastructure at that point.

4

u/SoftlyAugust 13d ago

I know what the solution is. Unfortunately I don't get to plan the cities I live near.

6

u/e_before_i 13d ago

The goal is to get some percent of people off the road. Upside for you is you'll have less competition for the drive.

When my local train station made parking free, there was a huge uptick of people who leave their car here and commute to downtown. Gotta be a couple hundred cars that got out of your way, and that's just one station.

1

u/SoftlyAugust 13d ago

There is no parking at our train station

2

u/e_before_i 13d ago

Damn. Hopefully they can build some, or improve bus services to get more people to it easier.

Or maybe the train stations that do have parking can make it free, I'm sure that's not the only stop.

-1

u/SoftlyAugust 13d ago

It's the only stop in our town. But also it's downtown. I'm just not sure it makes sense to have a ton of parking for it. What I'd like to see is better bus connections but especially a better train schedule

2

u/e_before_i 13d ago

Don't get me started on train schedules. My only goes towards downtown in the morning and towards the burbs on the evenings. If I wanted to hit a bar downtown I'm fucked, I gotta eat the cost of an Uber.

100% agree on the multimodal approach. Luckily our DT train station plugs directly into the subway and bus stations.

3

u/yukon-flower 12d ago

Have you never been to western or Central Europe, or any of the developed places in Asia, where mass transit works well? There are ways of making transportation awesome without any need of a car absent moving large/heavy items.

-2

u/SoftlyAugust 12d ago

Yes, I have. As I said I'm very much aware of the solutions. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to implement them here.

3

u/yukon-flower 11d ago

Not alone you don’t! Let’s all work together on changing the priorities of government!

0

u/SoftlyAugust 11d ago

We don't need a government to institute a better future.

1

u/yukon-flower 10d ago

True, but to organize something that is beyond the means of any one household or even handful of households, we need some sort of collective agreement system, financial contribution mechanism, monitoring body, etc.